A .466 average? 1.01 ERA? The Negro Leagues stars behind baseball’s new record statistics
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David Schoenfield, ESPN Senior Writer
When Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and the slow integration of Black players into the American and National Leagues began — emphasis on slow, as the Phillies became the last NL team to integrate in 1957 and the Red Sox the last AL team in 1959 — the wave of talent coming out of the Negro Leagues was extraordinary.
Roy Campanella became Robinson’s teammate in 1948 and would win three NL MVP Awards. Don Newcombe joined Brooklyn in 1949 and would win an MVP and a Cy Young Award in 1955. Larry Doby became the first Black player in the American League in 1947. Minnie Minoso came up initially in 1949, Willie Mays in 1951, Ernie Banks in 1953, Henry Aaron in 1954. Eventually, teams bypassed the Negro League pipeline and signed young players themselves. By the end of the 1950s, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Billy Williams and Bob Gibson had reached the majors. This wave included several Hall of Famers and many of the game’s most legendary stars.
It stands to reason, then, that the Negro Leagues featured players of similar stature before Robinson arrived in ’47. As Bill James once wrote, referring to Robinson, Campanella, Mays, Banks and Aaron, “If those leagues could produce five players like that in seven years, what about the previous 40?”
That’s just one of the reasons it’s important to recognize the statistical accomplishments of the players who performed in the Negro Leagues as a permanent and official part of the MLB database — although it means new records and new names at the top of the all-time career and season leaderboards. This is not without some controversy; some view comparing statistics from different leagues as going a step too far to recognize those players who never had the opportunity to play in the integrated major leagues. (I point out that the National League and American League were separate leagues until 1997, other than meeting in the World Series.) Some will point out the fewer “official” games in a Negro League season create sample size issues when compared to numbers compiled over a longer season.
As MLB put it in its press release, “Negro League stats may be viewed separately
As the release stated, “New stars, and the stories behind them, will emerge.”
As I was scrolling through social media, I saw a poster write, “I had never heard of Josh Gibson.” Now he has.
Indeed, starting with Gibson, here are some all-time greats to know about with MLB’s Negro Leagues statistical update.
Josh Gibson
With a .372 batting average in Negro League competition, Gibson now tops Ty Cobb and his .367 average as the all-time career leader. (To clarify, the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee is considering results only from official league games and not the many barnstorming and unofficial games Negro League teams would play.) Gibson’s .466 average in 1943 also becomes the new single-season record. The previous record holder being replaced at the top? Hugh Duffy hit .440 in 1894 for the Boston team in the National League.
The interesting lesson here is that stories about Gibson always mention him as the greatest slugger in Negro League history. Feats of his prodigious power include legends about him being the only player to hit a ball out of Yankee Stadium or belting 600-foot home runs or the great Buck O’Neil saying he heard only three players produce a certain sound while hitting: Gibson, Babe Ruth and Bo Jackson.
Gibson was a tremendous home run hitter: In his 12 full seasons playing in the Negro Leagues, he led his league in home runs 11 times. But these records show he was also a great hitter for average, winning multiple batting titles. Gibson never got a chance to play in the integrated major leagues. He died of a stroke in January 1947 at age 35, just a few months before Robinson would break the color barrier. (Gibson had been diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1943, playing the final four seasons of his career with recurring headaches.) Gibson didn’t walk as often as Ruth, Ted Williams or Barry Bonds, but he’s up there with them (excepting his career length) and could be considered the greatest right-handed hitter of all time and the greatest catcher.
Oscar Charleston
Rogers Hornsby was considered the modern record holder for batting average in a single season, hitting .424 in 1924. Charleston now beats that at .434 in 1921 and .427 in 1925 while posting a career average of .363, third behind Gibson and Cobb. Charleston was never as famous as Gibson and Satchel Paige and once the Hall of Fame started electing Negro League players in the 1970s (Paige and Gibson were the first two elected), he was only the seventh one inducted. If you conducted a poll of Negro League experts, however, Charleston would be regarded as the best all-around player. He was a center fielder with speed and power, who led his league in home runs, batting average and stolen bases. O’Neil compared him to Willie Mays — only better.
