National Post (National Edition)
`JUSTICE HAS BEEN DONE'
MLB RECOGNIZING NEGRO LEAGUES STATS CORRECTS ONE OF THE GAME'S ALL-TIME GREAT WRONGS
Major League Baseball has long been propped up by its tradition and statistics, an alliance that has often hindered its ability to move forward. The Negro Leagues are the opposite: a relic that lives on through its stories, those part-historical, mostly hyperbolic tales that turned legends into superheroes.
Forced by discrimination to create their own leagues in 1920, the nearly 3,400 baseball players from the Negro Leagues might not have been able to crush segregation. But Josh Gibson could hit a home run out of Yankee Stadium. James “Cool Papa” Bell could hit a light switch and be in bed before the light went out. Leroy “Satchel” Paige was such an attraction that Kansas City Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson had to buy a propeller plane to fly him to the various teams seeking to rent his services. At least one, probably two, of those tales were true.
Now, MLB has decided to recognize the statistics of leagues that lacked the structure, stability and financial resources of their all-white counterparts. While the move has mostly drawn applause, it has also been criticized as pompous, and for its disregard of the role MLB played in ostracizing Black talent.
Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick, though, doesn't believe the popular figures from the game, and the mythology surrounding them, will be diminished. The stories will always exist. And they will continue to be shared in their own convivial realm, liberated from the limitations of numbers.
“I don't ever want to lose the legend and lore surrounding these great athletes because they were shunned by baseball,” Kendrick said in a phone interview. “The oral accounts of what these players did is still important to me. You can never tell the true story of the Negro Leagues with numbers. You just won't.”
If anything, Kendrick said, MLB's announcement increases the need to provide context and substance to whatever the statistics reveal.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, founded in 1990 in Kansas City, Mo., is no mere Hall of Fame. It's a civil rights and social justice museum that spotlights how Black and Latino players shone despite being in the shadows, explains the substandard conditions in which they competed, and lays bare the role racism played in suppressing their greatness. So even as its stars' numbers are woven in with White players', who hit and pitched without being subjected to the same bigotry, the underlying “why” still needs to be told.
“That's my job,” Kendrick said. “It makes our work that much more important over the long haul, so that people don't lose sight that these courageous athletes essentially forged a glorious history in the midst of an inglorious history.
“They changed the game.”
Kendrick said he was first made aware of MLB's plans last summer. He was confused and conflicted, he said. Having spent much of his life talking to former players, their family members and others closely tied to the game, he knew they didn't need outside approval.
“I'll be honest: When I first caught wind of it, I can't exactly say I was feeling it,” Kendrick said. “Because I knew the players. I knew how proud they were. And they knew how good they were. And they knew how good their league was. So they were never seeking validation, from anyone.
“If you look at what happened from 1947 to 1960, Major League Baseball witnessed its greatest influx of talent in one single time span in the history of a league that's been around for 150 years,” Kendrick continued. “But, again, this talent was siphoned from a league that wasn't considered major, that was considered inferior.”
Then Kendrick talked to them again, those loved ones who carry on the legacy of players who brought flair and flavour to the game, the same way their ancestors turned plantation scraps into soul food. There might have been some confusion about how MLB will carry out its plans, but the prevailing sentiment, Kendrick said, was the belated correction of the oversight should be celebrated.
“I look at this as a merger. Too bad this happened after 99.9 per cent are gone. But still, justice has been done,” said Sean Gibson, great grandson of Josh Gibson, the Hall of Fame slugger for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords. “People would always say Josh Gibson is the greatest Negro League baseball player. They never said he's the greatest baseball player. Josh Gibson, `the Black Babe Ruth.' Nah, Babe Ruth was the white Josh Gibson. And so, now, we can say, `Josh Gibson is one of the greatest baseball players, period, of all time.' ”
Gibson has spent months lobbying the Baseball Writers' Association of America to name the MVP award after his great grandfather. Until a few months ago, the award was named for baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, whose discriminatory policies meant Gibson was never afforded the chance to play in MLB. Gibson died of a stroke months before Jackie
Robinson debuted on April 15, 1947.
