Negro League Stats included in official MLB records

[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by BillyCoxDodgers3B

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.