$Unique_ID{BAS01190}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{The Negro Baseball Roster:  Introduction}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Clark, Dick
Lester, Larry}
$Subject{NEGRO ROSTER black rosters color Peterson Holway Brashler Tygiel SABR
Davids Fowler Lester Clark Walker Whyte Mays Aaron Doby Irvin Banks Dihigo
Dandridge Redding Rogan Stearnes Marcelle}
$Log{}

Total Baseball:  Registers, Leaders, and Rosters


The Negro Baseball Roster:  Introduction

Dick Clark and Larry Lester


     In 1970 Robert Peterson wrote a pioneering book, Only the Ball Was White,
that launched the serious study of black baseball in the years before Jackie
Robinson broke the color line in 1947. Peterson was followed in that decade by
John Holway's Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues and William
Brashler's Josh Gibson, and in the 1980s by Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great
Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Recent years have produced further
interesting work, from television documentaries to lavish pictorials to oral
histories. You don't hear much argument anymore, as once was prevalent, about
whether black stars like Satchel Paige or Buck Leonard, Oscar Charleston or
Judy Johnson, truly belong in Baseball's Hall of Fame.
     Underlying much of the good work that has come forth over the last two
decades has been the diligent research of unheralded members of the Society
for American Baseball Research (SABR), founded in 1971 by L. Robert Davids and
fifteen other empassioned students of the game. Their early establishment of a
Negro Leagues research committee spurred such valuable efforts as the
compilation of team and individual statistics for many seasons of Negro League
play; the dedication of a monument in honor of Bud Fowler, the nation's first
professional black player; the founding of a Negro League Baseball Museum in
Kansas City, Missouri; and the long, steady progress toward an encyclopedic
research guide to black baseball, nearing publication by SABR in the coming
year.
     Part of that volume, edited by Larry Lester and Dick Clark, co-chairmen
of SABR's Negro Leagues Committee, is a massive revision of Robert Peterson's
listing of black baseball players and officials up to 1950. (Although we offer
only a smattering of names here from the waning years of the Negro Leagues,
1951-55, more will be appended in future editions. Lester and Clark, aided by
other SABR members, have added players, corrected names and team affiliations,
ranged earlier and later, broader and deeper, than Peterson's original work,
and have provided us with an invaluable reference tool. From vintage figures
like Bud Fowler, Moses Fleetwood Walker and Billy Whyte to more recognizable
names like Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, and Ernie Banks;
from Hall of Famers like Martin Dihigo and Ray Dandridge to storied figures
like Cannonball Dick Redding and Bullet Joe Rogan, Turkey Stearnes and Oliver
Marcelle, the shadows of legend are here. They were part of America's game;
savor their names.