Negro League baseball players earn spots in the National Baseball Hall of Fame
Negro League baseball players Buck O’Neil and Bud Fowler have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Seven Negro League and pre-Negro League players were being considered for induction into the Hall of Fame.
[Previous story, published at 4:40 p.m. ET]
The Early Baseball Era and Golden Days Era Committees were meeting Sunday to decide whether Buck O’Neil and other Negro League players — as well as pre-Negro League players — will be selected for induction into the Hall of Fame. In total, 20 players are being considered for induction.
Candidates for induction include O’Neil, who played 10 seasons with the Memphis Red Sox and Kansas City Monarchs, and Grant “Home Run” Johnson, who was a shortstop and second baseman in the pre-Negro Leagues era, according to the Hall of Fame website.
MLB said it was “correcting a longtime oversight in the game’s history” by elevating the status of the Negro Leagues — which consisted of seven leagues and about 3,400 players from 1920 to 1948.
The decline of the Negro Leagues began in 1947 when Jackie Robinson became MLB’s first Black player, joining the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1969, the Special Committee on Baseball Records did not include the Negro Leagues among six “Major Leagues” it identified since 1876.
CNN’s Ray Sanchez and Dan Kamal contributed to this report.
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