Baseball catcher Josh Gibson, in an undated photo, became Major League Baseball’s career leader with a .372 batting average, surpassing Ty Cobb’s .367, when records of the Negro Leagues for more than 2,300 players were incorporated after a three-year research project. Associated Press file photo

Baseball fans are obsessed with statistics. Memorizing them; sifting them; inventing new ones. For a true seamhead, if the ballpark is a cathedral, then record books are the Bible.

What welcome news, then, that Major League Baseball has announced a new phase in its project to integrate its statistical records. After a multiyear review of Negro Leagues box scores, MLB has announced it has enough information to start adding data for those players who were excluded from White teams by Jim Crow-era segregation laws. It’s a form of long-delayed professional justice for more than 2,300 Black ballplayers.

Even if it’s taken the better part of a century, correcting the historical record matters. Data tell a story. Baseball, more than other sports, allows for relatively precise measurement of a particular player’s abilities. Some have described the game as a series of individual performances: I throw the ball; you hit the ball; he catches the ball. The players may be part of a team, but each of these actions is performed alone, and can be logged and measured. And these stats can be traced across teams, leagues and eras.

Fans love nothing more than a vigorous argument over which statistics tell the story of baseball best. That story is now more complete than it was before, and further changes are possible as researchers continue to comb through records looking for more Negro Leagues box scores.

I was just a child when I made my first trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, but children have an especially sharp sense of what’s fair and what’s not. And I still remember how deeply wrong it seemed to exclude the great Negro Leagues players from the official list of Major League Baseball record holders — or recognize only the achievements they won in the formerly all-White leagues.

Take Satchel Paige. He entered the Negro Leagues in 1927 at the age of 20 and became such a standout pitcher that, according to legend, he’d sometimes ask his fielders to sit down on the grass before striking out all three opposing batters. But because of segregation, he wasn’t allowed to join an MLB team until age 42. (He’s still the oldest player to ever debut in the majors.) For decades, his total statistics only reflected the twilight of his career. But now, thanks to the record book reboot, his official career wins rise from 28 to 125 and his complete games soar from 7 to 94. The changes mean he takes his rightful place as third among all pitchers in single-season earned run average, for his 1.01 ERA over 16 starts for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1944.

The changes also boost Minnie Miñoso’s career hit total over the 2,000-hit threshold, Roy Campanella’s RBI total to over 1,000, and crown Josh Gibson as the new all-time Major League batting champion. Half of the top 10 players in career batting average are now Negro Leagues players. The single-season batting-average records have also been completely revamped, with the great Oscar Charleston now appearing twice.

Some may chafe at changes to records they memorized in their youth. But I hope many more will cheer. Baseball records have never been static; there’s long been a demarcation between the so-called “deadball era” (where conditions favored pitchers) and the modern era; there will be asterisks (at least in our minds) for the steroid era of the 1990s and early 2000s. Changes to the height of the pitching mound or the dimensions of various ballparks have also influenced the game and thus the records — Fenway Park added bullpens to right field in 1940, lopping 23 feet off the outfield in a naked attempt to help Ted Williams hit more home runs.

Arguments that the Negro Leagues were “easier” have never made sense to me. After all, Gibson was slamming hits against aces like Paige; and Paige was racking up strikeouts against sluggers like Gibson. Yes, it’s haunting that we’ll never know how Black players and White players of that era would have fared regularly playing against each other. But for that, we can blame segregation for the scar it left on the sport.

The belated revisions to the record books do not, of course, right the wrongs of the past. Paige was reputed to be the highest-earning player in the Negro Leagues, earning $600 a month in 1936. When he joined the Cleveland Indians (now the Guardians) in 1948, that shot up to over $13,000.

And it’s not like Jackie Robinson solved the problems of racism in baseball when he walked onto the field with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. There remained at least one all-White team until 1959 — the Boston Red Sox. After integration, the Negro Leagues couldn’t compete financially and many folded, even as teams like the Red Sox weren’t exactly eager to fill their rosters with Black talent. Who knows how many more Paiges, Robinsons and Gibsons never got a chance to play because of that?

But now, at least, baseball’s holy text has a more robust, more accurate translation. And some players may finally get more of the recognition they have always deserved.

Sarah Green Carmichael is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and editor.