Hall to honor Negro Leagues’ ASG with exhibition

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The traditional format of the Negro Leagues’ East-West All-Star Game will be revived in the spring when the National Baseball Hall of Fame hosts a tribute to the one-time fixture with a legends exhibition in Cooperstown, New York.

The Memorial Day weekend game, announced during the winter meetings Tuesday, will be played at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown on May 25, 2024, and will feature a number of prominent ex-big leaguers. Hall of Famers Ken Griffey Jr. and Ozzie Smith will help manage and coach the squads. Serving as team captains will be former All-Star pitcher CC Sabathia and outfielder Chris Young.

“The East-West All-Star Game was the annual showcase for the Negro Leagues, and we are privileged to be able to honor the legacy of those stars over Memorial Day Weekend in Cooperstown as part of the Hall of Fame’s celebration of Black baseball,” Sabathia said in a statement. “As players, we are indebted to the pioneers who came before us, and recognizing the All-Stars of the Negro Leagues pays tribute not only to their playing ability but also to their courage and devotion to the game.”

Other players scheduled to appear include Josh Barfield, Tim Beckham, Prince Fielder, Curtis Granderson, Adam Jones, Dontrelle Willis, Ryan Howard and Tony Gwynn Jr. Also appearing will be brothers Scott Hairston and Jerry Hairston Jr., whose grandfather, Sam, played in the Negro Leagues and appeared in an East-West All-Star game.

The first East-West All-Star Game was played on Sept. 10, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, two months after the first major league All-Star Game was played on the same field. The contest was played annually until 1962, with some seasons featuring multiple games, all in the East-West format.

The game ended when the last Negro League was disbanded after the 1962 season.

The game will be the featured event in the Hall’s annual Hall of Fame Classic weekend and will coincide with the unveiling of the museum’s new exhibit commemorating the history of Black baseball, “The Souls of the Game: Voice of Black Baseball.” The exhibit is part of the Hall’s Black Baseball Initiative seeking to tell a comprehensive story of its origins through the present day.

“I think by seeing what we’re doing, you can recognize how much the Hall thinks that’s a significant part of the history of baseball in America,” Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch told ESPN. “One of the … misperceptions that we often are trying to change is the [lack of recognition] that Black people have been playing baseball since baseball started.

“This wasn’t a sport that was started by white people and Black people picked it. Maybe it’s gone in ebbs and flows in popularity, and I think that’ll be part of the stories that we tell too. But I think from our standpoint, it’s imperative that we tell the history of all of baseball.”

The idea to revive the Negro League All-Star format was the brainchild of John Odell, the longtime head curator for the Hall of Fame who died in July. Rawitch said that once the idea was hatched, finding players to participate was an easy task.

“The key was really getting CC Sabathia first to buy into it,” Rawitch said. “And CC said, ‘I’m all in.’ So he was going to start putting the team together. He and Chris Young said, ‘Oh, we’ll have no problem getting these guys.’ Then they just started sending us names. It’s almost like everybody wants to be a part of this weekend.”

The Hall also will host the Jerry Malloy Negro League conference in June to promote scholarly and literary work around the subject. This occurs at a time when MLB’s work in integrating statistics from the Negro Leagues into the official major league record continues to advance.

Next summer, MLB will hold a regular-season game between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 20. The venue, the oldest professional ballpark in the United States, is the former home of the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues.

The event will serve as a tribute to the Negro Leagues and Birmingham native Willie Mays, widely considered to be baseball’s greatest living player.

Finally, at the 2024 winter meetings, the Hall’s era committee selection process will consider the cases from the “classic baseball era” featuring pre-1980 performers, including Negro League players.