After Major League Baseball officially recognized Negro League stats Wednesday, there may just be a new greatest of all time in baseball.
Major League Baseball announced Wednesday that statistics from the Negro Leagues have been added to the MLB database. MLB elevated Negro Leagues stats to 'major league' in 2020, a move MLB said was 'a longtime oversight in the game's history.' Since then, MLB has been working with the Elias Sports Bureau to figure out a way to incorporate them into the league's database. The move shook things up in the baseball record books.
But there may now be a new best baseball player of all time. His name was Josh Gibson. He was a Negro League star catcher who, despite Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, actually might just be the best player the Negro Leagues had ever seen. But now he's in the conversation as the best player the sport has ever seen in any league. Because of the revamping of the system, Gibson now holds the records for highest career batting average , slugging percentage and OPS . His .
According to MLB, the Special Committee on Baseball Records ruling in 1969 stated, 'For all-time single season records, no asterisk or official sign shall be used to indicate the number of games scheduled.' For context, that would have remained the case had any records been broken in the strike-shortened 1994 season or the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. With his shorter seasons and fewer games played, Gibson's cumulative numbers do not come close to the all-time rankings.
says Negro Leagues research is about 75% complete, so expect some more changes down the line. Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
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