Advice on Researching Negro League history

[Butch7999]

An enormous amount of effort has already been put into Negro League research, so make sure, first,
that you're not spending time digging up stuff that's already been dug up.

The Complete Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues by John Holway et al is regarded as the best, most thorough,
and most accurate of many books on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book.../dp/0803820070

That's more than fifteen years old, though, and surely even more information has been unearthed since then.
A scholarly compendium of Negro League data entailing about 5,000 pages was in the works in recent years,
but we're unclear who was behind it or what its status is.

In any case, we'd strongly advise contacting the Negro Leagues Committee of SABR for guidance before you
do more work than might be necessary -- the specific information you want may already be available.

[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by Butch7999

An enormous amount of effort has already been put into Negro League research, so make sure, first,
that you're not spending time digging up stuff that's already been dug up.

The Complete Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues by John Holway et al is regarded as the best, most thorough,
and most accurate of many books on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book.../dp/0803820070

That's more than fifteen years old, though, and surely even more information has been unearthed since then.
A scholarly compendium of Negro League data entailing about 5,000 pages was in the works in recent years,
but we're unclear who was behind it or what its status is.

In any case, we'd strongly advise contacting the Negro Leagues Committee of SABR for guidance before you
do more work than might be necessary -- the specific information you want may already be available.

Thanks! I emailed them.

I haven't seen a project yet that attempts to go to the depth that I am hoping for (my goal is to take a small period of time - 1 season or so) and dig as deep as possible to get as good a feel as possible. My thought process is that the whole of the Negro Leagues seems to be bunched together into big statistics and the like with a few interesting biographies, but the day to day details are often lost. My hope would be to find some of that.

Originally Posted by toledo_mudhen

If you have never been there - The Negro League Baseball Museum is downtown Kansas City. Awesome way to spend a day.... highly recommend

http://nlbm.com/

I imagine it is an amazing place. Hopefully one day...

[steve B]

The Library of congress also is scanning newspapers, and has the benefit of being free (Sort of, our tax dollars at work )

From what I've seen, there isn't a lot of overlap with the commercial services.

Steve B

[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!

[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...)