Negro League baseball players Buck O’Neil and Bud Fowler have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Seven Black League and pre-Black League players were considered for inductance into the Hall of Fame.
[Previous story, published at 4:40 p.m. ET]
The Committees on the Early Baseball Era and Golden Days met on Sunday to decide whether Buck O’Neil and other Black League players – as well as pre-Black League players – should be selected. to be inducted into the Hall of Fame or not. In total, 20 players are being considered for referrals.
Candidates for the referral include O’Neil, who played 10 seasons with the Memphis Red Sox and Kansas City Monarchs, and Grant “Home Run” Johnson, who was a short-timer and second-place finisher in the series. era before the Negro Tournament, according to the Hall of Fame Web Site.
The MLB said it was “repairing the perennial scrutiny in gaming history” by enhancing the status of the Black Leagues – which included seven leagues and about 3,400 players between 1920 and 1948.
The decline of the Negro Leagues began in 1947 when Jackie Robinson became the MLB’s first Black player, joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1969, the Special Committee on Baseball Records did not include Baseball Leagues among the six “Major Leagues” it had identified since 1876.
CNN’s Ray Sanchez and Dan Kamal contributed to this report.
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