'Reclaimed: The Forgotten League' takes a look into the unseen history of the Negro Leagues
As baseball fans gear up for this year's playoffs, and await which team is going to make it into the MLB history books, one fan is going to make sure her family's long-lost connections to the game are finally told.
"Reclaimed: The Forgotten League," a new podcast series launched Oct. 2 from ABC Audio, will track the quest of Vanessa Ivy Rose, the granddaughter of Negro Leagues star Norman "Turkey" Stearnes, as she uncovers his ascension through the league and his outstanding career stats.
The center fielder, who played for several teams including the Detroit Stars and Kansas City Monarchs, was one of the best players in the league, hitting better than .300 for 15 seasons. However, due to the racism and segregation in the country, many of his exploits were lost to time, even to his own family, according to Rose.
"He should be considered one of the greatest of all time, but very few people know it. He's a forgotten legend," Rose, an author who is part of the Negro Leagues Family Alliance, a group of Negro Leagues descendants working to preserve the legacies of their family members, said in the podcast's premiere episode.
The six-part series will look into the history of the Negro Leagues, from its inception in the late 19th century to the emergence in towns across the country during the early 20th century.
It is the third season of ABC Audio’s award-winning “Reclaimed” podcast franchise.
Rose speaks with many Negro League historical experts, including Shakeia Taylor, sports and culture editor at the Chicago Tribune; Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum; and Seamheads Negro Leagues Database co-founder Kevin Johnson, about how the leagues and the game reflected the social and political oppression the Black community faced post-Reconstruction.
"The Negro Leagues were born out of the ashes of American segregation, an era in this country when Black and brown athletes were denied an opportunity to play Major League Baseball, so they came together and they created a league of their own," Kendrick said.
"This organized effort was really the first to succeed because there were others who had attempted, but they had failed," he added.
Rose also speaks with her own family members and one of the few living Negro Leagues players to get more insight into her father's career and the life of a Black baseball player during that time.
"My father didn't brag. I tell people that all the time; he didn't brag," Joyce Stearnes Thompson, one of Stearnes' daughters, said. "He'd talk about games and people and things that happened during the game. And that was interesting."
Rose's research uncovered new details about her grandfather's career, including audio recordings.
"There's no footage of any of the Negro Leaguers of his era, and the people who saw them play firsthand are in their 90s or above, and there are precious few of them left to tell these stories," she said.
Rose will also explore Major League Baseball integrating its teams starting in 1947 with Jackie Robinson and the growth of more Black players in the decades that followed.
The series will also examine the lesser-known side of the story: the impact of integration on Black players and the ultimate fate of the Negro Leagues.
The series also delves into the ways in which Major League Baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame are grappling with this history to this day, as the MLB made a promise in 2020 to integrate the Negro Leagues statistics into its official record book.
The stats could alter the top 10 baseball players with names many Americans may not recognize.
"It could quite literally rewrite American history," Rose said.
Listen to "Reclaimed: The Forgotten League," the third season of ABC News' Audio series "Reclaimed," on major listening platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon audio, and the ABC News app.
