Negro League Stats included in official MLB records
 

I thought this happened quite some time ago.

Hmmm, we'll see how this affects some prices

Major League Baseball will officially incorporate Negro Leagues statistics into MLB's historical records on Wednesday, reports USA Today. MLB elevated the Negro Leagues to "Major League" status in 2020 and recognized the "statistics and records" of approximately 3,400 players who played in seven leagues between 1920-48. Now they are part of the official record.


…What is the difference between recognizing the stats and records and being part of the record?

This won't affect anyone's prices. Cobb, Ruth or any of the all-time greats.

+1
It will probably increase some of the Negro League players prices.

Not so much Cobby etc....

The last player to hit .400 in a season is no longer Ted Williams
 

... I think that it is Artie Wilson now....

Ty who? Gibson now has the highest batting average ever. I think this is ridiculous--the competition was not the same. This is just a botched attempt to atone for past injustices.

Given the sparsity of the stats, how could he have enough at bats to qualify?

You can see and sort all the stats here:
Batting
https://www.mlb.com/stats/batting-av...ll-time-totals

Pitching
https://www.mlb.com/stats/pitching/wins/all-time-totals

I think a bigger concern is the incompleteness of the stats. In some cases it seems to pick up only a small fraction of the games an individual played.

The legend of Satchell Paige is full of amazing stories. I want to believe he may have been the best ever. I cherish the couple Paige cards I own ('48 Bowman & Exhibit)) It seems appropriate, based on the stories, to include him in the discussion of greatest pitcher ever.

A few years ago I tries to get a handle on Satchell's stats. Unfortunately, with whatever research I could find on the internet, I came to the conclusion that there just is extremely minimal concrete stats. There simply wasn't enough meat to be found that could justify his legendary status. So you live with the stories, accept the fact not much in the way of stats and move on.

So now, how in the world is MLB able to come up with enough detail and solid stats, comparable to actual MLB player stats, to start including all the amazing, fully worthy HOF caliber players that played in the Negro Leagues ?

Immaculate Grid's about to get REAL interesting!

I just think comparing Negro League stats to MLB stats is comparing apples and oranges. I don't know with 100% certainty which league was better, but I do know that they were not the same and calling the stats equivalent doesn't seem correct to me.

I dislike that guys who have been identified as using or most likely using PEDs are in the record books with those who did not. Also is the guy who hit .300 in the 19th century as great a hitter as the guy who hit .300 in the 21st century?

Immaculate Grid has been counting Major Negro League Stats for the entirety of its existence, as Baseball Reference had made the integration of Negro League stats long ago.

But it gets tricky. I once chose Hank Aaron as a Negro League player and it come up as wrong, because he has no stats with any of the 7 Major Negro Leagues.

I'm not sure about this. Let's say you had a ticket or program from Willie Mays' first hit 2 days ago. You likely had a ticket or program for the MLB game in which he got his first hit. But now a ticket or program for his first hit game would technically have to come from a Birmingham Black Barons game. If such a program or ticket exists, then that piece of memorabilia just soared in value, while perhaps the pieces from his first MLB hit game become a little less valuable. Card prices might not change much, but perhaps prices for other memorabilia might.

I don't think prices will do much of anything. When the NL numbers were initially canonized, prices on a lot of guys spiked, Wilson among them. That cat is already out of the bag.

Oh, and a few Wilsons:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...Wilson%201.jpg
https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...Wilson%202.jpg

A snapshot too, taken on opening day 1949 in San Diego:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...er%20photo.jpg

Love these Artie Wilson cards

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

Always thought no one would break Cobb's lifetime BA record....Someone (Gibson) did many years ago but we just found out.

And you think Ty Cobb's competition was the same as post-war players? lol

Comparing players across eras is not the same as comparing contemporaneous leagues. Your point seems irrelevant to the one Jay raised. His point (and not commenting on its merit) would be as if MLB decided to include this year's minor league stats in determining leaders.

I posted essentially the same thing that snowman did to Jay's comments. And I have never thought of MLB stats by era being relevant but when people are opposing the stats of a group of people who were outright denied the chance to play in the MLB, not because they were not good enough but because of the color of their skin, the argument comparing eras has some merit.

There is no perfect solution to this...sorta like the ML auction debate (though some very esteemed members did not see it as a debate)...I think most who look at stats take into account the era as well as the guys who are suspected of using PEDs.

