Baseball Made ‘Whole’: Rhetorical Hierarchy and Post-racial Discourse in Major League Baseball’s Inclusion of the Negro Leagues

Abstract

In December 2020, Major League Baseball announced a decision to formally include records of Negro League Baseball games as ‘official’ Major League status. Against the backdrop of widespread protests for social justice and discourses surrounding racial reckoning occurring during that same year, the decision garnered heightened importance given baseball’s symbolic resonance within US public culture. This essay asserts this decision, and the coverage it received among prominent sports outlets, reveal a rhetorical hierarchy wherein “Major League Baseball” status serves to legitimize the historical contributions of Negro League players via an act of statistical integration. In granting official “Major League” status to the Negro Leagues, Major League Baseball operates from a position of institutional legitimacy, statistically integrating the Negro Leagues via an act of mortification. Ultimately this serves to rhetorically construct a post-racial history of the game and reassert the legitimacy of baseball’s statistical record. The implications of this analysis for scholars of sport, rhetoric, and public memory are discussed.