Integrating the MLB Record Book

Black Diamonds

SiriusXM

History, Baseball, Black History, Sports, Negro Leagues, Documentary, Equality, Society & Culture, Civil Rights

4.8 • 617 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2024

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s a new era in baseball history as Josh Gibson now sits atop many MLB all-time leaderboards and numerous other great Negro Leaguers are now found in the top 10. Bob Kendrick discusses the significance of Major League Baseball’s decision to finally incorporate the Negro Leagues into the MLB record book and what it means for the players and the leagues to be officially recognized. Bob’s joined by historians John Thorn and Phil Dixon as they reveal how the committee uncovered the records, which players are finally getting long overdue recognition and what their findings mean for baseball history.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I realize how important it is to this country, to our history,
0:11.1	having the Negro leagues included into all of this baseball history is as American as you can get.
0:21.9	Well, I've oftentimes said after completing tours with my guest here at the Negro
0:30.7	League's baseball museum that had the doors open sooner, the record books would be entirely different.
0:40.9	Well, on May 29th of this year, Major League Baseball went back and reopened the door.
0:52.0	And what happened?
1:14.2	The record books are now a little different. And I am so honored to have just played a small role in what truly will be considered one of the great milestones of black baseball history,
1:24.3	with what we saw with the rolling of the stats of the Negro leagues into the annals of Major League Baseball's record books.
1:31.8	This is something, if you recall, that was initially announced in December of 2020.
1:45.0	Just as we were really embroiled in a global pandemic, it was also the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Negro Leagues.
1:55.8	And we were also experiencing significant social unrest as we witnessed the heinous murder of George Floyd.
1:59.6	So there was a lot of things happening there in 2020.
2:00.9	But it was December 16th of 2020 when Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred
2:07.3	made the historic announcement that first and foremost,
2:13.9	Major League Baseball was going to at long last recognize the Negro Leagues as a major league.
2:19.7	Now, all of us who are stewards of this story, that is no surprise to us.
2:23.2	We've always known that the Negro Leagues were as major as any league.
2:28.8	But there was certainly a reckoning here because of what had taken place in 1969 when the commission that Major League Baseball put together simply dismissed the Negro Leagues.
2:42.0	Recognized all these other leagues and just absolutely blatantly dismissed the Negro leagues or disregarded the Negro Leagues.
2:50.2	So first and foremost, the commissioner was essentially riding a wrong.
2:55.6	But as part of that, he also made the epic announcement that there would be a team of Negro
3:03.3	League historians who would then work to pull together the data necessary to include the
	...

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