In my personal opinion, having the stats included with MLB stats does not make those players any more legit than they already were. And at least our hobby shares that view if we take the prices alone for what the NL players' cards, postcards, etc sell for.

I don't know enough about the Negro Leagues to have a meaningful opinion re the statistics issue. But, from the FWIW department, below are the first few paragraphs from a piece by Kevin Blackistone that appears is the Sports Section of today's Wash. Post. If anyone cares to read this entire piece, here's the link to it: https://wapo.st/3RaqMGu


"A chapter inside the 1991 edition of “Total Baseball” written by sports scholar Jules Tygiel, whom I interviewed a few times for his seminal research on the Negro Leagues, recounts offseason whistle-stop games in which White baseball stars played against their counterparts in the Black leagues.

The section came to mind this week after MLB’s Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee, led by official MLB historian John Thorn, concluded that the achievements of Black players during the 60-year segregated era should be included in the official statistics of what, despite that racist history, has been celebrated as America’s pastime.

“Postseason tours against big league stars offered an opportunity for black players to prove their equality on the diamond,” Tygiel wrote in 1991. “Matchups between the Babe Ruth or Dizzy Dean ‘All-Stars’ and black players became frequent. The most famous of the interracial barnstorming tours occurred in 1946, when Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller organized a major league all-star team and toured the nation accompanied by the Satchel Paige All-Stars.

“Surviving records reveal that blacks won two-thirds of all interracial games,” Tygiel pointed out.

In other words, as I argued Wednesday on “Around the Horn”: “The Negro Leagues were never less than major. They weren’t minor leagues.”

That was my initial thought. Gibson played in 600 games lifetime….compared to Ruth’s 2500. The whole thing is silly, but whatever.

I think the only real world lab we have to test the quality of Negro League play is what happened in the first ten years of integration.

ML ROY 1947: Robinson
NL ROY:
--1949: Newcombe
--1950: Jethro
--1951: Mays
--1952: Black
--1953: Gilliam

NL MVP:
--1949: Robinson
--1951, 1953, 1955: Campanella
--1954: Mays
--1956: Newcombe
--1957: Aaron

Notable black players who came into the game from 1947-56 and had an impact at the MLB level:
--Jackie Robinson
--Campanella
--Mays
--Irvin
--Minoso
--Doby
--Banks
--Aaron
--Frank Robinson
--Clemente
--Elston Howard
--Jim Gilliam
--Newcombe
--Joe Black
--Hank Thompson
--Luke Easter
--Satchel Paige

Probably some others who don't come to my mind readily (I usually see their cards in my head and remember who was who that way). There were also a number of NL players who got very short trials in MLB and were cut down immediately if they were not spectacular off the bat. Mays was one of the lucky ones in working with Durocher, who was not quick to pull that demotion trigger on him after he went 1 for 25 to start, yet the Giants kicked Artie Wilson back down to the PCL after 24 at-bats produced 4 hits.

My point is that the black players who entered the Bigs in that first decade comprised an all-star team that could have beaten any white team of the era. Carrying NL stats as MLB stats, I don't see a good argument for not doing that given the quality of the players who were or would have been in the NL had there not been integration. Bottom line for me is that if NL stats are MLB stats, you can't make distinctions between seasons given how the game was played at a time of segregation. The NL players played the game they had available to them.

Oh, and a card:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...4%20Easter.jpg

Well throw your RoY analogy out the window because they "had been playing MLB" for year prior.


People now clamorimg to have their Roy's removed from history and awarded to 2nd best

Well, yeah, because the creme de la creme of Negro League players were naturally selected to integrate first. Your statement is accurate, but the obvious has to be kept in mind.

I agree but I am not sure what that proves or disproves. If you want to see how the best of the NL stacked up against MLB under league game conditions and you don't want to compare stats between NL and MLB because of differences in play and conditions, tracking that pioneer group in MLB is the best we can do.

Who is clamoring?

Stats
 

Jay - I agree 150%. An absolute joke!

Your new single-season batting average leader, Tetelo Vargas .471:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...20Vargas_1.jpg

Highest on base percentage


Eddie Gaedel. 1.000

single season batting leader -Not mine.



.

