{"id":33616,"date":"2020-12-28T19:31:46","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T00:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/?p=33616"},"modified":"2024-08-30T20:21:55","modified_gmt":"2024-08-31T01:21:55","slug":"the-seamheads-negro-leagues-db-a-brief-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/28\/the-seamheads-negro-leagues-db-a-brief-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seamheads Negro Leagues DB: A Brief Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of the recent announcement about MLB’s recognition of the Negro leagues, we prepared the following brief introduction to our work here.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Seamheads Negro Leagues Database is an in-progress statistical encyclopedia covering Black professional baseball players, teams, and leagues during the era of segregation. Our work was specifically commended<\/a> by Commissioner of Baseball Rob Manfred<\/strong> when he announced that the Negro leagues would be recognized as major leagues. Bryant Gumbel<\/strong> of HBO\u2019s Real Sports pronounced our database to be \u201cthe most authoritative record of Negro league statistics ever assembled.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to games between Black major league teams (including postseason series and All-Star games), we also offer statistics for exhibition games between Black teams and white major and minor league teams. And, as Black American players often played in Latin American leagues, and Black players from Latin America played in the Negro leagues in the U.S., we cover Cuban and Mexican baseball of the era, and plan to cover Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela in the future.<\/p>\n

Currently we have at least some data for every season in the United States from 1886 through 1948, as well as more than 20 Cuban seasons from 1899\/1900 through 1927\/28 and several Mexican seasons in the 1940s. We are always uncovering and adding new seasons, leagues, games, and other information to our database, so it is worth checking back frequently to see what\u2019s new.<\/p>\n

Our database (with the exception of the Mexican League statistics) is built from the game level up, using box scores, newspaper articles, and scoresheets.<\/strong> Currently we do not make use of published year-end statistics or standings\u2014everything is verified from contemporary accounts of individual games.<\/p>\n

Another core principle of the database is that both sides of every game are represented.<\/strong> Consequently many white major and minor leaguers are present in the database, so it\u2019s possible to see how Babe Ruth<\/a> or Christy Mathewson<\/a> fared against Black or Cuban competition. (White major and minor leaguers might also appear because they played in the Cuban or Mexican leagues.)<\/p>\n

For a number of leagues and seasons, we still need to add fielding and complete pitching statistics (e.g. home runs allowed by pitchers), as well as hit by pitch for batters. These seasons include: 1924 ECL, 1925 NNL & ECL, 1927 NNL & ECL, 1929 NNL, and 1930 NNL.<\/p>\n

SOME HINTS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE DATABASE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Postseason series and All-Star games are presented as separate \u201cleagues,\u201d as are exhibition games against white major and minor leaguers.<\/p>\n

A blank space does not indicate a zero; it means insufficient or missing data.<\/strong> In general, we do not have enough data for batters\u2019 strikeouts and caught stealing in Negro league games; there are exceptions for some postseason series and All-Star games. However, both categories are available for many Cuban League seasons, and batters\u2019 strikeouts were recorded in Mexican League statistics.<\/p>\n

The default display for player pages shows all stints combined for any given year; that is, it shows one line for each season of a player\u2019s career. If a player appeared for more than one team, or his team appeared in the playoffs or World Series, the default display adds his statistics together. (This means, incidentally, that zeros will sometimes appear for columns that are actually blank.) If you click the \u201cShow Individual Stints\u201d button it will separate out a player\u2019s stints within a given season.<\/p>\n

The per-162-game figures given after career totals on every player page adjust for missing and incomplete statistics. We use 162 games to enable cross-era comparisons to major league players.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 1\/18\/2021<\/strong> Also keep in mind that at its core the database covers games between teams we\u2019ve defined as Black major league teams\u2014that is, teams roughly comparable in quality to the teams in organized Negro leagues, 1920-1948. It does not (yet) cover games against white semipro and amateur teams, lower-level white minor league teams, college teams, and teams we\u2019ve defined as Black minor league teams.<\/strong> Especially prior to 1920 and the advent of organized Negro leagues such games took up large parts of Black teams\u2019 schedules\u2014so the games counted here generally represent only a small part of each team\u2019s season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of the recent announcement about MLB’s recognition of the Negro leagues, we prepared the following brief introduction to our work here. The Seamheads Negro Leagues Database is an in-progress statistical encyclopedia covering Black professional baseball players, teams, and leagues during the era of segregation. Our work was specifically commended by Commissioner of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":809,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,16162,4235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-negro-lgs","category-top-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/809"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33616"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34561,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33616\/revisions\/34561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}