The Negro Leagues Player Numbers

The recent recognition of professional baseball players from a few all black leagues known as the Negro Leagues. We are honoored to have recently sat down with perhaps the top historian and reasearcher of the Negro Leagues have given the proper recognition that some very ballplayers of yesteryear may have never had. Active baseball historian and proud SABR member, Mr. Larry Lester was kind enough to educate us on some player and components of the legendary leagues and described his tedious labor of love to record and preserve the history of these men and the uniform numbers they wore.

The 1924 Colored World Series in Kansas City, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Full Credits are at the bottom of the page.

During an unfair and ugly time in American History baseball was once segregated. Men of color were not welcome to play in the mainstream major leagues of baseball that is up until 1947 when Jackie Robinson historically became a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, famously breaking the color barrier in Major League baseball and basically opened the door for athletes in other professional sports arenas as well to have an opportunity to play their respective sports in the mainstream organized leagues. Robinson, Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, Sam Jethroe as well as many other ball players of color in most of the first half of the 20th century played baseball professionally in what has gone down in the annals of history known as the Negro Leagues of baseball. In my quest to learn about the great stories of past athletes I ask for the help of historians and passionate experts to educate us in an effort to learn of the past and preserve the history of sports. We are so fortunate to have a man on today that literally wrote the book on the history of black baseball, in fact 9 books on the subject plus a very informative website, Larry Lester and his book The Negro Leagues Volume 2. You can see some of Larry's books at the bottom of this page in our Amazon portal or go to: LarryLester42.com

Large 1932 team photograph of what appears to be an all-star type assemblage of various players on various teams including Chucho Correa, Rogelio Alonzo, Eugenio Morin, Joseito Rodriguez, Lazaro Salazar, Oscar Rodriguez, Cheo Ramos, Cando Lopez and Francisco Quevedo. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Larry was gracious enough to educate me on the basics of the Negro Leagues, where they took place, the roster sizes of the teams and many of the cities and teams that played. The Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, the New York Cubans, Kansas City Monarchs, New York Cubans and so many more are referenced by Mr. Lester inthe itnerview above.

Oh and the players he took the time to tell me about like Rube Foster, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Sam Jethroe and so many more. These gentlemen were great athletes and their stories are covered by Larry in the podcast above. Larry Lester has a tremendous website that keeps followers of what he has accomplished in the preserving of history, his books and even some current projects he and others are working on. His site: LarryLester42.com

The photograph in the banner above is courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons collection of Public Domain pictures. It is of the First colored world series, opening game Oct. 11, 1924, Kansas City, Mo. / photo by J.E. Mille[r], K.C.

Special thanks to Baseball-Reference.com and LarryLester42.com.