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.
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