Larry Tye: MLB records were never real. Racism was.

Major League Baseball keeps vowing to redress its racist past, but its half-steps only reinforce the elusiveness of that goal, for it and the rest of America.The league’s latest push, unveiled with fanfare last week, was to formally recognize the most prominent of the Negro leagues as equal to the American and National leagues.That, M.L.B.’s commissioner says, means that more than 3,400 players from seven distinct all-Black conferences will become part of big-league history, and incl