DETROIT – In this era of racial reckoning in the U.S., the professional league for American baseball is taking a step forward by honoring its past.
Major League Baseball (MLB) is finally recognizing the historic Negro Leagues as part of its own history -- counting the statistics and records of thousands of Black baseball players.
The Negro Leagues were comprised of Black Americans who played between 1920 and 1948. The MLB is now recognizing more than 3,400 players as “Major League” players for the first time in history.
“It’s overdue, but it’s a bittersweet moment because most of the guys are gone,” said Negro League historian Louis Manley Jr.
Between 1920 and 1948, four major Negro League teams played in Detroit. The most famously-known team is the Detroit Stars, but the city was also home to the Detroit Wolves, the Motor City Giants and the Detroit Senators.
According to Manley, the most “popular” and “dominant” player in Detroit’s Negro League history was Norman Thomas “Turkey” Stearns, who played for the Detroit Stars beginning in the 1920s.
“He’s what you call a 5-2 player, because he could run, hit and field. He could do it all,” Rosilyn Stearnes said of her father Turkey Stearns. “He played with Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and those guys are in the Hall of Fame -- but all of them should have been in the Hall of Fame.”
Stearns says her father and the other players in the league didn’t get the respect they deserved...if any at all.
“They had to go through some terrible things. They went through the two world wars, they had The Depression and ... a pandemic like we’re experiencing,” Stearns said. “(They) also they had to deal with racial discrimination, because these guys were so good, they weren’t allowed to play in the Major Leagues.”
Though she may be a little biased when it comes to her father, Rosilyn Stearns believes that he was one of the “greatest baseball players who ever lived.” Turkey Stearns was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2000.
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