Baseball Remembers: Dick Lundy

When Dick Lundy was just 17 years old in 1916, he’s known to have played one game with the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants and another game with the Brooklyn Royal Giants. We don’t know precisely when each of those games was played, and since his birthday was July 10, right in the middle of the baseball season, it’s possible he played them after turning 18. Either way, he was really young.

Regardless of his age at the time, neither of those games counts toward the major league totals Lundy is currently credited with. Both Atlantic City and Brooklyn were among the most acclaimed teams of Black baseball in the days before the Negro National League was formed in 1920 to give Black ballplayers an organized league to play in, but no statistics from Black baseball before that year are currently part of Major League Baseball’s official record book. Many from after it still aren’t included either.

That wouldn’t really matter in the case of these two games because Lundy was 0-for-4 in each, so his career numbers wouldn’t be impacted much. But that’s not the case with many Black ballplayers from that era, whose accomplishments still aren’t recognized as “major league” solely because they played for teams, or in years, that Major League Baseball hasn’t chosen to recognize yet.