MLB will work with the Elias Sports Bureau to determine how the records will be incorporated, but Gibson's .441 batting average in 1943 is likely to become the highest mark in the history of the game, edging Hugh Duffy's .440 average with the Boston Beaneaters in 1894. Another part of Gibson's legacy could be lost: His plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., claims he hit “almost 800 home runs” in 16 seasons. The official Negro Leagues tally is less than a third of that.
“If it was up to the Gibson family to be the all-time home run leader and have that one solid category and that's it, or would we take Josh Gibson in the top five or top 10 in several categories? We'll take that,” Sean Gibson said.
Artie Wilson Jr. also sees the positive in MLB's announcement. His father, Artie Sr., should soon replace Ted Williams as the most recent hitter to bat over .400. Wilson hit .402 for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, but had his opportunity to play a mere 22 games in MLB delayed by three years because of a contract dispute between the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees.
“If it would have happened before he passed away, he would have been smiling,” said Wilson, whose father died in 2010. “My father had zero bitterness about what happened in his life when it comes to baseball. ... He played the game because he loved it, absolutely loved it more than anything.”
“It's about atonement,” Kendrick said. “It's about long overdue respect for this league that made as much of an impact on Major League Baseball as anything that has ever occurred in this country.”
Kendrick did object to MLB's contention, in its announcement, that the Negro Leagues were being “elevated,” which he said portrayed a “level of arrogance.”
Otherwise, he praised MLB commissioner Rob Manfred for righting a wrong that has been in place since 1969, when the Special Committee on Baseball Records decided not to include Negro Leagues statistics among the other six major leagues dating from 1876 — “a blatant dismissal that was completely racially motivated” and that Kendrick didn't learn about until last year.
He compared Manfred's move to the one late commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler made in opening up the league to Robinson.
“Baseball did in one day what we've been trying to do as an institution for almost 30 years,” said Kendrick, 58.
“It is always the right time to do the right thing, and commissioner Manfred did the right thing. Others had the opportunity to do this and didn't.”
Last year was supposed to be special for the museum, a 100th anniversary celebration that would trumpet the Negro Leagues' legacy. But the museum was shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic from March to June. There were moments worth celebrating: A “Tip of the Cap” social media campaign featured politicians (including the four living former presidents) and professional athletes such as Michael Jordan showing their respects to the pioneering legends of baseball.
And the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill directing the Treasury Department to mint coins commemorating the Negro Leagues, which will generate an estimated $6 million in revenue for the museum once the coins hit the market in 2022.
Still, last year's losses were significant. Hall of Fame outfielder Lou Brock and country music legend Charley Pride, both former Negro Leagues players and members of the museum's advisory board, died. So did Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson and two members for the museum's “Hall of Game” ceremony, Joe Morgan and Dick Allen.
The museum also lost actor Chadwick Boseman, who played Robinson in the biopic “42.” At the film's premiere in Kansas City in 2013, Boseman presented the Monarchs jersey that he wore in the movie, and it has hung in the museum ever since.
“When you lose people like that, who are so near and dear to you, that always takes a little piece out of you,” Kendrick said. “But by and large, we've been able to orchestrate a tremendously successful 100th anniversary, in spite of all that. The party ain't gonna stop.”
The museum will focus its efforts in 2021 on the “Negro Leagues 101” promotional campaign, to celebrate its 101-year history and offer fundamental lessons on the league. Critics of MLB's decision have suggested that Manfred could have done more to right a wrong, such as donating some of MLB's billions in revenue to make sure the museum's doors stay open.
Kendrick, though, pointed to a joint $1 million donation that the museum received last year from the league and its players' association.
“I think we'll continue to benefit from this, because I think it's going to only enhance the working relationship and the partnership we have,” he said. “I would only hope that the institution that is charged with preserving its history becomes even more significant and meaningful to you.”
He chuckled and added, “I hope that more cheques are coming.”