Quote:
Originally Posted by Misunderestimated
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.
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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.
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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
, 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