Seamheads.com updates Negro Leagues Database with 1946 stats
We are pleased to pass along this update from SABR member Gary Ashwill at Seamheads.com on January 30, 2018:
In 1946 the Negro leagues began to face the inevitable. The Brooklyn Dodgers finally broke Organized Baseball’s 60-year-old color line, signing several black players for their minor league system—including the best player in the 1945 Negro American League, the Monarchs’ shortstop Jackie Robinson, and arguably the best player in the 1945 Negro National League, the Elite Giants’ catcher Roy Campanella.
Returning veterans helped the Negro leagues compensate for white baseball’s inroads, at least temporarily. Monte Irvin (.363/.431/.522), Larry Doby (.339/.414/.557), Leon Day (11-2, 2.41), and Max Manning (10-2, 2.80) led the Newark Eagles to a dominant pennant victory in the NNL, while Willard Brown (.306/.342/.528) and Ted Strong (.321/.406/.464) sparked the Kansas City Monarchs to an equally lopsided win in the NAL. The Eagles prevailed in a tense, classic, 7-game World Series.
Bereft of their longtime leader Cumberland Posey, who died in March, the Homestead Grays slumped to their worst season since the mid-1930s, as they finished in second place, but barely above .500 (36-34) in league games. The blame lay not with veterans Josh Gibson (.320/.382/.651), Buck Leonard (.337/.459/.550), or Cool Papa Bell (.393/.452/.451), but rather with a pitching staff devastated by the loss of Johnny Wright to the Dodgers’ organization and the departures of Roy Welmaker and Ray Brown (to Venezuela and Mexico, respectively).
Newcomers to the Negro leagues in 1946 included a young Cuban third baseman named Orestes Miñoso, as well as future big leaguers Al Smith, Harry Simpson, and Luis Márquez.
To view the award-winning Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, visit http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/index.php
Related links:
- Seamheads Negro Leagues Database update: 1945 season (September 22, 2017)
- Seamheads Negro Leagues Database update: 1944 season (April 28, 2017)
- Seamheads Negro Leagues Database update: 1938 Negro National League stats (January 28, 2016)
- Seamheads Negro Leagues Database update: 1932 East-West League stats (August 13, 2015)
- Little-known players from the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database (February 2, 2012)
- Read our Q&A with Gary Ashwill about the Negro Leagues Database (September 14, 2011)
Originally published: January 30, 2018. Last Updated: July 16, 2020.