Major League Baseball announced last Wednesday that it was "correcting a longtime oversight in the game's history" by designating seven distinct Negro Leagues from 1920-1948 as "major leagues".
This monumental decision, encompassing approximately 3,400 players from seven distinct leagues, comes after decades of research and years of discussion and will cause a significant rewriting of the game's record book. There will be dramatic changes to the Top Ten leaders in career batting average and slugging percentage. And Ted Williams will no longer be the last major leaguer to bat .400 in a season. The 1948 cut-off also means the three women who played for the Indianapolis Clowns in 1953 and 1954 — Mamie "Peanut" Johnson, Connie Morgan, and Toni Stone — are not major leaguers.