Scores of protesters today marched with torches and pitchforks to MLB stadiums against the championship title of "world series". MLB has decided they would be changing the title of their trophy, as well as going back through all records and removing the title of world champions. Also, new trophies will be awarded to Zimbabwes Tigers who went 160-2 in 1975, as well as many other baseball teams around the world for their compelling records. More to follow on this breaking story.

The ironic issue with MLB's decision re: integrating the NL stats into current MLB stats AND changing the various leaders in season stats is that, by doing this, they are doing exactly what they have failed to do with the National Association of 1871-1875. The argument used to not recognize the NA as a major league included, in large part, the small number of "league" games played each season and an erratic schedule. Apparently, in 2024 this is a good idea for the NL, but still not a good idea for the NA. It is popular today to call early black players and players of the NL pioneers and they are. But what about the white pioneer players of the 1840s-1870s that laid the groundwork for professional baseball and are almost completely left out of any HOF conversations. This is wrong. You can't have it both ways and be right in what you are doing.

That definitely dawned on me too, Gary.

If something similar was done with the Association, then it would finally make Steve Bellan the first Cuban MLB player by a long shot.

With 30 games played that year. What a joke.

I am all for it. This makes my little league stats one step away from being included now.:eek::D:rolleyes:

On a serious note I dislike it because it was a different league. It would be like adding CFL stats to the NFL.

You can take solace in the fact that SABR does consider the NA a major, it is treated as such within the databases of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs, and the plaques of Hall of Famers with NA experience, such as Deacon White and Pud Galvin, list the NA teams for which they played along with those in the majors.

Yes, but MLB and the HOF don't. There are at least a dozen players whose careers started prior to 1876 and prior to 1871 for that matter, who are only technically eligible for the HOF as pioneers since they are not eligible because of the ten year rule. Making the NA a major league would allow some of these players to qualify based on the ten year rule. Does it make any sense to make it near impossible for pioneer players to to be elected to the HOF for being born too soon. In fact, these players are excluded because recognized major league baseball didn't exist when they they started playing. This is not dissimilar, not from a ethical/equality standpoint, but logically, to the argument used to advocate for the inclusion of pre-integation black players in the HOF. That argument being that it's not black players fault they couldn't play in the major leagues due to the segregationist policies, and this is true. It is also true that early players couldn't play in the major leagues through not fault of their own since the major leagues didn't exist prior to 1876, as it now stands. As I said, making the NA major would be a start towards opening the HOF door to some players and being consistent. If you look at the number of players in the HOF by decade/era, the least represented group is from early baseball. You wouldn't have the baseball of today without these players and they are not given their due by MLB or the HOF.

Gary, sounds reasonable. Just out of curiosity, which players from the NA would you like to see in the HOF as players? I don’t know a ton about the NA players.

On my list I have players like Cal McVey, Al Reach, Dicky Pearce, and, my favorite Ross Barnes. There are also earlier pioneers such as Doc Adams and Jim Creighton, although Adams is more of a contributor. Interestingly, I don't believe making the NA major would help any I've listed. I'll have to take a closer look.

Interesting list. But I think you are right that having the NA recognized as a major league would still not allow them to get into the HOF because they didn’t play 10 years.

However, elevating the NA to major league would make an undeniable case for a player like Barnes. He would become the only player to hit .400 in four seasons and would be the winner of three batting titles. Those are pretty good credentials. Also, since Gibson is now the career batting average leader with less than 3000 ABs, wouldn't Barnes career .360 average be considered with a similar amount of ABs? I have another thought. Since there is a ten year rule, are black players whose careers began after 1920 (NLs first season), now ineligible for HOF consideration if they don't play ten seasons? The pioneer route would their only option, right? That's the same requirement for 19th century pioneers with less than ten major league seasons. Doing anything else would be inconsistent. I think MLB has opened up a can of worms on this point. The sad thing is that not enough people care about the early history of baseball to force action by the HOF and MLB.

I think the question of if the Negro League states belong in there is a legitimate question.

However, MLB has all sorts of apples-to-oranges juxtapositions. Ty Cobb and Barry Bonds, Cy Young and Clayton Kershaw lived in very different baseball periods.

True but they are very different questions. One is horizontal -- do you assume talent is relatively constant over time, or at least that players should be judged relative to their era such that someone with a 10 WAR in 1920 was as "good" as someone with the same WAR in 2020?

