Column: Incorporating Negro Leagues stats into the record books is a long time coming, but MLB — finally — rights a historical wrong

Former Negro Leagues star Ted Radcliffe approached MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent one spring day in 1992 and asked for help getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“He came up to me and said, ‘I’m 89, I belong in the Hall of Fame and I’m running out of time,’ ” Vincent recalled before a Chicago White Sox game at what then was called new Comiskey Park.

Radcliffe, dubbed “Double Duty” by sportswriter Damon Runyan for pitching one end of a doubleheader and catching the other, was cautiously optimistic when I asked him about Vincent’s comment.

“I know they’re working on it,” he said with a slight smile.

The Sox honored Radcliffe and a couple of dozen other Negro Leagues players including Buck O’Neil, Sam Jethroe and Perry Hall, that May afternoon on the South Side. During the game, Sox players wore caps of the Chicago American Giants — the Negro Leagues team that played in old Comiskey Park — becoming the first MLB team to honor Negro Leaguers in such fashion.

In a pregame address to fans, O’Neil called the tribute “one of the greatest moments of my life.”

I thought of old “Double Duty” and Buck upon hearing the news Wednesday afternoon that MLB finally had reclassified the Negro Leagues as a major league.

Radcliffe was a frequent visitor to Sox games late in his life, often regaling the writers with stories of Black ballplayers that the white media of that era ignored and time forgot. Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf sent a car to pick up Radcliffe and drive him home whenever he felt like coming out — a gesture that helped Radcliffe feel recognized in his final years — and threw a 100th birthday party for him at the ballpark.

Radcliffe lived to 103, a nice, long life that he slyly attributed to “knowing young women.” But he did not live long enough to see his name listed in the MLB stats books, unlike Moonlight Graham, an obscure New York Giants player from 1905 who had no at-bats in only one career game but gained fame after serving as a plot point in the movie “Field of Dreams.”

That injustice soon will be rectified. MLB and the Elias Sports Bureau will review Negro Leagues statistics and records to incorporate the stats of more than 3,400 players into their database. Currently, the stats of many of those players are available on seamheads.com, but someday we’ll be able to type “Double Duty” into the search box of the more mainstream site baseball-reference.com and find his pitching and hitting numbers somewhere between John Radcliff (1871-75) and Brad Radke (1995-2006).

“We’re working on it” is a common response by those who pretend to do things while either procrastinating or not doing anything at all. Correcting this error in baseball history was a long time coming.

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”

Better late than never, of course, but if Manfred and his predecessors knew this all along, why did it take this summer’s racial reckoning from the killing of George Floyd to right a wrong from 1969? That was the year MLB classified four whites-only leagues from the late 19th century and early 20th century as major leagues, including the Federal League, which existed as a major league for only two years from 1914-15, and two leagues that lasted only one year each.

The Negro Leagues were not considered for reasons we can only surmise. Two years later, Satchel Paige became the first Negro Leagues player inducted into the Hall of Fame, and it took 49 more years to acknowledge the Negro Leagues as major.

The MLB record books will change, and greats such as Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard will see their names alongside the likes of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. Sox legend Minnie Minoso, who finished with 1,963 hits and a career .298 average in his 17-year MLB career, should jump up to 2,121 hits and a .299 average if the numbers from his three years in the Negro Leagues are validated.

Minoso already should be in the Hall of Fame, but the added hits should aid his cause in future voting by the Hall’s Veterans Committee. More important, the decision to place Negro Leagues players on the same level as their white peers should spur interest in their stories.

Players such as Mule Suttles of the American Giants, who was greeted with “Muuuuule! Muuuuuule!” whenever he stepped to the plate. Or Gibson, considered the “Black Babe Ruth” and as legend has it hit a 440-foot, line-drive home run into a loudspeaker in center field at old Comiskey Park but was credited only with a double because the ball ricocheted back onto the field. Or the annual East-West All-Star Games at Comiskey, which fans packed to see the great Black stars of the day.

“Most of the big-league teams wouldn’t let them use their ballpark and when they did, they weren’t allowed the use of the locker rooms,” author Bill Brashler once told the Tribune. “They had to come dressed to play.”

Some of us were fortunate enough to be able to listen to the tales of players such as Radcliffe and O’Neil. Despite being denied a chance to play in the majors, they never seemed embittered or angry. When the Baltimore Orioles named their spring training complex in Sarasota, Fla., after him in 1995, O’Neil, a first baseman for the Kansas City Monarchs and later the majors’ first Black coach with the Cubs, spoke to some high school students about his career in the Negro Leagues.

“A lot of people say to me, ‘Buck, I know you should be bitter because of the things that happened to you. I feel sorry for you because I think you were born too soon,’ ” O’Neil told them. “I say, ‘You’ve got to be silly. I was right on time.’ Right on time to see the change, right on time to help make that change.

“How could I have been too soon when I played baseball with some of the greatest athletes in the world? I played against Ruth. I played against Buck Leonard, I played with Satchel Paige, I played against Josh Gibson. I did this. I just happened to have been Black.”

Baseball was not right on time, but now that it’s official, welcome to the majors, Buck and Double Duty.

It’s about time.