Turkey Stearnes
It took Stearnes until 2000 to get elected to the Hall of Fame, but he ranks right up there with Gibson and Charleston as the best hitters in Negro League history with a .348 lifetime average and more home runs than Gibson (188 to 174 via the numbers at MLB.com, although Gibson homered more often per at-bat). Stearnes was a left-handed hitting center fielder, not a big man (listed at 5-foot-11, 175 pounds), but a clear five-tool player with many stories of long home runs. He was nicknamed Turkey either because of the way he flapped his arms while running or, according to a Stearnes interview, because he had a potbelly as a kid. His best years came with the Detroit Stars from 1923 to 1931, but the team never won a pennant, perhaps explaining why he faded away from memory and took so long to make the Hall of Fame.
Mule Suttles
A big, powerful first baseman/left fielder, Suttles is credited with 183 home runs and a .337 average on MLB.com, putting him alongside Gibson and Stearnes as the third great power hitter of the Negro Leagues. In his greatest season with the St. Louis Stars in 1926, he won the Triple Crown, hitting .425 with 32 home runs and 130 RBIs … in 94 games. According to Suttles’ SABR bio, research shows he played 126 games in the California Winter League from 1930 to 1940 — a strong league featuring active major leaguers and top minor leaguers. Playing on Black teams that played against white teams in the league, Suttles hit .378 with 64 home runs.
Buck Leonard
A first baseman, Leonard was called the “Black Lou Gehrig” — indeed, Leonard said he copied his swing after Gehrig’s — and finished with a lifetime average of .345, which places him eighth on the all-time list, a bit higher than Gehrig’s .340 mark. A graceful, respected player who was a gifted defensive first baseman, Leonard didn’t join the Homestead Grays — where he teamed with Gibson for a lethal one-two punch — until 1935, when he was 27 years old. He was still active when Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947. Bill Veeck reportedly approached him about playing for the St. Louis Browns, but Leonard was in his 40s by then — too old, he said, to give it a try.
Satchel Paige
OK, hopefully you know about the great Satchel, regarded as the greatest pitcher in Negro League history. His 1.01 ERA for the Kansas City Monarchs in 16 starts in 1944 now ranks third on the all-time official list — behind Tim Keefe’s 0.86 for the 1880 Troy Trojans and Dutch Leonard’s 0.96 for the 1914 Red Sox. Of course, by then Paige was already 37 years old and probably past his fireballing peak of the late 1920s and early 1930s. How good was he? Well, Paige was the one Negro League legend who did a get chance to play after integration. In five seasons with the Cleveland Indians and Browns, pitching mostly in relief and relying more on junk and guile than his fastball, Paige posted a 3.31 ERA, good for an adjusted ERA+ of 124 — higher than Hall of Famers Juan Marichal, Mike Mussina, Bob Feller or Don Drysdale, to name a few.
This is just a starting point. Go look up Bullet Joe Rogan and John Henry “Pop” Lloyd and Cool Papa Bell and Martin Dihigo (maybe the best two-way player of all time before Shohei Ohtani) and Chino Smith (who hit .451 in 1929 but would die at age 30 after contracting yellow fever while playing in Cuba) and Willard Brown and Smokey Joe Williams and Willie Wells and so many others. These players are part of a rich, vital part of baseball history, of American history. Statistics and leaderboards and records are just a small part of that.
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Bill Connelly
The 2025 College Football Playoff got underway in Norman, Oklahoma, on Friday night, and we’ve already seen a first. After all four home teams won by demonstrative margins in last year’s first round, Alabama became the first road team to prevail in a playoff game with a stirring comeback against Oklahoma and a 34-24 win.
Here are the main takeaways. We will update this with each completed game.
What just happened?
Oklahoma’s offense only had 20 minutes in it. The Sooners were perfect out of the gate, bursting to a 17-0 lead against an Alabama team that looked completely unprepared for the moment. But the Crimson Tide adjusted and rallied, and OU had only a brief answer. From 17 down, Bama outscored its hosts by a 34-7 margin from there.
We use the word “momentum” far too much in football, but this was an extremely momentum-based game.
1. Over the first 19 minutes, Oklahoma went up 17-0 while outgaining Bama by a stunning 181-12 margin. It could have been worse, too, as the Sooners’ Owen Heinecke came within millimeters of a blocked punt that might have produced a safety or a touchdown.
2. Over the next 21 minutes, Bama outscored the Sooners 27-0, outgaining them, 194-59. Freshman Lotzeir Brooks caught two touchdown passes — the first on a fourth-and-2 to finally get Bama on the board (after he caught a huge third-down pass earlier in the drive), and the second TD came on a 30-yard lob that put the Tide up for good. The Tide defense got pressure on John Mateer, and his footwork and composure vanished. An egregious pick-six thrown directly to Zabien Brown tied the game, and Bama scored the first 10 points of the second half as well.
