Sadaharu Oh and josh Gibson

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Posted By: Sean

How many people still have more home runs than barry bonds? Just Sadaharu Oh and Josh Gibson?

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Posted By: MikeU

Yes, but those are pretty apples to organges comparisons. Particularly for Gibson.

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Posted By: peter chao

Has there ever been an estimate of the number of homers Josh Gibson hit while playing in the Negro Leagues? I'm not counting exhibition games.

Peter C.

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Posted By: David Vargha

Nope. Nobody has ever tried to make an estimate. Most baseball fans just aren't that interested in statistics.

DavidVargha@hotmail.com

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Posted By: dennis

http://sports.jrank.org/pages/1645/Gibson-Josh-Career-Statistics.html

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Posted By: PAS

I read in today's paper Oh allegedly used a "compressed" bat.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I heard he rubbed his arms down with what his trainer told him was teriyaki sauce.

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Posted By: Justin

The quality of play in Japanese baseball wasn't anywhere close to MLB, ditto the Negro Leagues. Also the Japanese ballparks were typically smaller than anything in the Majors.

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Posted By: Bobby Binder

If we are going to talk about ballpark size the parks where much bigger in the days Ruth played. I saw a show that plotted all of Ruth's fly balls and if played in todays stadiums in 1927 would have 108 HR's. As well as over 1000 for his career.

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Posted By: jay behrens

Where did you see this? Unless their is video of every at bat, there is no way to know where every hit went. When research was done to try and figure out how many HRs Ruth would have had if played until the conditions Jimmy Foxx did when he hit 58 and how many Foxx would have hit in when Ruth hit 60, they had a difficult time finding out exactly where the HR were hit, it would be really interesting to know how someone one was able to plot all his fly balls. Sound like more myth than reality to me.

Jay

The richest person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.

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Posted By: rob

I'm not sure what video the person above is describing,but I just finished reading a very well-researched book (new in stores),titled "The Year babe Ruth hit 104 Home Runs",or something like that (dont have access to it as I'm at work). Pretty much tracks his homers as much as possible over his career,and it was very convincing. Worth reading...
rob

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Posted By: James Feagin

"The quality of play in Japanese baseball wasn't anywhere close to MLB, ditto the Negro Leagues. Also the Japanese ballparks were typically smaller than anything in the Majors."

Back up your statement...

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Posted By: PAS

A nice column on Oh -- which mentions his compressed bats.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/opinion/09whiting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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Posted By: MVSNYC

davidcycle- that made me laugh out loud

justin- from what i understand, the quality of ball played in the negro leagues was amazing...

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Posted By: JK

Yes Justin, please back up that statement. From the article Peter posted:

"Many naysayers in America play down this achievement. They argue that it doesn’t really count because Oh played in Japan, where the players are smaller and the fences are closer than they are in North America. But that view is narrow-minded and misinformed.

***

Oh batted against some of the toughest pitchers ever to play the game, wickedly effective breaking-ball artists. Like Oh, they were kept from playing in the United States by a restrictive reserve clause that bound players to their Japanese teams, even after their contracts expired, and by the quaint notion of loyalty. During Oh’s era, Major League Baseball players who ended their careers in Japan reported that two or three pitchers on each Japanese team could have played, and in some cases even starred, in North America."

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Posted By: Chad

Oh had some advantages, but the season in Japan is shorter, too. As for Gibson, he hit about 250 official homeruns which may not seem like a lot, but you have to remember:

1.) The Negro League seasons were only about 60 games long.
2.) Most Negro league teams, and especially Josh's home teams played in horrible parks for home run hitters. Old Forbes and Griffith were tough parks to hit HR's in. In one year at Griffith, the Washington Senators as a team hit only 4 balls over the fence in an entire year. That same year, Gibson hit 7 over the fence by himelf for the Grays.
3.) By all accounts, the ball used in Negro League play was mushier and in paly for much longer than the ball in MLB.
4.) Gibson also played against top caliber competition in Cuba and Puerto Rico and Venezuela and Mexico, not to mention barnstorming against MLB players.

I don't know how many HR's Gibson would have hit in MLB. I think he was at least the equal of Jimmie Foxx as a hitter. While the statistics for Josh aren't as exhaustive as for players in MLB, there is enough of a record to show that no matter where Josh played and against whom, he was ALWAYS the best hitter in the league, and often it wasn't even close. His last full year in the Negro League, when he was fat and addicted to heroin, and he was playing against guys like Luke Easter, Monte Irvin, Buck Leonard, Minnie Minoso and so on, he was STILL the best hitter in the league. The man was born to hit as much as anyone who has ever walked the planet.

--Chad

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Posted By: Mark

Oh's record is all the more impressive given that he compiled more than 200 home runs more than the second Japanese career home run leader (who had 657). That is dominance.

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Posted By: Justin

I am not arguing that there was not talented players in both the Negro Leagues and Japanese Leagues.

But having read alot of first hand accounts by negro league players most of them point out that although there were plenty of star players, most of the Negro League teams weren't particularly deep and thusly had to field alot of subpar players.

So while at any given time you might have had 20-30 legitimate major league quality players(maybe a low estimate, I am not sure, but I doubt it was much higher) in the Negro Leagues, you also had a lot of fill-ins, scrubs and has-beens that filled out rosters.

Also the Negro League teams played against tons of different opponents, many of them semi-pro and hardly top-flite.

