The Negro Leagues are an important part of baseball and American history, whose iconic figures are not nearly as well-known as other baseball players of the era. San Diego Studio previously announced that they plan to use MLB The Show as a gateway to expose new generations of baseball fans to these historic figures and their stories of triumph over adversity.
In a new interview with Comicbook.com, Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, revealed how this collab between MLB The Show 23 and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum came to be.
From what I understand about this whole video game process, this took place pretty quickly because it was about a year’s time that they reached out to me over at PlayStation with the idea of exploring the possibility of getting Negro League figures introduced into MLB The Show. Honestly, I think the folks over at PlayStation thought that this might be something that would take place in ‘24 instead of ‘23. This took on a life of its own, particularly after they came here. We had a number of meetings leading up and then eventually they came here to hang out with me at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. This thing just morphed and took on a life of its own and it was fast-tracked into the ‘23 game.
They did a remarkable job of making this available for this edition of MLB The Show. I had to sit on this, though, for about a year. It’s hard to keep a secret that long. Everything was percolating and I’m excited about this. I couldn’t wait for the announcement because what you hoped was that others would feel the way that it seems that you felt about this announcement, and certainly, how I felt about this long overdue inclusion of the Negro Leagues because people had been asking about this in my social media family. Here it was, imminent, but I still had a little nervous energy because I wasn’t sure how well it was going to be received by the gaming community. As you saw, the reaction was just absolutely explosive. It really was. I am overwhelmed by the tremendous positive response that we have gotten to this announcement about the inclusion of the Negro Leagues in MLB The Show 23.
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