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Zabien Brown stuns OU with game-tying pick-six before halftime
Zabien Brown takes a big-time interception 50 yards to the house to tie the score before halftime.
OU responded briefly, cutting the margin to three points early in the fourth quarter thanks to a 37-yard Deion Burks touchdown. But the Sooners’ offense couldn’t do enough, and kicker Tate Sandell, the Groza Award winner, missed two late field goals to assure a Bama win.
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Tate Sandell’s back-to-back FG misses help Alabama secure 1st-round win
Tate Sandell misses a pair of late field goals as Alabama holds on to beat Oklahoma 34-24 in the CFP first round.
Impact plays
Oklahoma beat Alabama in Tuscaloosa in November — in the game that eventually certified the Sooners’ CFP bid — thanks to a pick-six and special teams dominance. But the tables turned completely in Norman. Brown’s pick six was huge, and special teams completely abandoned the Sooners, both with Sandell’s misses and with a botched punt in the second quarter.
The botched punt was actually the second of a two-part sequence that turned the game against the Sooners. First, Mateer passed up an easy third-and-3 conversion to throw downfield to a wide open Xavier Robinson, but he short-armed the pass and dropped it. On the very next snap, punter Grayson Miller dropped the ball moving into his punting motion. Bama’s Tim Keenan III recovered the ball at the OU 30, and while OU’s defense held the Tide to a field goal, what could have been a 24-3 OU lead turned instead into a 17-10 advantage. That set the table for Brown’s pick-six and everything that followed.
The blown early lead leaves Oklahoma with quite the ignominious feat: In the history of the College Football Playoff, teams are 28-2 with a 17-point lead: OU is 0-2, and everyone else is 28-0. Ouch.
See you next fall, Sooners
We knew that whenever Oklahoma’s season ended, offense would be the primary reason. The Sooners survived playing with almost no margin for error for most of the year. Their No. 49 ranking in offensive SP+ was the worst of any CFP team, but they got enough defense (third in defensive SP+), special teams (21st in special teams SP+) and quality red zone play to overcome it.
The Sooners’ defense still played well on Friday night — Bama gained only 260 total yards (4.8 per play) — but the special teams miscues put more pressure on the offense to come through, and after a brilliant start, it ran out of steam. Mateer began the game 10-for-15 for 132 yards with a touchdown, 26 rushing yards and a rushing TD, but his last 31 pass attempts gained just 149 yards with five sacks and the pick, and his last nine non-sack rushes gained just 15 yards.
Brent Venables therefore heads into the offseason with some decisions to make. OU’s offense technically improved after the big-money additions of coordinator Ben Arbuckle and Mateer, but Mateer was scattershot before his midseason hand injury and poor after it. Do the Sooners run it back with the same roster core, hoping that better health and a theoretically improved run game can give the defense what it needs to take OU to the next level? Does Venables hit the reset button again? Can he ever get all the arrows pointed in the right direction at the same time?
What’s next
Alabama’s reward for the comeback win is a trip out West: The Tide will meet unbeaten and top-seeded Indiana in the Rose Bowl on January 1. Bama’s defense will obviously face a stiffer test from Heisman winner Fernando Mendoza and the Hoosiers attack, but Bama’s defense has been mostly up for the test this season. Their ability to pull an upset will be determined by Ty Simpson and the Alabama passing game.
Simpson began Friday night’s win just 2-for-6 with a sack, and while he improved from there and didn’t throw any interceptions — his final passing line: 18-for-29 for 232 yards, two touchdowns and four sacks (6.0 yards per attempt) — his footwork still betrayed him quite a bit over the course of the evening, and he misfired on quite a few passes. Oklahoma’s pass rush is fearsome, but Indiana’s defense ranks seventh in sack rate itself, and with almost no blitzing whatsoever. The Hoosiers generate pressure and clog passing lanes, and they held Oregon‘s Dante Moore and Ohio State‘s Julian Sayin to 5.1 yards per dropback with 11 sacks and two touchdowns to three picks. Bama will be an underdog for a reason.
That said, kudos to the Tide for getting off the mat. They were lifeless at the start, missing tackles and blocks and looking as unprepared as they did in their season-opening loss to Florida State. But Brooks’ play-making lit the fuse, and Bama charged back.
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