16 Dec Late Flowers: MLB Finally Gives Shamefully Overdue Recognition To 3,400 Iconic Negro League Players As “Major League”

It’s about cotdamn time. Smh.

Source: Candice Estep / EyeEm / Getty

This must be the week that baseball unanimously decided to rid itself of it’s long racist history. We, for one, will not allow them to forget about it. Monday, BOSSIP reported that the professional franchise in Cleveland will no longer go by the name “Indians” after next season.

According to CBSSports, Major League Baseball announced that it will be recognizing almost 3,400 Negro League players as “major leaguers” and including all their stats and accolades in the official tally of baseball history. Despite the fact that the sport was too white to recognize these men previously, Black players did accomplish significant feats in the sport from 1920-1948 and to omit them will forever be a sin that baseball will have to live with. Commissioner Rob Manfred couches the decision as, “correcting a longtime oversight in the game’s history.”

That’s one way to put it…

Here is the list of Black leagues that are being recognized for their contributions to the game:

Negro National League (I) (1920–1931); the Eastern Colored League (1923–1928); the American Negro League (1929); the East-West League (1932); the Negro Southern League (1932); the Negro National League (II) (1933–1948); and the Negro American League (1937–1948).

Do ya Googles and check out some of the feats from the ballers who dominated this era while also being hated by their own homeland. It’s incredible what they were able to accomplish and we’re glad they are finally getting their much-deserved flowers even if it is too little, too late.