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How did Major League Baseball recognize Negro leagues as major leagues in 2020?

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Negro league The 1935 roster of the Negro league team the Pittsburgh Crawfords, including Cool Papa Bell (seventh from right), Josh Gibson (fourth from right), and Satchel Paige (second from right).

In 2020, Major League Baseball (MLB) officially recognized seven Negro league associations that operated between 1920 and 1948 as major leagues.12

This decision reversed a 1969 ruling by MLB’s Special Committee on Baseball Records, which had previously excluded these leagues from its official definition of major league baseball. The 2020 announcement followed extensive 21st-century research aimed at recovering and verifying game records from that era. By 2024, the statistics from these leagues were formally incorporated into MLB’s official record books, leading to significant updates in historical rankings, such as Josh Gibson becoming the all-time leader in batting average, slugging percentage, and on-base plus slugging.21