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Earlier this year, when Major League Baseball retroactively granted the Negro Leagues “official major league status,” thousands of players (including legendary greats Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson above) who were kept out of the game’s biggest stage for no reason other than the color of their skin were now officially — albeit in many cases, posthumously,” major leaguers.
And starting today, fans can deep-dive into the career stats of players like Josh Gibson, James “Cool Papa” Bell, Buck O’Neil and Satchel Page just as they would all-time greats like Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willy Mays and Babe Ruth or modern stars like Mike Trout, Ronald Acuna Jr or Fernando Tatis.
Starting today, stats for players of Major Negro League teams from 1920-1948 will be available at Baseball-Reference.com, with those stats also being used to produce modern-era stats like OPS and WAR.
“Baseball Reference is not bestowing a new status on these players or their accomplishments,” said Sean Foreman, president of Baseball-Reference.com’s parent company, Sports Reference Inc. “The Negro Leagues have always been major leagues, and we are changing our site’s presentation to properly recognize this fact.
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