The NL question is vertical -- IF the leagues were not equal, it doesn't make sense to consider the stats the same as MLB players of the same era. Today, for example, if the minor league champion had a higher batting average than the MLB champion, you would not say he led baseball in hitting, or if you did it would be meaningless. I am not commenting on the "IF" but just putting it in context.

I do not think including the Negro League's stats to be included with MLB stats is a correct decision.
I can acknowldge the significant injustice done to these players while at the same time understand the the MLB is not just a category, ie a Major League, but it is a specific league. Japan, Mexico, Cuba, and other places had major leagues of baseball play for many many years, but we don't consider them the same and are not considering including the as well.
This is a quote from the website Trib live that I think shows what I mean about it being different.
"In 1943, when Gibson hit his “record-setting” .466, his Homestead Grays finished first in the Negro National League with 53 wins, 14 losses and a tie. The Harrisburg Stars finished third with a record of 8-8. Must have been a lot of rainouts."
The full article... https://triblive.com/sports/mark-mad...lly-incorrect/

So he hit 466 in about 70 games. That's a lot different than hitting that for 140 games. Do we even know how many abs he had? Would he have qualified for the title based on that if he was in the MLB?
Again, I am in no way saying Gibson was less of a great player. I am saying that comparing records played in different leagues, even in the same time period, is not an accurate comparison.
I mean how can you really compare records of a player who has 2100 at bat's over 14yrs(150/yr) to a player who has over 11000 at bat's in 24 yrs(458/yr) and say their records are equal. In no single year did Gibson have over 250ab. He would have never qualified for any single year batting title accolades. (BTW, I used baseball reference website for those stats).

I am sorry they were left out of the MLB for so long. I wish BB had been integrated sooner. Imo, adding those records to official MLB records does not make up for anything. It just confuses and changes well established standards of excellence with data that is incomplete, at best, only partially verifiable, and played against different competition.

It would have been great to see them compete day in day out vs Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, etc, etc, but we didn't. Trying to make up for old injustices should not be done in a way that creates new ones, imo.

Sent from my SM-F946U using Tapatalk

Interesting, since Zimbabwe didn't exist as a country until 1980.

Any reason you chose Zimbabwe specifically as an example instead of any North American, South American, European, Australian, or Asian countries?

Technically the Rhodesia Tigers.

Quoting this as reference to the low level, gaslightimg, virtue signaling, scumbag piece of $hit you are.

I dnjoy reading about this subject so im happy this is happening

I thought it was called MLB Stats. The Negro Leagues may have been better, the same or below the Major Leagues during 1920-1948 but it should not be included in the MLB Stats since they were not. It should be as it is, The Negro Stats from 1920-1948 showing the greatest players from those leagues during that time ( best average, single single season,career etc. I think putting them together just doesn't seem right to me.

The MLB is considered the AL/NL after they joined up.

All others (7 major negro leagues, American Association, Players League, etc) are considered major leagues, but not MLB. Yeah, its somewhat convoluted.

Yes! It's time to stop ageism!
While they're at it, why not add the AAGPBL stats to the MLB record books as well?

And the Stats from the baseball leagues in Guam and American Samoa.

Don't forget Japan. Why isn't Oh in the HOF??

I'm so sick of "woke", "cancelled" , and PC crap.

The past is the past and nothings going to change it. But lets put some lipstick on this pig and see what we have.

Eligibility based on number of years played is certainly a bit confusing.
You have a bunch of guys who played in the Negro Leagues that do not have 10 years of major league experience. Martin Dihigo has 9 years, Jose Mendez has 7, and Louis Santop has only 4. I guess the idea is that in addition to their major league Negro League experience, they also have non-major league Negro League experience.

Still, it would be nice for Ross Barnes to be recognized for his popularization of the sport, but you are right, there may not be enough interest in the guys who played for the National Association in the 1870s.

But how come the same standards are not used for 19th century century players whose careers started before 1871/1876? Almost all played in the highest levels of baseball prior to open professionalism. The HOF exists or should exist to show the history of the game and honors ALL eras of that history. In fact, the HOF has the audacity to refer to pioneer players as "executives" on their own site, apparently not daring to call them pioneers for some unknown reason. George Wright is an executive. Yeah, right.