A team of negro league allstars particularly in the 1930's and 40's would likely be quite good in the majors, but that's not the means by which to judge the quality of play in the Negro Leagues.

I believe Josh Gibson was better than any major league catcher from 1928-1947(even Dickey and Hartnett), so I am not denying his talent, but I am just pointing out that he hit against a lot of schmoes from Palookaville.

As for the Japanese Leagues, the same argument I believe holds true. Even if the quality was quite good, I doubt it was major league level. You probably had a lot of potential major leaguers, but the talent pool wasn't nearly as deep as in North America. So Oh as good as he may have been, also faced alot of lower quality talent.

I do know that in 1974 the Japanese Champions were able to play close to .500 ball against the NL Champion Mets in a post season series. So obviously there was some talent.

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Posted By: Pcelli60

Hey Justin when are you going to learn that in this forum the Negro Leagues are a subject that has immunity when it comes to any critical examination that may even remotely be negative .In fact I put myself in a danger zone when I was expressed my belief( responsibly and respectfully) that Buck O'neil was a fine fellow but not a HOFer..Who knows how many HR's Gibson hit or games Page won. Does it really matter? The legend is all that counts..

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Posted By: Chad

I don't recall anyone here saying Buck was a HOFer based on his playing career. He pretty clearly isn't. His arguments for induction center on his role as a pioneer as the first black coach in MLB.

As for the Negro Leagues not having depth, I do agree with that. However, since MLB has more teams and was purposefully excluding black and dark skinned latinos, there were an awful lot of players in the big leagues who shouldn't have been. So why is depth a ding against the Negro leagues but not against MLB? We'll never know exactly how many home runs Gibson hit or how many games Paige won, but that doesn't mean we can't make reasoned conclusions about the quality of the players. When I say Gibson is one of the greatest hitters ever it's because I have yet to some across a single piece of information that would dissuade me from this conclusion. You want to know how I feel about other Negro Leaguers? Judy Johnson? Overrated. Leon Day? Overrated. Jud Wilson? Might haved gotten 4000 hits in a long MLB career. Willard Brown? Think Andre Dawson with more power. Dick Seay? A poor man's Bill Mazeroski. Marvin Williams? A lot like Dick McCauliffe to me which is pretty good. I could go on. My research into the Negro Leagues isn't to create legends of crap players but to get an idea of how good or bad they really were to satisfy my curiosity about them. If I'm grandiose in my statements about Gibson it's because there is every reason to be grandiose about Gibson. His record of play is phenomenal.

--Chad

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Posted By: Justin

Chad, I agree with you about there being alot of talent in the Negro Leagues, but the problem with comparing the Negro Leagues to the Majors is that there really isn't an effective way to do so.

In the Negro Leagues, the actual league seasons were very short with erratic schedules, so teams played against a large variety of teams of varying quality. Also combine that with the habitual jumping of teams by most star players and that also diminishes the quality. So using statistical evidence to determine the Negro League's quality of play is really difficult and probably impossible. So for many players in any given season we have maybe a 15-30 game sample of statistics garnered from totalling up box scores.

Add to that the fact that many NL'ers played 200+ games year round and it becomes like comparing apples and oranges. No one is looking at Barry's minor league numbers and spring training numbers, or the Babe's records on barnstorming tours and adding them to their totals. So it would be unfair to use every game Gibosn played against all competition to total up his homeruns.

Even if Josh Gibson hit 1000 homers, alot of those came against subpar opposition and whilst playing year round in Mexico, The Caribbean and the US.

A team of Negro League all-stars with a full pitching staff would probably have done quite well in the Majors, but even the great Negro League teams like the Crawfords and Greys were subject to losing players pretty regularly(notably Satchel and Josh who both spent significant portions of their playing time outside of the Negro Leagues), and can't really be adequately compared to Major League teams of the time.

Also the barnstorming tours and exhibition games against major league players do reveal something of the talent level, but not everything. All they tell us is that some really good Negro League players could most likely hang with some good Major League players, but due to the fact that mainly star quality and veteran NL'ers were the ones doing these tours no indication is given of how the mediocre and marginal NL'ers would have done.

The best NL'ers would have likely done well in MLB, and maybe quite a few more would have been able to hold jobs or be bench players, but that doesn't mean that the top to bottom quality of the Negro Leagues was in any way comparable to that of the Majors.

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Posted By: David Atkatz

Jay wrote (re. larger parks and Ruth's HR numbers):

"Sound like more myth than reality to me."

Yep. Steroids and HGH didn't help Bonds, and large--hell, gigantic--parks didn't hurt Ruth.

I guess Barry is a better pitcher than Ruth was, too.

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Posted By: howard

There is no question that the quality of play in the United States is and has been superior to that in Japan. The number of players who thrived Japan after they could no longer hit American pitching or young players who NEVER could hit in America is a long one. Roberto Petagine, Randy Bass, Orestes Destrade, Tuffy Rhodes, Charlie Manuel, Leron Lee and Leon Lee were all among the greatest hitters in Japanese baseball. As a group they were worse than mediocre in the States. Has there been an unsuccessful Japanese hitter that came to America and suddenly thrived? No, they have all been less productive in the American major leagues, even Ichiro.

One of my favorite players growing up was Roy White. In his best season in the USA he hit twenty-two HRs. After he was washed up in 1979 he went to Japan and hit thirty HRs in his first season. There are plenty of examples like this.