‘Double penalty’: One man’s crusade to shine spotlight on forgotten segregation-era Black baseball players

David Shuffler is not a baseball historian. He never worked in the game. He didn’t play, manage or coach; nor has he been credentialed as media.

He is not a member of a college faculty, teacher or scholar. He’s never been a paid researcher or statistician, nor is he a member of the Society for American Baseball Research.

He doesn’t have a blog, podcast or even his own Facebook group.

But Shuffler is as passionate about baseball as anyone. So much so, he has turned a lifelong fascination into a post-retirement crusade of advocacy on the part of a forgotten subset of players that was already marginalized within the game.

Shuffler, who had a long successful career as a medical practice banker and valuation expert, just wants to shine a light on some ballplayers who should have received their due a long time ago.

Shuffler was introduced to the game in 1948 during the World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves – the first to be broadcast beyond regional television. In Game 1 of the series, Cleveland’s Bob Feller and Boston’s Johnny Sain were locked in a scoreless pitching duel. In the eighth inning, a controversial call followed by a base hit sent Phil Masi home with the winning run. Feller lost 1-0. The young Shuffler was devastated.

“Although I was distraught, I learned that baseball provides valuable lessons that apply to everyday life,” he said.

His youthful enthusiasm for the game never left him. As an adult, Shuffler became a collector of historic baseball caps. There was plenty of information on his favorite vintage MLB caps, but he found “scant information” on the segregation-era Black baseball caps in his collection.

The more he learned about the iconic teams and legendary players who wore these caps, the more he wanted to learn about Black baseball.

“The history of Negro and pre-Negro Leagues baseball is the history of Black America and by proxy, the history of America,” he said. “Black baseball was a bedrock of the Black community, Black culture and Black commerce.”

When Jackie Robinson broke MLB’s color barrier in 1947, it was not only a historic baseball moment but a watershed moment in the U.S. civil rights movement. It helped pave the way for racial equality in education, arts, business medicine and law. It set the stage for legislation such as the executive order desegregating the military, Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Shuffler used the remarkable legacy of Black baseball as inspiration for his personal research into a forgotten era. A deeper dive illustrated something he already knew deep within him but had yet to be voiced: the Hall of Fame-caliber players of this era – outside of a select few standard bearers for an entire generation of Black players – were largely ignored, victims again of a systemic whitewashing of baseball history.

As MLB historian John Thorn said in 2024 upon MLB recognizing and including Negro Leagues statistics into the official record books, “To deny the best Black players of the era their rightful place among the all-time leaders would be a double penalty.”

Of the 351 players, executives, managers and umpires who have been enshrined by the Baseball Hall of Fame, only 44 “spent all or part of their careers in organized Black baseball – including the Negro Leagues – before, during and after segregation prohibited many of them from playing in the American League or National League,” according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame website.

Those 44 players includes some who did star in MLB, including Robinson, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, Minnie Minoso, Buck O’Neil and Satchel Paige.

In 2006, a Special Committee on Negro Leagues elected 17 Black segregation-era ballplayers and executives to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a special election. That number represents nearly 40% of all segregation-era Black players to be enshrined.

“I’m sorry that we’re late,” then MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent, the nonvoting chairman of the Special Committee, told Gannett News Service that day. “I’m sorry we couldn’t do this 30 or 40 years ago when some of our candidates were alive. But we’re here now to make this right.”

But Shuffler doesn’t think that committee did enough. He formalized his research, curating three anthologies – “Segregation to Integration: A look back at Black Baseball in America;” “Selection Bias: A look back at the BBWAA Rules for Election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame;” and “2025 Mock Hall of Fame Election: A Tribute to Legendary Iconic Negro and Pre-Negro Leaguers.”

“The goal of the anthologies is straightforward,” Shuffler said. “First, they tell the story of racism and racial discrimination in baseball and recount the fight for racial equality. Second, they challenge Hall of Fame electors to put an end to allegations of racism that have plagued it for decades by eliminating selection bias and making Hall of Fame elections fair-minded.”

The only problem was Shuffler’s research wasn’t being seen outside of a few like-minded individuals on a social media chat group.

Last year, he distributed the research – along with an impassioned letter – to 139 libraries and colleges predominantly in markets with pre-Negro or Negro League teams or historically Black college and university towns.

Two responded.

He also contacted the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum – with little response.

“Apathy is accepted as status quo,” he said. “Everyone I talked to on the subject was happy whining and complaining but not doing anything, because there really isn’t anything to do.”

But Shuffler persisted.

Through the spring and early summer, Shuffler made several presentations – both in-person and through video call – on each of his three anthologies to various libraries and academic groups.

Shuffler’s presentations all hinge on one predominant theme: the Baseball Writers Association of America eligibility requirement – which states a player must have played in each of 10 Major League championship seasons” – is an insurmountable barrier to election of segregation-era players.

His presentations helped him gain momentum, and eventually Shuffler was granted a presentation slot before the Abstract Committee of the 36th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, a joint venture between SUNY-Oneonta University and the Hall of Fame, which was held in late May. The symposium is widely regarded as the pre-eminent academic conference on baseball.

Shuffler honed his speech and materials for months. He presented the results of his mock hall of fame election which showed that of 50 supremely qualified pre-Negro black baseball and Negro League players, nine were “elected” to the hall by the mock electors.

He felt the presentation was “pretty damn good.” After the presentation, however, there was no raucous applause. There were no questions. There was little reaction of any kind by hall officials or other presenters.

“Nothing,” he said. “Nobody seemed interested.”

So, what’s next?

Shuffler has plans to fold his research and anthologies into a larger series of lectures about what Black baseball meant to American history.

“I am going to continue to present programs on segregation-era baseball,” he said. “I want to keep making people aware of how segregation-era baseball was a cultural phenomenon and a bedrock of the Black community.”