How do you rate the Negro League greats when discussing the history of baseball?
 

This is something I've always thought and had discussions about, so I figured I'd bring it over here to Net54. There have been many great black ballplayers, that either never got the chance to play in Major League Baseball due to the color barrier, or by the time they were able to come over, they were well past their primes.

I think it's easier for a player like Satchel Paige to be rated. We saw what he was capable of as a pitcher, even at the end of his career. Paige was dominant, putting together some very impressive seasons especially at the ages of 45 and 46. I would think that had he been able to spend his entire career, playing for a big league team, he would easily rank in the top 3-5 pitchers statistically speaking. So I think we can likely conclude that Paige was one of the greatest pitchers ever.

But then we get the other players who are shrouded in equal parts of mystery, fact and legend. I'm talking about guys like Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Pop Lloyd, Jose Mendez, etc. I can go on. Writer Joe Posnanski attempted to tackle this in his Baseball 100, but I was curious what everyone thought? Thanks.

I really enjoyed this short collection of essays. Discussed some of the real difficulties in comparing Negro League players to today. Lots of complicated issues, but clearly there were amazing players who were screwed out an opportunity to play in MLB. The gaping holes in the historical record make this a very difficult question to drill down on.

https://www.amazon.com/Negro-Leagues.../dp/1970159634

Didn't know about this collection, will definitely check it out. Thank you.

Its a really great collection of essays, and a great recommendation by Steve.

In the essay "Negro Leagues = Major Leagues", author Todd Peterson points out that between 1866 and 1948, top African American ball clubs played over 7,000 games with White semi-pro, college, minor League, and major league teams and beat them 65% of the time.

Negro League teams won about 55% of the time vs. white Major League teams.

The quality of play in the top 7 Major Negro Leagues was clearly as good as the MLB.

I think as more research is done, Negro Leaguers will continue to be considered the equal of the players in the MLB.

As already pointed out, authors like Joe Posnanski rank the Negro Leaguers high on their all-time lists

I'm reading a book on the California Winter League, which is a somewhat integrated league that played in Cali in the prewar era. NL greats came here and played against a lot of MLB players wintering here as well as a lot of PCL players. The 1921-22 black team was headed by Oscar Charleston and included a bunch of legendary players, including Biz Mackey and Dobie Moore. They played in Los Angeles in a 4000 seat park against 10 white teams and regularly beat the teams staffed with MLB and PCL players. Charleston hit .405 and Mackey hit .382 against white opposition.

My point being that when they got the chance to go head to head, they could play just as well as the white guys. I have no doubt that the best black players would have been just as successful in MLB as the guys were who got into MLB after 1947.

Adam,

I would generally agree, I think the top talents of the Negro leagues would have been just as successful as any of the other marquee players of the mlb.

+1 Agree I will check it out also

I don't see how one can argue that the top Negro League players weren't on a par with the best MLB players.

MLB of the late 1940's and early 1950's had an infusion of blacks - Jackie, Paige, Aaron, Mays, Campanella, etc.

The Negro Leagues didn't just produce these top players all of a sudden with no top talent before them.

Thread needs an image or two

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The general observation that the best Black players were on the same level as the best White players is fairly easy and obvious. Without good numbers, though, it's a bit harder to make specific rankings and head to head comparisons. I'm not sure we can really say one way or the other, for example, who was the greater HR hitter, Ruth or Gibson. Or who was better, Lloyd or Wagner. Etc.

I tend to agree with Peter about rankings, especially since fans can't even agree on who was better among the guys who played in the same leagues. Ranking Ruth, Cobb, Aaron, Mantle, Musial, Mays and Ted Williams is a never ending debate. Wait, did someone say Clemente?

When you throw Charleston into the mix it just gets more speculative. Still, those early greats all deserve their due and it's cool to see them getting more recognition. I would love to see more research come out from the Cuban leagues about the participation of Negro Leaguers there.

