After 100 Years, MLB Recognizes Negro Leagues As 'Major League'

Major League Baseball has finally decided that players from the Negro Leagues should be considered Major Leaguers. All 3,400 players - from 1920 to 1948 - will be elevated to MLB status.

This newly gained "status" is merely in name only, as many of those great players were already considered among the all-time greats in the sport.  Players like Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson have always been celebrated, but as representatives of segregation and they always occupied a different section of baseball history.  Baseball is a sport where the statistics carry a lot of weight, and the addition of the Negro Leagues to the MLB record books will have a massive impact on the way future generations view the segregated leagues of the 1920s-1940s.  

Approximately 3,400 players competed in the Negro Leagues from 1920 to 1948. They were kept out of the segregated major leagues. And then, when an opportunity came up in 1969 to retroactively award the Negro Leagues major league status, an MLB committee didn't consider it. But in December of 2020, MLB said that was clearly an error.    Very few original players remain alive in 2020, but at least now the history will be presented to a new generation of baseball fans as being on par with the rest of the MLB as they always should have been.