Baseball Reference Blog

Players who Played Pitcher, Catcher, and Shortstop in the Major Negro Leagues

Posted by Adam Darowski on February 1, 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 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.

Pitchers who played in the Major Negro Leagues

Our database has over 1,000 pitchers who appeared in the major Negro Leagues. Ten of them are in the Hall of Fame:

  1. Ray Brown
  2. Andy Cooper
  3. Leon Day
  4. Martín Dihigo
  5. Bill Foster
  6. José Méndez
  7. Satchel Paige
  8. Bullet Rogan
  9. Hilton Smith
  10. Joe Williams

There are several tremendous Negro League pitchers beyond those ten that could be considered for the Hall of Fame via the Early Baseball Era Committee in December. Some of the top names include Cannonball Dick Redding, William Bell, Bill Byrd, and John Donaldson. Don Newcombe, Toothpick Sam Jones, Dan Bankhead, and Connie Johnson are among the several pitchers who appeared in both the major Negro Leagues and the AL/NL.

See all 1000+ major Negro League pitchers on Stathead

Catchers who played in the Major Negro Leagues

Nearly 400 players in our database played at least one game behind the plate in the major Negro Leagues. Four primary catchers from the Negro Leagues are in the Hall of Fame:

  1. Roy Campanella
  2. Josh Gibson
  3. Biz Mackey
  4. Louis Santop

Beyond this quartet, Frank Duncan, Larry Brown, Bruce Petway, and Ted Radcliffe had long, successful careers in the Negro Leagues. Quincy Trouppe also had a superlative career that started in the Negro Leagues and ended in the American League with many stops (in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Canada) in between. He even went on to manage in Colombia.

See all 380+ major Negro League catchers on Stathead

Shortstops who played in the Major Negro Leagues

At least 500 players appeared at shortstop in the major Negro Leagues. Two primary shortstops have been enshrined in Cooperstown:

  1. John Henry Lloyd
  2. Willie Wells

There are several magnificent Negro League shortstops who have yet to be enshrined in Cooperstown but deserve a very long look. One, Grant “Home Run” Johnson, played before the Negro Leagues were considered major. Dick Lundy and Sam Bankhead had extended runs of success in the Negro Leagues while Dobie Moore had a short (but spectacular) peak before his career “abruptly ended at the age of 29 as the result of an incident clouded with mystery.”

See all 500 major Negro League shortstops on Stathead

The Giants and Cardinals

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:

Giants:

  1. Monte Irvin
  2. Sam Jones
  3. Willie Mays
  4. Ray Noble
  5. Hank Thompson
  6. Artie Wilson

Cardinals:

  1. George Crowe
  2. Bill Greason
  3. Sam Jones
  4. Minnie Miñoso

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 1st, 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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