It’s important to make a differentiation between quality of the leagues and the quality of the players. I believe that it is just historical malpractice to argue that the leagues were equal. Up until the 1940’s even the best negro league teams only carried 13-15 players at a time , had terribly unstable rosters with players jumping contacts all over the world, had no athletic training, poor transportation and even worse lodging. If you put the 1932 Chicago American giants in the National league and asked them to play 154 games they would have finished in last place 40 games back. The Negro league teams were not built to play the same type of season that the majors played. This is not criticizing the Negro league but merely recognizing the world they lived in the effects of existing in Jim Crow America. I would argue that by trying equalize the leagues we are actually writing out the racist reality that drove the inequality
The players however were often clearly the equal of major leaguers. Taking the same 1932 Chicago American team there were two Hofers Foster and Stearns and a couple of players who would have been perineal all stars at least in Radcliffe and Malarcher. Move any of these players into the National league in 1932 and they are still great

Agreed

My 2 cents

Based on many articles and other available information, it's obvious the black players were just as good as the white players.

I just find it hard to integrate the stats and make comparisons between the Negro League stats and MLB stats because the Negro league stats are not even close to being complete, which is a total shame.

Believe me, I'm not inferring that the Negro League stats are meaningless. For all we know with complete stats, Oscar Charleston could be the lifetime batting average leader but there will never be that apples to apples comparison available.

Josh Gibson

162 game average:

BA .374 - Hits 218 - OBP 458
HR 45 - Runs 165 - SLG 720
RBI 198 - BB 90 - OPS 1.178

Not too shabby.

Yes, it is impossible to make an apples to apples comparison between players in the Negro Leagues and those in MLB. But by acknowledging the stats of the 7 Major Negro Leagues, Baseball Reference is bringing more recognition to these great players, which I think is both long overdue and fair.

Because Baseball Reference only counts the 7 Major Negro Leagues, which had the best competition, the counting stats are very low, so you have Josh Gibson with 165 career Home Runs, rather than the ~800 Home Runs he may have hit when you consider all his games. And Gibson doesn't qualify for career Batting Average because he had fewer than 3,000 plate appearances in Major Negro League Play.

But its tricky, like you say, when saying Oscar Charleston had the 2nd best career batting average ever at .364 with 3,920 Plate Appearances. Its tricky to compare Oscar Charleston to Ty Cobb, Hornsby, etc. but I still think it is the right thing to do, given the similarity of stats between the 7 Major Negro Leagues and the MLB, and the quality of players/teams.

I completely exclude Negro Leaguers when talking of this era, the only reason being that I need solid numbers to look at, not incomplete stats and a lot of homespun exaggeration. "I saw Josh Gibson hit a ball 800 feet blindfolded using only a toothpick!" Yeah, OK... Thankfully, people are certainly trying to complete those stats as best as is possible, but still... It's just difficult to look at career stats that were recorded as properly as possible vs. the unfortunate shambles that we've been left with for the Negro Leaguers. It's not fair to those players, but I wasn't there to witness their prowess and have to have something concrete to rely on if I can speak with any accuracy.

The stats recognized by Baseball Reference and SABR are solid. A painstaking and thorough process by Seamheads and others took place to gather them.

If you believe Satchel Paige was perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time, then why not trust what he has to say about players only he and players like him got to see?

Francisco Coimbre was perhaps the greatest player Puerto Rico ever produced right up until Clemente. Clemente himself said Coimbre had no equal on the diamond.

And this is what Satchel had to say about him: “Coimbre could not be pitched to. No one gave me more trouble than anyone I ever faced, including Josh Gibson and Ted Williams.”

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...4778f0c308.jpg

I think what a lot of people here say is true and it can be compared to something like picking out players from a specific state now to play against everyone else. They would still have great players, but overall the talent would be lacking.

Everyone has to remember how popular baseball was back then and how small a percentage of the population was able to play in the Negro Leagues. If you right now made a team just of players born in Texas, they would have great players and their All-Star team could beat other MLB teams. But if you tried to put together a 30-team MLB league of just players born in Texas, you would have a lot of guys well below MLB quality. The greats would still be great though, regardless of the league. Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, etc would still be Hall of Famers, not doubt.

