MLB Elevates Negro Leagues to Major League Status, Admits it's "Overdue"
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Major League Baseball officially elevated the Negro Leagues to "Major League" status in an announcement on Wednesday (December 16).
Commissioner Rob Manfred says that the move is "correcting a longtime oversight in the game's history." A statement released also admits that the recognition is "long-overdue." The full MLB statement is as follows:
"This long-overdue recognition is the product of evaluation throughout this year, which included consideration of: discussions with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and other baseball entities; the previous and ongoing studies of baseball authors and researchers; the 2006 study by the National Baseball Hall of Fame (the Negro League Researchers and Authors Group); and an overall historical record that has expanded in recent years. In particular, MLB commends the work of Gary Ashwill, Scott Simkus, Mike Lynch, and Kevin Johnson, who drove the construction of the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, and Larry Lester, whose decades-long research underlies and adds to their work. MLB credits all of the baseball research community for discovering additional facts, statistics, and context that exceed the criteria used by the Special Committee on Baseball Records in 1969 to identify six "Major Leagues" since 1876. It is MLB's view that the Committee's 1969 omission of the Negro Leagues from consideration was clearly an error that demands today's designation."