The Other Box Score

The Other Box Score

A museum-quality, open-source data journalism platform dedicated to the Negro Leagues. Fifteen chapters and a signature interactive feature. One question: why don't you know their names?

About this project

The other box score
was always there.

For fifty years, the best baseball players in the world played in leagues the official record refused to count. The Pittsburgh Courier covered every game. The crowds came. The statistics accumulated.

Nobody was writing them down in a book that counted.

This platform is that book. Fifteen chapters and a signature interactive feature, organized as five parts, a coda, and a lineup builder. Each one answers the same question from a different direction: why don't you know their names?

Everything here is open. The data, the code, the methodology. MIT license on the software. CC0 on the data. Free forever.

Part One . The world they played in

"Have you heard how they got there?"

Part Two . The game they played

"Have you heard what they built?"

Part Three . The record that wasn't kept

"Have you heard what was taken?"

Part Four . What the numbers say

"Have you heard what the numbers say?"

Part Five . What remains

"Have you heard who kept the record?"

Signature Feature

"Build your nine. Find theirs."

Coda

The Parallel League

The hardest question, asked last. What would baseball have looked like if none of this had happened? The answer is uncomfortable. The answer is that it would have looked completely different. That is the last page of the book.

Enter the record →