I think that's a lot like what integration would have been. I sometimes find it comical when people use that excuse to talk down Babe Ruth. How many Negro League players would be good enough for the majors back then? Let's say 35, while remembering the small size of MLB back then. Half of those players would be in the NL and never face him. Half of that remaining 17-18 would be position players. You have eight players left for eight teams, and how many do you think the Yankees would have? Probably the best available 1-2 guys. Then figure in that how much better would those players be than the guys they were replacing? Probably not a huge difference when you're getting down to about 5-6 guys. You're talking about 20-30 at-bats a season where he's facing slightly better MLB pitchers. Maybe his stats suffer a little, but so would everyone else and he would still be that much better than them.

If you look at it the other way though, those Negro League players would be facing much better players on average, so their stats would suffer more, plus they would still being seeing the best players of their own league.

I think the population size and ability to play ball often gets overlooked. Segregation wasn't just happening in the majors, it was everywhere at the time, and that affected the ability to play ball regularly for some. Think of how many white players got to play college baseball, then they went out to the minors or semi-pro and played during the summer

I don't really agree with that perspective. A player like Alejandro Oms played in multiple professional leagues and against competition faced nowhere else. If you were in MLB at the same time, you played only white American players.

I don't think there is a way to quantify a percentage of quality players from either MLB or the Negro Leagues in terms of a superstar for every X player, so I don't think there's any reason to make assumptions about the more elite talent either.

Players from Latin America are among the best in the game and have been for quite some time. Many of them come from very little, both in an economic sense and an organized competitive sense, and are elite anyway. Is there anything to suggest the same hasn't always been true?

The best record for evaluating the issue is what happened as MLB integrated over the decades after 1947 (took the BoSox until 1959). We all focus on the stars and superstars who emerged from the Negro Leagues (Aaron, Banks, Campanella, Doby, Mays, Minoso, Newcombe, Jackie Robinson, etc.) and the guys who lost careers (Paige, Charleston, Gibson, etc.). To better address the question of what MLB would have looked like without the racism, we probably should focus on the guys who were brought up in the 1950s-1970s when the teams were de-segregated and actively looking for talent of color. Not just stars like Clemente, Frank Robinson, Gibson, Brock, Stargell, McCovey, Jenkins, and so on, but also the guys who were average or who were bench warmers. I think there are some studies out there that American-born black players had their highest level of representation in MLB in the late 20th century and have fallen back substantially since then, primarily losing ground to Latin American players. I think we'd have had a similar situation in the prewar era, with a variety of players from superstars down to bench warmers, as a part of the picture, competitive but not necessarily the dominant part.

As far as assigning a % of pop who woulda been stars, there is a structural bias to that analysis. The early integrating teams were very concerned with having too many black players, so they staggered MLB call-ups (the Dodgers), avoided having majority black line-ups, and consequently left the lesser caliber players out of integration. There really weren't 24 roster spots for black players, more like a handful per team. The result is that the early black MLB players were of a much higher caliber on average than their white teammates. They had to be, or they were gone. Look at the MVP voting from 1949-1959 in the NL: white guys won in 50 and 52. Makes it look like the black guys were dominating MLB. A handful of superstars were, but there were very few back players who weren't really good who stayed on MLB rosters. The Yankees weren't going to use up their 'black roster spot' with a lousy player., so they got Ellie Howard (MVP, 1963). Like the term or not, it really was a form of structural racism that remained in place for many years after the color barrier was broken.

Players from Latin America now get with trainers at an extremely early age and they are playing an extreme amount of baseball against the best players. That happens at an early age because they can sign at 16 years old and agree to deals as young as 14 years old. Those trainers take 30-40% of their bonuses, so they put money into those kids to help them get better. There's nothing like that happening in the U.S.

