One of the greatest to ever play for the Detroit Tigers no longer has a historic record.
Ty Cobb had a career batting average of .367, which for decades made him the player with the highest career batting average in baseball history.
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But with Major League Baseball announcing that it is incorporating stats from the Negro Leagues into its record book, Cobb is now no longer No. 1.
That honor now belongs to the great Josh Gibson, who finished with a career batting average of .372.
However, Cobb’s family is still supportive of MLB’s initiative to incorporate Negro League statistics into the record book, even at the expense of the player known as the “Georgia Peach.”
“Baseball history is a part of U.S. history, and I think [the] Major Leagues acknowledging and incorporating the Negro Leagues is a huge step in kind of bringing all the parts of baseball history together,” Tyrus Cobb, the great-grandson of Ty Cobb, said to the Associated Press.
“And I think it’s actually pretty exciting that there’s a new statistical batting average leader.”
In 1943, Gibson had a .466 average playing for the Homestead Grays. Gibson also surpassed Babe Ruth as the career leader in slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.1777).