I just checked the HOF's site. There are forty executive/pioneers. Thirty-three were actually executives. Only seven were players, at least for part of their baseball careers. The list, with induction year: George Wright (1937), Candy Cummings (1939), Harry Wright (1953), Rube Foster (1981), Frank Grant (2006), Sol White (2006), Bud Fowler (2022). Probably, only George Wright, Candy Cummings, Frank Grant, and Bud Fowler were inducted as players.
Is it reasonable that only two white "pioneer" players have been elected to HOF in its history and these elections took place 85 and 87 years ago?
I'm all in favor of fairness, equity, or whatever else people want to call it today, but, as I've already said here, 19th century baseball players are the most underrepresented group in the HOF and it is a black eye on the HOF.

A) I'm not sure you understand what gaslighting is, and
B) Honestly ask yourself why you chose that specific country as an example when composing your 'hot take'. It may help you grow as a human being.

I'm in favor of including the Negro League numbers.

Some stray thoughts about these numbers:
The stats that people have trouble with are (from my reading) all rate statistics -- high averages and percentages -- not counting stats. My sense is that Negro League's best players would have been as good/better than their AL/NL counterparts. This is what the anecdotal evidence says and it's supported by the level of excellence of the first waves of integrated players who include many of the greatest national Leaguers ever (Aaron, Mays, et al)

I'm not as sure if the Negro leagues as a whole -- I mean the hypothetical replacement players too -- were on par with the AL and NL at the same time. This may help account for the staggeringly high rate stats that the Negro League's best players (almost all hitters by the way) put up.

The Negro Leagues as a whole were definitely superior to the lesser leagues in the 19th Century and probably the Federal League in 1914-15. The Union Association of 1884 was far worse that any league and it's considered a major league... Look at how good that league made Fred Dunlap look. (BTW the National Association circa 1871-75 belongs as a major league unless we are going to bounce the UA and maybe a few years of he American Association when it was at its weakest)

I don't think the incompleteness of Negro Leagues data should exclude them from major league status. it is interesting that the numbers may be moving over the next few years -- e.g. Josh Gibson's BA could go up or down.

Many of the record-breaking seasons were during a particularly weird time in baseball history --> the WWII era when many American males (of all colors) were fighting the war. It stands to reason that this more limited pool of players would make ir easier for the best to stand out even more. Think of this: what would Ted Williams have hit if he had gotten to feast on the AL pitching in 1943-45 ? He hit .406 in 1941 -- I'm guessing he gets to .420 with a lot of BB if he plays those years although Hal Newhouser was pretty awesome in 1945-46. Of course, Josh Gibson may have been suffering from a brain tumor in the 1940's and he still put up those numbers.

--

Finally, the impact and import of baseball stats as an arbiter of greatness suffered a body blow during the PED era that it hasn't recovered from... Since Bonds, McGwire, and Clemens (and company) stats lost their allure to many people. This says nothing about the Negro Leaguers -- they weren't juicing. But it does make all of this less meaningful than it would have been if this decision had been made in 1997. Maybe it should have been made then, although I don't know how much data was available back then.

"There is a certain justice in Ty Cobb's .366 BA record being broken by a Negro Leaguer. While Cobb was not been as bad at the end of his life he had a history of racism during his playing years."

Other than Al Stumps debunked sensationalistic biography, can you give me some examples of Cobbs racism?

100% agree that after Bonds, stats really lost their significance.

Buck O'Neil said Cobb used to barnstorm in Cuba with Cuban and Negro League players. Not something a racist would do.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=l7zYopq-...y0Lty8Qreg6yhf

Interesting brief counterargument: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...s-not-a-racist. There have been some good book length treatments with full citations in recent years that are much fairer biographies.

I'm not sure if people just repeat the Stump lies out of habit, or if people just really need some targets for their contemporary narratives and do not care whatsoever about evidence.

Trying to shovel contemporary narrative into the past and then vilifying the past for not being the present is a stupid game to play at all, but it's extra stupid when the chosen target was actually much more aligned with the contemporary narrative than the one of their own time and place.

The Stump (and Alexander and Tommy Lee Jones) versions of Cobb are unfair. The revisionist account by Leerhsen paints a fairer and far more flattering picture of the man. (Perhaps it "overcorrects?") By the end of his life Cobb was positively progressive on race. But my understanding is that his fury as a young man (a very very southern young man in the early 20th century who lived and worked in the north) often had a racial edge.... The incident with the handicapped heckler comes to mind. I can't think of anything else off-hand though -- maybe I'm remembering things from the Alexander bio although I read the Leershen book more recently.
Perhaps I'm overstepping in calling the young Cobb racist... I'll retract that.

