Negro Leagues now part of Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball has announced that records of Negro Leagues players will be included in the game’s official statistics, in a “long overdue recognition,” reports NBC.

Before Jackie Robinson broke professional baseball’s race barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Black players were barred from playing in the MLB, denying many baseball fans to witness some of the best hitters, pitchers and fielders of the 20th century.

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumph against a backdrop of injustice,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.

The records and stats of 3,400 players who competed in seven leagues for Black players between 1920 and 1948, will be included in MLB records, officials said.

“For historical merit, today is extraordinarily important. Having been around so many of the Negro League players, they never looked to MLB to validate them,” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick said in a statement. “But for fans and for historical sake, this is significant, it really is.

Read more on NBC News