Negro League Baseball

• Retrosheet File Types
  For Negro League games, Retrosheet has introduced a new file type, game files, and has modified the way in which it presents team and player data. These are described here.

• Negro League Games
  Retrosheet is releasing Negro League games along two parallel paths. First, Retrosheet will be releasing "full" seasons working back through time. In addition, Retrosheet is also maintaining a set of "notable" Negro League games.

  Negro League Seasons

  Retrosheet has compiled regular-season Negro League games for the following seasons.

  1948    1947    1946
  1945    1944
  

  Notable Games

  Retrosheet has also compiled notable games which do not (necessarily) fit within a season for which Retrosheet has released data (although several of these games do fall within released seasons) but which are noteworthy or interesting enough that people might be interested in these games.

• Negro League Players

  Because of differences in the quality of the data available for Negro League seasons vis-a-vis the American and National League, Retrosheet has decided that it will not present season totals for Negro League players. Instead, it will present game logs for players (and teams) which summarize all of the data which we have found. Player pages for Negro League games can be found here. This includes Negro League (and inter-racial) games played by players who also played in the American or National League.

• Data Downloads
  Game files and rosters for all of the Negro League games on our website can be downloaded here.

Acknowledgements

For this project, Retrosheet is standing on the shoulders of giants. The hard work of finding, compiling, and publishing the statistics of Negro League players was done by a number of dedicated researchers to whom Retrosheet - and all baseball fans - owe a tremendous debt of gratitude. The list of researchers who were helpful to Retrosheet in its work so far, either directly or indirectly, includes, but is by no means limited to the following: Gary Ashwill, Ray Doswell, Leslie Heaphy, Kevin Johnson, Larry Lester, Todd Peterson, and Scott Simkus. Thank you all so much for all of your work on Negro League baseball and for your assistance to Retrosheet with this project.

Retrosheet is an all-volunteer organization. We could not and can not do what we have done and hope to do in the future without the help of volunteers. Volunteers who have helped with this project include, but, again, are not necessarily limited to, Javier Anderson, Mark Aubrey, Mike Cantor, Alan Cohen, Dean Esgrow, Jonathan Frankel, Mike Grahek, Larry Hayes, Dave Lamoureaux, Mark Pankin, David Roher, Dave Smith, Stuart Shiffman, Tom Stillman, Wes Tervo, Tom Thress, Wayne Townsend, Ted Turocy, Neal Williams, Mark Williamson, Jim Wohlenhaus, and Greg Zeis. Thank you all.

If you are interested in helping on this project, please contact Tom Thress (tthress--ATsign--retrosheet.org).

Thank you very much! We hope you enjoy the data here and we look forward to adding more data over time.

Tom Thress
Retrosheet Treasurer