Larry Lester, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Negro League Committee Chair and co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City joined us for an exclusive interview this week.
Lester, also a prolific author Harry Chadwick Award winner for his exhaustive research into Negro Leagues history, spoke about Major League Baseball's long overdue recognition of the Negro Leagues as Major League Baseball. We discussed the process taken to compile Negro League statistics that will be merged into National and American League statistics. We discussed with Lester legendary players from the Negro Leagues like Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell and native Texan, Willie "The Devil" Wells and others.
Lester chairs the annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference which will be in Birmingham in late July. He has also written and edited numerous Negro League biographies, anthologies and historical non-fiction books that are available on Amazon. Lester is a treasure trove of information about this fascinating time in Major League history - we could have talked for hours!
We wrapped up the episode discussing Houston's troubled pro sports scene, including the James Harden trade and Rocket rebuild, the Texans' disgruntled star quarterback and tumultuous front office, and the Astro's signings and arbitration status as George Springer prepares to land elsewhere in free agency (looks like Toronto).