I rarely see mention of a man like Frank "Home Run" Baker who prevented the lynching of a black man accused of assaulting his sister in law in 1924.

I didn't want to truncate your quote, as I feel it would diminish it. This conveys my opinion nearly completely.

The only thing I would add is that I would be against this move 25 years ago. Why? Not because I believed the NL didn't deserve the recognition, but because the method of baseball stats delivery was via BOOKS and rudimentary sort features! I was calculating 162 game comparables back in the mid 70's. The DH rocked my world, as it created a disparity in comparing AL/NL. It annoyed me (and to some extent, still does) when playoff 'records' were broken and didn't account for playoff expansion. I loved reading old contemporary news story accounts, recollections, and biographies of past players. I was fascinated by the challenge of trying to accurately gauge how a deadball vs. liveball vs. WWII vs. Negro League vs. post expansion player would fare against one another. As I know now, it is a fruitless folly. Just watch a game from the 80's on youtube. The level of play (NOT the 'game') now is tremendously greater. And that is within my lifetime.

Now do I believe that the greats would be great regardless? Yes. Just not as great.

My point is :D, stats are stats. They give insight, not proof of superiority across generations. Inclusion of the Negro League stats are fine with me. As long as I can sort them, just as I did with the 18th century players decades ago.

P.S. If I recall correctly they were italicized :D

Duplicate

Here is a short piece by Charles Leerhsen, author of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty that says: "But what about Cobb’s 19th-century Southern roots? How could someone born in Georgia in 1886 not be a racist? What I found—and again, not because I am the Babe Ruth of researchers, but because I actually did some research—is that Ty Cobb was descended from a long line of abolitionists. His great-grandfather was a minister who preached against slavery and was run out of town for it. His grandfather refused to fight in the Confederate army because of the slavery issue. And his father was an educator and state senator who spoke up for his black constituents and is known to have once broken up a lynch mob.

Cobb himself was never asked about segregation until 1952, when the Texas League was integrating, and Sporting News asked him what he thought. “The Negro should be accepted wholeheartedly, and not grudgingly,” he said. “The Negro has the right to play professional baseball and whose [sic] to say he has not?” By that time he had attended many Negro league games, sometimes throwing out the first ball and often sitting in the dugout with the players. He is quoted as saying that Willie Mays was the only modern-day player he’d pay to see and that Roy Campanella was the ballplayer that reminded him most of himself.

A similar piece by MLB.com echoes the above sentiments, stating that "We have zero evidence to suggest that Cobb was a racist."

It's utterly confounding that this information about Cobb took so many years to come to light. He has descendants. If the ancestors, and Cobb himself, had this type of history, it's very strange that the family wouldn't have been more vocal against what had sadly been accepted as the more awful account of the "truth".

I have not yet read the Leerhsen book. Does he give a differing account of the story of Cobb going into the stands to attack the crippled heckler who allegedly called him the N word?

The Leerhsen link I provided states: "He was the first baseball celebrity, and he did not always handle well the responsibilities that came with that. And yes, he once went into the stands and repeatedly punched a man who had been heckling him for more than a year, and who turned out to have less than the full complement of fingers—hence the story of him attacking a handicapped fan. This is a mark against him. But was he a racist and an embarrassment to the game? Far from it."

I have not read the Leerhsen book.

Leehrsen's book, as I recall, spends most of the length debunking myths by going back to primary sources. The short of it is that no evidence was found to support most of the common stories told about him. He did commit some assaults and had a bad temper as a young man, for which he is criticized fairly in the book, but these incidents are all very different from what was written in the 60's and then passed on down. He does not conclude Cobb was some flawless individual, just that most of what is said about him is contradictory to the evidence.

I think that the issues raised by some point to distinctions between the Negro Leagues and the American and National Leagues. There is no doubt that the length of season was different.

Combining the numbers ignores many, many things and may be inconsistent with how other leagues have been handled. Yes, it ignores the length of season. It ignores the conditions that black players played under. It ignores the fact that they had to play semi-pro teams in between their official games because they needed to earn more money. It ignores the racism and discrimination that they dealt with.