I think what you're seeing now in the Dominican actually helps prove my point. They play a lot against the best players and everyone plays baseball there. In the U.S., a recent nationwide poll said that just 9% of the 18&under crowd considered baseball to be their favorite sport, which is a continuation of the decline of the sport. Fewer kids are also playing baseball, despite the population of the country on the rise. That means it is harder for kids to get games going and the best players are spread thinner, so they are playing against mediocre talent coming up, except for the few baseball hotbeds still around.

There is a clear decline in the quality of play in the majors and minors because of that, but there are also more young international players coming up that are top talent, which helps make up for the decline. If MLB right now was just American-born players, the level of play would be even worse than it is now.

I'd also point out that MLB was not all white Americans at any point in its history. That's the same thing people who use the segregation crutch say about Ruth, but minimal research disproves.

Your post asked a rhetorical question about how many Negro League players would have been considered elite when people bring up the point that Ruth didn't face all players.

I don't think you can refute what I said about playing against white males when the sentiment came from your post.

I disagree with what you said because I think talent is talent and it's always present. I don't see any reason to discount a player like Alejandro Oms or suggest he was anything other than a great player. Why? Because elite players have always been present whenever a sport is played. That's why I brought up Latin American players who grew up without any real advantages at all but were elite anyway. I wasn't just talking about today.

Oms is a really interesting test case. He is actually one of my favorite players and I have collected him for years. He was a dominant player in all of the leagues that he played in and put up incredible batting numbers. He was also about 5 foot 5inches tall and would be the shortest MLB regular in history. I wonder if his game would have completely translated

You can only judge a man by who he played against. Or was allowed to play again. The whole exercise of comparing leagues and comparing eras is interesting of course, but can only recognize greatness where and when it existed. Would be like arguing that Hoagy Carmichael couldn't write a hit song today for Britney Spears. Who knows.

He would be roughly the same size as Jose Altuve. Altuve doesn't seem to have a problem though he is no doubt an outlier.

Oms wasn’t all that different from Keeler or Evers either.

Lifelong Carmichael fan here.

Your point brings to mind a story which could practically apply to our baseball discussion as opposed to the music world if he was talking about older players vs. new!

Shortly before rock & roll exploded, Hoagy could already see the tides of music turning. According to a late in life interview, Hoagy claimed to have written a trunk full of songs that would have all been hits in an earlier time. He knew they wouldn't go anywhere with how the world had changed, so they never saw the light of day.

If practically any other songwriter had claimed to have a trunk full of unreleased hits, I'd be a bit dubious. I take Hoagy's claim as gospel. He wasn't a braggart, nor an egomaniac. Man, I hope those songs will see the light of day in the right hands and be properly arranged and recorded.

There's been some talk of Oms, whose career I've found fascinating, Cristobal Torriente is another slugger that I'd throw into the ring as well. Pitchers like Rube Foster would be another interesting case.

I obviously can't level the blame solely at the feet at Cap Anson, but I know he initially refused to get on the field with a player of color, and it snowballed from there. An absolute shame so many of these guys never saw the MLB and now we have to ask the constant "what if?" question.

On a much lighter note, imagine the cards of these guys we could've gotten!

He was the coolest of the cool, an A-lister from the Jazz Age and then stole every movie scene he was ever in!

Hoagy was one of my favorite Jazz artists in the 1940's. He composed "Star Dust" (lyrics and music), and other greats.... "Skylark", "Ole Buttermilk Sky", "Rockin' Chair", etc.

And, you are correct Hank.....he usually "stole every movie scene he was ever in".


TED Z

T206 Reference
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Never thought we'd see a Hoagy Carmichael reference, in a discussion on Negro League Baseball Players! In terms of "a trunk full of unreleased hits" my mind immediately went to Prince, who apparently has a vault full on unreleased material. Probably where the comparison between the two ends however!






Ted,

Always love when you chime in on my threads. Can't forget Heart And Soul as well, when it comes to Mr. Carmichael! Hope all is well!