The greatness of the Negro Leagues now in the record

Imagine thousands of Jackie Robinsons breaking the color barrier long after they’d hung up their caps and cleats.

It sounds fanciful, the stuff of fiction, but this is no field of dreams.

In a move that was long overdue, Major League Baseball elevated the Negro Leagues to major league status, allowing the players — and their statistics — to enjoy the same status as their white counterparts.

The Negro Leagues operated from 1920 to 1948, and while this decision does not erase decades of bigotry that forced Black players into a separate league, it is a great civil rights triumph. It rights a long-standing wrong.

It gives the Black players equality in one of the most hallowed areas of the sport — the past. With one eye on the field and the other on the box score, baseball fans are the nerdiest of all, treasuring the past as though it were a scrapbook come to life.

For the surviving Black players, it has come to life, validating all those years of toil and struggle in what had been considered an inferior league. This move confirms what all the Black players knew — they belonged, and now that the “Colored Only” sign has been ripped off the record books, they can sit beside their white counterparts. “It’s early Christmas, and it will make the new year a lot happier, especially since my wife passed away in January,” Ron Teasley told CNN. Teasley, 93, is one of the few surviving players of the Negro Leagues. He lives in Detroit, but part of him resides in another realm — the past. They say you cannot rewrite the past, but you can; you can present it in a different light, a light that is more humane and just.

History is harsh, mostly told by those who wield the power. Too often, the past is viewed through a narrow prism. In this case, a prism that long relegated many of the key players in the Negro Leagues to the same status they experienced decades before — the sidelines. No longer.

It is almost as if the players are on that bus, sitting alongside Rosa Parks. This move redresses some of the wrongs the Black players suffered, and it comes at a momentous time, the centennial celebration of the Negro Leagues. Teasley is rejoicing.

“I just think about all the players,” Teasley said. “It’s a wonderful thing.”

The past is the key to understanding the present, and baseball fans now have a new handle on the past. Consider Babe Ruth, long regarded as the greatest hitter in baseball history. But was he really?

Josh Gibson, who debuted with the Homestead Grays in 1928, dwarfed Ruth, statistically if not physically. He is credited with almost 800 home runs, approximately 100 more than Ruth, and his batting average was 10 points higher — .356. They called him the “Black Babe Ruth.”

Maybe Ruth should be called the “White Josh Gibson.” Ruth is a legend — will always be a legend — and while this move will not diminish him, it will elevate Gibson. Finally.

Other players will experience the same dynamic. Satchel Paige, Mule Suttles, Cool Papa Bell, Smokey Joe Williams — all of them great Negro Leagues players. The qualifier is gone now; they were great major league players.

The decision will also affect major league players who started in the Negro Leagues. That includes Willie Mays, whose Negro League stats will be added to his MLB stats. Arguably the greatest player who ever lived, Mays will grow in stature. “All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumph against a backdrop of injustice,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.

Back to the Ruth. During his heyday in the 1920s, Ruth barnstormed with the Negro Leagues during the offseason, defying the racist baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. He paid heavy fines for his intransigence, according to Jane Leavy, who wrote a wonderful biography of Ruth, “The Big Fella.”

According to Leavy, “their sparkling brilliancy on the field would have a tendency to increase attendance at games,” Ruth told the Pittsburgh Courier, arguing for the inclusion of Black players in the major leagues.

In 1963, an MLB committee rejected elevating the Negro Leagues, a wrong that has now been redressed. The world now knows what Ruth knew. The Negro Leagues were major.