Major League Baseball has admitted it is correcting a longtime oversight

It’s profoundly gratifying. It’s a boast to our National Pastime. It’s Major League Baseball finally reaching out to reclassify the Negro Leagues, granting MLB status a century after their founding.

Some say it’s correcting a longtime oversight, that MLB, in the eventful year of 1969, viewed the omission of the Negro Leagues from consideration, and admitting now that it was clearly an error that demands today’s designation.

And now the Major League Baseball committee is correcting the oversight and elevating the Negro Leagues on the centennial of its founding in 1876. Back then, it was nothing fancy, just bats and balls, a place to play, but no way to travel. As the years went by, the Negro Leagues overcame the obstacle barriers and began keeping statistics from 1920-1948.

But it was in 1947, the year after Jackie Robinson became MLB’s first Black player when he signed by the then-Brooklyn Dodgers, that Negro Leagues began to dissolve. Then in 1969, these leagues were excluded when the Special Committee on Baseball Records identified six official “major leagues”.

Now the Negro Leagues that produced such greats as slugger Josh Gibson, pitcher LeRoySatchel Paige, outfielder Monte Irvin, and a young Willie Mays, who later became Irvin’s roommate with the New York Giants, played alongside him in the outfield, and all four being named to the prestigious Baseball Hall of Fame, has been reclassified as a major league, and stats and records of some 3,400 players will count.

Mays will now add some hits to his record, Irvin’s big league batting average should climb over .300, and Paige may add nearly 150 victories to his total. Gibson, considered the greatest of all Negro League sluggers, might also wind up with a major league record.

The statistics and records of these greats are set to join Major League Baseball’s book afterMLB made the announcement that it is reclassifying the Negro Leagues as a major league. The league will work with the Elias Sports Bureau to review Negro Leagues stats and records and figure out how to incorporate them into MLB’s history. There was no standard method of records keeping for the Negro Leagues, but there are enough box scores to stitch together some of its statistical past.

For instance, Mays could be credited with 17 hits from his 1948 season with the Alabama Black Barons, Irvin could see his career average climb from .293 to .304 if numbers listed at Baseball-Reference from his nine Negro League seasons are accurate. And Paige, who is credited with 28 major league wins, should add at least 146 to his list.

While Gibson’s long years in the leagues have estimated that he hit over 800 home runs in 16 seasons, it’s unlikely that enough records exist for him to officially pass Barry Bonds for the career mark of 762. But depending on what Elias and MLB rule, though, Gibson could wind up with another notable record, for his .441 batting average in 1943 would be the best season mark ever, edging Hugh Duffy’s .440 from 1894, although Gibson did it in fewer than 80 games, however, far short of the modern standard of 162.

Major League Baseball revealed it has considered input from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the Negro League Researchers and Authors Group, and studies by other baseball authors and researchers.

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Sounds good, is good, that the Negro Leagues are finally getting their due. They toiled for many years by stuffing players into packed vehicles, having cramped busses, using inferior bats and ball and gloves, and playing in front of African-Americans at ball parks with broken seats, dirt fields, and few refreshment stands due to fans spending their money to attend the games.

But they, too, loved the game, and play they did, and now receiving further recognition. Of the four players mentioned, Mays is the only one still alive. Classified by many as the best-ever ballplayer, he’s 88, has lost his sight, and hopefully he has learned of this new gesture pieced together by Major League Baseball.