The Negro League revolutionized baseball – MLB's new rules are part of its legacy

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/10/ [login to see] /negro-league-baseball-mlb-sam-pollard
This season, the MLB instituted new rules designed to make baseball games shorter and more exciting. According to filmmaker Sam Pollard, some of these changes hearken back to an earlier period in baseball history: The Negro National League.

While sluggers like Babe Ruth dominated MLB, the Negro League, which was founded in 1920, featured a scrappier, hit-and-run, base-stealing style of play. Years later, as the first Black player to play in MLB in the modern era, Jackie Robinson would bring the same energy to a wider audience.

"If you watch footage of Jackie Robinson from the '40s and the early '50s, he had a lot of flash and pizzazz," Pollard says. "You can see it follow up with other players who came along ... people like Maury Wills, Willie Mays, Rickey Henderson. They brought a different kind of style, which was part of that style that was in the Negro Leagues. Energetic, punchier, aggressive — a kind of baseball which Major League Baseball is trying to bring back since they've changed some of the rules."