National League (Major League) Encyclopedia and History

About the Register Data

Historical performance data for professional leagues (affiliated minor leagues, independent minor leagues, fall/winter leagues, and other international leagues) is provided by and licensed from 24-7 Baseball and Chadwick Baseball Bureau. It incorporates the work of many stalwart baseball researchers, including Cliff Blau, Art Cantu, Frank Hamilton, Reed Howard, Kevin Johnson, Bob McConnell, Jack Morris, and Ray Nemec, as well as members of the Minor Leagues Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research.

Perhaps most importantly, it builds upon the seminal work of Ed Washuta, who magnanimously provided the framework to make the whole thing possible.

Minor league Total Zone (Rctch&Rtz, 2005-2009) data provided by Baseballprojection.com and Minorleaguesplits.com.

About the Negro League Data

Sources

This data comes from two sources. 1) The Negro Leagues Researchers and Authors Group put together by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum thanks to a grant provided by Major League Baseball. 2) Gary Ashwill and his collaborators.

The Hall of Fame data is found for the years 1920-1948 and the Ashwill data is found from 1904-1919. Many statistics are incomplete due to ongoing research and/or limitations in published sources, so please be assured that we are aware there are issues with the data and will continue to work with our data providers to improve the data that appears here.

The Hall of Fame dataset

This data is constructed from the best available information as provided by Larry Lester, Wayne Stivers and Dick Clark of the Negro Leagues Researchers and Authors Group. It contains data culled from newspaper boxscores, covering league sanctioned games from 1920 to 1948, which was produced for a study sponsored by Major League Baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It reflects totals as compiled by the NLRAG up to 2006. As new credible information is continually unearthed, these numbers will continue to change.

Baseball-Reference and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum would like to acknowledge Major League Baseball for funding this study, along with the Negro Leagues Researchers and Authors Group for their extensive efforts to collect the raw data and construct the most comprehensive database of Negro Leagues Baseball statistics.  Under the direction of Larry Lester, Wayne Stivers and Dick Clark, this database is the largest dataset ever made publically available and we wish to express our gratitude for all their efforts to help rebuild this lost statistical history.

The Ashwill Negro Leagues Database

Playing statistics and biographical data on the Negro leagues (all pre-1920) and early Latin American professional baseball is licensed from and provided by the Negro Leagues Database, a project organized by Gary Ashwill with the participation of many historians of Negro league and Latin American baseball.

The database is a work in progress, and will include more seasons as development continues. It appears in its original form at Seamheads.com.

Playing statistics and biographical data for this portion of our dataset (The Negro Leagues Database) are all copyright 2013 by Gary Ashwill. All rights reserved.

Completeness

Note that our records are missing thousands of players who played in the Negro Leagues for minor league teams, independent teams, barnstorming teams or even Negro major league teams. We will bring their records to light as soon as suitable records are available for those players.

Details about our NLB Data