LOVERRO: Washington baseball history, in the official record book in black and white

OPINION:

It’s a good thing that Ernest Judson Wilson had the sense to be born during Black History Month. Maybe more people will come across Jud’s story that way.

It’s a story unknown to many Washington sports fans, though his name was immortalized in 2010 at Nationals Park when he was added to the Washington Nationals Ring of Honor (of course, that came only after he was immortalized four years earlier in the National Baseball Hall of Fame).

He is in Cooperstown because he was one of the greatest hitters in Negro League history. Those in the know realize that means he is considered one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, period.

Wilson, born 130 years ago on Feb. 28 in Remington, Virginia, played third base in the Negro Leagues for the Baltimore Black Sox, the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Philadelphia Stars from 1922 to 1939. He won the Eastern Colored League batting title in back-to-back years, 1927 and 1928, batting .422 and .399, respectively.

But he would enjoy his championship seasons with the Homestead Grays from 1940 to 1945, when the Grays played most of their home games at Griffith Stadium and often called Washington home, even though the team had been founded in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and had played many of its early seasons in nearby Pittsburgh. 

They found Washington a more lucrative market — as did Senators owner Clark Griffith, who profited from Negro League baseball and was in no hurry to see the major league game integrated. In those championship seasons, the Grays played more than two-thirds of their home games in Washington.

That makes Wilson part of Washington’s baseball history, along with outfielder James “Cool Papa” Bell, pitcher Ray Brown, first baseman Buck Leonard and, of course, the great catcher Josh Gibson — all former Grays players now in the Hall of Fame.

Gibson, considered to be one of the greatest home run hitters in baseball history, is depicted in a statue outside the home plate entrance to Nationals Park.

These great players had the opportunity to express their talent, as former Nationals manager Davey Johnson used to say, but only in the Negro Leagues — MLB’s color line banned Black players from the main stage until Jackie Robinson broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

But soon greats like Wilson and others will take their place alongside major league stars in the record books, according to a report earlier this week in USA Today.

In December 2020, MLB announced it would recognize the records and statistics from seven Negro Leagues and approximately 3,400 players from 1920 to 1948 as part of the official history of the game. It has been a challenge, though, to establish Negro League statistics because of the nature of the business that operated then — sporadic record keeping and schedules that included many barnstorming games against hometown teams, not Negro League clubs.

Negro League researchers have worked diligently over the years to document those statistics.

Now it appears they are ready to incorporate those numbers and outcomes into the major league record books.

“While it would be imprudent and perhaps counterproductive to set a hard deadline … we anticipate being able to share with fans a solid representation of an integrated MLB database in 2024,” John Thorn, MLB’s official historian, told USA TODAY Sports in an email.

Then fans may learn that Wilson — nicknamed “Boojam” because of the noise his line drives would make after the ball hit the fences in the outfield — was one of the all-time greats and an important part of Washington’s baseball legacy.

According to Baseball Reference, Wilson played in 911 games against Negro League competition over 21 years, with a career batting average of .350, an on-base percentage of .434 and a slugging percentage of .545.

He joined the Grays briefly in 1931 and 1932, then came back to the club in 1940 for his final six years as a player.

Wilson batted .391 in 1941 and .306 in his final season in 1945.

Granted, these were the World War II years when competition was diluted from players serving in the armed forces. But Wilson was 51 years old in his final year in Washington.

Wilson would make Washington his home. After retiring, he worked on a road crew building the Whitehurst Freeway, according to a biography on the Society of Baseball Research website.

Wilson passed away on June 27, 1963, at the age of 69. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, having served in the military in World War I.

His baseball accomplishments live on.

• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.