PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — One of Major League Baseball's foremost authorities on statistics is adding Negro League stats to its database, taking a step many people believe will help tell baseball's complete history.
Baseballreference.com is the go-to site for statistics on the game for people around the world, but until now, those stats have not included the Negro Leagues.
But with a site redesign, the leading information-gathering resource site for the sport is now including the league where Black players could only play from 1920 until the integration of MLB with Jackie Robinson in 1947.
"There have been a lot of comments (conveying) 'About time.' We agree with that," said Sean Forman, the owner and operator of the Mt. Airy-based site that works closely with Major League Baseball.
"I don't think it should have taken us as long to do this as it did, but we're very happy to have done it now.
The update will include stats from seven Negro Leagues from 1920-48.
"Thousands of hours and hundreds of people (worked) on them to produce them, so we're still at the early part of generating these numbers," Forman said.
He believes this will now give people a chance to compare greats from across the different leagues, something current players appreciate.
"The Phillies' own Andrew McCutchen retweeted our announcement as well," Forman said.
"It's been really gratifying to see the current players latch on to this, help promote this and get the word out there for us."
Forman added he hopes this also leads people to explore what these players had to endure off the field as they became great on it.
