Advice on Researching Negro League history

[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by jerseygary

The Jackie Robinson tours should be fairly easy to research, especially with all the newspapers archives now online. There's a book by Thomas Barthel about baseball post-season tours so you can start there to get general info. Newspapers at this time would have reported the Robinson tours, especially after Jackie's 1947 rookie season. I found some good stuff on his 1946 tour when I was writing my article on Johnny Wright this past winter.

Dick "Cannonball" Redding will be a bit harder to research. He doesn't get the credit his career deserves, and for some reason no book or long articles have been written about him. Luckily, a few really talented researchers have dug up some great stuff on Redding over the past decade, including his death certificate. That was a real find because no one was really sure how or where he died. If you do some digging around the internet you can find some good stuff on him.

Try Gary Ashwill at the Agate Type blog. For my money's worth he's the go to guy for pre-1930's Negro League info. It's primarily Gary's research that is posted on the Seamheads Negro League Database. This is the most up to date and accurate stat research available, and it is constantly being updated as more box scores are located. This is a labor of love by Gary and a few other historians, doing it solely for the knowledge and at no financial gain to themselves. On the other hand, the Hall of Fame spent a fortune hiring a team of people to do Negro League stats years ago, but they are very incomplete and very out of date. Plus, I do not think it has ever been published in its entirety anyway.

Good luck on your research, it will be fun, frustrating and rewarding!

Thanks!

I have the book on the barnstorming tours which you mention, but am hoping to get a closer picture (game by game for the tour) if possible.

On Redding I had a question. I see the stats listed on seamhead.com and have seen similar numbers elsewhere. But at the same time I see in book that Redding pitched 30 no-hitters (against all levels of competition). The stats on the website are much less impressive.

Is this generally because the stats only include elite competition, or is it more likely that the stats are incomplete? (It indicates Redding won 133 games in 19 seasons, which seems really low...)