What we are left with is trying to figure out what to do in a world where the black players were not allowed to play in the American and National leagues, despite a lot of evidence that they were roughly equivalent players. (Books like Outsider Baseball highlight the evidence but to briefly note a couple of sources: interracial barnstorming games, the success of the black players who integrated MLB and were enormously successful in the years immediately following integration etc.)

At this point we are left with a 'what do we do now?' And there is no right answer. Should Josh Gibson hit over 800 homeruns but the vast majority were in unofficial games. Should he be considered the all-time leader, or should he rank around 250th with 246? He played those games and hit those homeruns and in some cases, the unofficial games were against elite teams. But they were not official games. And so there is a tough decision to be made. Similarly, should we ignore Negro League rate stats (like batting average) because the season was shorter, or find a way to accomodate?
There was no simple, clean, easy decision. And any fan with a degree of nuance will know that Ty Cobb's career batting average was accomplished in far longer seasons, while Josh Gibson's 246 homeruns barely begins to tell the story.

It's not perfect. It never will be. In part because the history is not perfect. There never should have had to have been a separate Negro League. People like Effa Manley, Gus Greenlee, Cumberland Posey etc should have owned MLB teams. Josh Gibson should have been behind the plate catching Lefty Grove or Red Ruffing etc. Satchel Paige should have been pitching to Bill Dickey or Gabby Hartnett. But that was not the case. So we are left picking up the pieces and trying to make the best of it.

Baseball stats more than any other sport are considered sacred. And this is a big change. One that will take getting used to for many and one that some people will not like. I'm sure some of those people will not like it for racial reasons, others because of the inconsistencies and others for many other reasons. As a solution, it is an imperfect one. But I think that some view it as a good start in the right direction.

I'm not sure how exactly the stats are calculated, but if there is any sort of leeway given as described above, then all non-NL payers obviously deserve to have their numbers similarly padded. Wow, Babe Ruth hit 1500 HRs? Amazing! Where would Babe Didrickson rank among professional baseball's all-time greats?

The only solution that works for me (and I stress, for me because it's clearly not happening) is to leave everything as it was. This is what happened in real life. How hard is that to leave alone? We can hate that it happened, making sure to teach our children that it was wrong and that some of the best to ever play were denied opportunities because of racism. It has to be left separate in order to accurately teach the history of the game/American society and to make it less confusing for future generations. By all means, keep celebrating these players. Keep putting up gravestones for those without one. Honor and respect them all, but accept that there's a historical stain that will always be there and needs to remain in place for the sake of accuracy, and due to that, the leagues are forced to stay segreated. That was life at the time. Would it sound silly to anyone else if every African American, dead or alive, was retroactively given permission to drink from Jim Crow Era water fountains and open access to all the other freedoms they were historically denied?

By all means, the NL stats need to be as accurately recalculated as possible using period data, but they should be limited to official games played. Otherwise, it's as silly and pointless as counting every Babe Ruth exhibition and barnstorming stat.

Only official games are being counted. But comparing Ruth's barnstorming to Negro League barnstorming is comparing two very different things. The Negro Leagues were forced to barnstorm due to the realities of their existence. Ruth barnstormed to make more money. More importantly, the sheer quantity of games was radically different. The Negro League stars allmost definitely played many more unofficial games than official games. Ruth played a tiny fraction.

I'm not arguing for including unofficial games. Just pointing to a complexity in comparing.

I think counting Negro League stats as Major League stats is a bad idea for two reasons:

1)It is a superficial way of making people in the present feel better about the past. The reality is that Negro League players were not allowed to play Major League Baseball. That is the whole reason there were Negro Leagues in the first place. Going back and declaring them major leagues now is like retroactively declaring slavery illegal and then saying no one was ever actually enslaved in the United States. Yes they were. You can deal with that fact, but you can't change it.

2)The Negro League stats we have, as many have pointed out, are terribly incomplete and the truth of players' performance is irretrievable. So it doesn't help to pretend that we have the real stats for Paige, Gibson, etc. We don't, and the numbers we do have will never do them justice.

I disagree. I think the project was well-researched over many years, not superficial in any sense, and the purpose was to better inform people of the history of the game. The result of the project was an awareness that the various Negro Leagues were comparable in level of play to the American and National Leagues, and in that sense should be considered major leagues, for purposes of US baseball and its historical stats.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

Guess it helped this card. Wow.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/375448380819

I was watching that one as well. Holders of Josh Gibson's 1976 Shakey's Pizza card look to have hit a windfall as well.