Negro League Baseball - Negro Major Leagues

Negro Major Leagues

While organized leagues were common in black baseball, there were only seven leagues that are considered to be of the top quality of play at the time of their existence. None materialized prior to 1920 and by 1950, due to integration, they were in decline. Even though teams were league members, most still continued to barnstorm and play non-league games against local or semi-pro teams. Those games, sometimes approaching 100 per season, did not count in the official standings or statistics. However, some teams were considered "associate" teams and games played against them did count, but an associate team held no place in the league standings.

• Negro National League (I), 1920–1931.
• Eastern Colored League, 1923–1928.
• American Negro League, 1929; was created from some of the ECL teams but lasted just one season.
• East-West League, 1932; ceased operations midway through the season.
• Negro Southern League, 1932; incorporated some teams from the NNL(I) and functioned for one year as a major league, was otherwise a minor league that played from 1920 into the 1940s.
• Negro National League (II), 1933–1948.
• Negro American League, 1937–1960 or so; after 1950, the league and its teams operated after a fashion, mostly as barnstorming units, but historians have a hard time deciding when the league actually came to an end.

The NNL(I) and ECL champions met in a World Series from 1924 to 1927 and the NNL(II) and NAL met in a Negro League World Series from 1942 through 1948.