baseball: Integration of Professional Baseball

During World War II, many major league stars served in the armed forces. By the mid-1940s most had returned to their teams, but major league baseball continued to exclude black players, who, barred by a color line drawn in the 1880s, showcased their skills in separate leagues, especially the Negro National League (1920, folded late 1920s, revived 1933), the Eastern Colored League (1923, folded late 1920s), and the Negro American League (1936). Black players like Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard, Josh Gibson, and Judy Johnson, among the best in baseball, often played before large crowds, “invisible” to the white public. In 1947, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn's general manager, began the integration of the major leagues by bringing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers. Weathering great pressure and the hatred of many players and fans, Robinson became one of the most electrifying performers in the game, paving the way for other black stars like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. Integration became a fact of baseball life so quickly that the remaining Negro Leagues began to fold in 1948 and by the mid-1950s there were more African-American players on major league teams than there had been in the Negro leagues at their height of popularity just a decade earlier. The records of those leagues's players were not classified as major league statistics, however, until 2020.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Amateur and International Baseball
• Expansion and Labor Conflict
• Integration of Professional Baseball
• The Golden Years
• The Development of Professional Baseball in the United States
• Early History
• Basic Rules
• Bibliography

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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