Baseball Reference Blog

Hall of Famers, All-Stars, and Players with a sub-3.00 ERA season in the Major Negro Leagues

Posted by Adam Darowski on February 15, 2024

Today’s Immaculate Grid includes the category “Played in the Major Negro Leagues.” In 2021, Baseball Reference dramatically expanded coverage of the Negro Leagues as part of our project “The Negro Leagues are Major Leagues.” The major Negro Leagues (currently seven leagues that operated between 1920-1948) are now listed with the National League and American League on Baseball Reference as major leagues.

Those seven major Negro Leagues are:

  1. NAL: Negro American League (1937-1948)
  2. NN2: Negro National League II (1933-1948)
  3. EWL: East-West League (1932)
  4. NSL: Negro Southern League (1932)
  5. NNL: Negro National League I (1920-1931)
  6. ANL: American Negro League (1929)
  7. ECL: Eastern Colored League (1923-1928)

Because the category includes the major Negro Leagues, it is worth mentioning that Henry Aaron and Ernie Banks will not match for this Grid category. They played in the Negro Leagues in 1952 and 1953, respectively, after the Negro Leagues were no longer considered major.

Hall of Famers who Played in the Major Negro Leagues

There are 34 Hall of Famers who played in the Major Negro Leagues. They are:

  1. Cool Papa Bell
  2. Ray Brown
  3. Willard Brown
  4. Roy Campanella
  5. Oscar Charleston
  6. Andy Cooper
  7. Ray Dandridge
  8. Leon Day
  9. Martín Dihigo
  10. Larry Doby
  11. Bill Foster
  12. Josh Gibson
  13. Pete Hill
  14. Monte Irvin
  15. Judy Johnson
  16. Buck Leonard
  17. John Henry Lloyd
  18. Biz Mackey
  19. Willie Mays
  20. Minnie Miñoso
  21. José Méndez
  22. Buck O’Neil
  23. Satchel Paige
  24. Jackie Robinson
  25. Bullet Rogan
  26. Louis Santop
  27. Hilton Smith
  28. Turkey Stearnes
  29. Mule Suttles
  30. Ben Taylor
  31. Cristóbal Torriente
  32. Willie Wells
  33. Joe Williams
  34. Jud Wilson

You can see the batting and pitching stats in the major Negro Leagues of all of them on Stathead.

This list includes Campanella, Doby, Mays, Miñoso, and Robinson—all of whom were inducted primarly for their careers in the AL/NL. The list does not include Rube Foster, Frank Grant, Cumberland Posey, and Sol White. These Hall of Famers played in the Negro Leagues before they were considered major.

All-Stars who played in the major Negro Leagues

233 different All-Stars played in the major Negro Leagues. Some of them, like Willie Mays, played in the major Negro Leagues but appeared in an AL/NL All-Star Game. The vast majority, however, were named All-Stars in the East-West All-Star Game, a highlight of the Negro League season from 1933 all the way until 1962. These stats only include East-West All-Star Games through 1948.

These are the players with the most All-Star seasons in the major Negro Leagues:

  1. Buck Leonard (11)
  2. Alex Radcliff (11)
  3. Josh Gibson (9)
  4. Neil Robinson (8)
  5. Sam Bankhead (8)
  6. Willie Wells (8)
  7. Wild Bill Wright (7)
  8. Cool Papa Bell (7)
  9. Vic Harris (7)
  10. Lloyd Davenport (6)
  11. Ted Radcliffe (6)
  12. Hilton Smith (6)
  13. Bill Byrd (6)
  14. Leon Day (6)
  15. Larry Brown (6)
  16. Satchel Paige (6)
  17. Gentry Jessup (5)
  18. Henry Kimbro (5)
  19. Lennie Pearson (5)
  20. Horacio Martínez (5)
  21. Parnell Woods (5)
  22. Quincy Trouppe (5)
  23. Pepper Bassett (5)
  24. Ted Strong (5)
  25. Sammy Hughes (5)
  26. Biz Mackey (5)
  27. Turkey Stearnes (5)
  28. Mule Suttles (5)

See the full list of major Negro League All-Stars on Stathead

Players with a sub-3.00 ERA season in the major Negro Leagues

410 players had a sub-3.00 ERA season in the Negro Leagues between 1920 and 1948. Here are the pitchers who did it the most often:

  1. Satchel Paige (12 times)
  2. Bill Foster (10 times)
  3. Bullet Rogan (8 times)
  4. Bill Byrd (6 times)
  5. Hilton Smith (6 times)
  6. Ed Rile (6 times)
  7. Johnny Wright (5 times)
  8. Eugene Bremer (5 times)
  9. Roosevelt Davis (5 times)
  10. Jim Willis (5 times)
  11. Terris McDuffie (5 times)
  12. Ted Trent (5 times)
  13. William Bell (5 times)
  14. Dave Brown (5 times)

See the complete list on Stathead

Pirates and Mets

These two teams are also included in today’s Grid because they signed players who had previously played in the major Negro Leagues (even though that is not paired with these teams today). Those players are:

Pirates:

  1. Gene Baker
  2. Lino Donoso
  3. Sam Jethroe
  4. Luis Márquez
  5. Jim Pendleton
  6. Curt Roberts
  7. Harry Simpson

Mets:

  1. Of course, the one and only Willie Mays.

Learn More About the Negro Leagues

We highly recommend visiting and supporting the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. The Sports Reference team visited the museum in 2022 and it was an unforgettable experience.

Further reading on Baseball Reference:

  1. The Negro Leagues are Major Leagues: Includes articles from prominent Negro League historians and family members of Black baseball players
  2. The Negro Leagues are Major Leagues podcast: Hosted by Curtis Harris and produced by Sports Reference.
  3. The Negro Leagues Are Major Leagues: A Resource for Educators: A resource for educators to share the incredible story of the Negro Leagues. (It also is a great way for anyone interested in the Negro Leagues to quickly get up to speed.)

Thank you for joining us in celebrating the Negro Leagues this month at Immaculate Grid. We’ll be using this category a few more times this month (and beyond).

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2024 at 6:00 am and is filed under Immaculate Grid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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