https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2024/05/28/negro-leagues-statistics-officially-incorporated-into-major-league-record-book/73882293007/

...former Negro League players, will have their statistics officially incorporated into Major League Baseball’s historical records, according to a person familiar with the announcement.

It will be interesting to see which stats are included and if any will change some of baseballs most iconic records. One point of contention I expect to see is that stats accumulated during barnstorming tours will not be included. I don't expect to see Josh Gibson with the new all-time homerun record with 800 HRs as the vast majority were hit in non-league barnstorming games.

I just have a problem putting Gibson in there for batting average when he didn't even have enough at-bats technically to qualify (I read where Gibson only played the equivalent of 5 MLB seasons) and Cobb played like 600+ more games.  The Negro Leagues had like 60 game seasons versus MLB having more than double that amount.  That leads to a significant discrepancy in averages.

I guess its hard to just have two separate lists and just reboot the stats for when integration really began but this doesn't sit well with me.  I'd prefer we have a MLB pre-integration list, a Negro League list record list, and then MLB records post-integration.

The website Baseball Reference did this a couple years ago.

3 hours ago, Tranquility Base said:

The website Baseball Reference did this a couple years ago.

They had the stats, but I didn't think they included them in career stats league leaders list.