The Future of Negro League Players in the Hall

[packs]

Going to cross my fingers for Valentin Dreke, Francisco Coimbre, and Perucho Cepeda anyway.

[Jason19th]

Originally Posted by packs

Going to cross my fingers for Valentin Dreke, Francisco Coimbre, and Perucho Cepeda anyway.

I think the above players, though unquestionable great players, actually poise a interesting question. How much should we value performances outside the US. After all it is the National baseball hall of fame and museum. We would never think about putting Sarahadru Oh or Victor Sarafin in the hall for there performance in japan. So should we think about putting Cepeda in for what he did in Puerto Rico and other Latin league. The same with Drake - if I am correct his stateside negro league experience is pretty limited. Pedro Formental played in the Cuban leagues throughout the 1950 and has many of the offensive career records. He was a great player - but should he really be considered for the American hall of fame

[packs]

I think they should be. Dihigo played 12 seasons in the Negro Leagues, but I would argue it was his numbers in the Cuban and Latin leagues that got him in.

I think Dandridge and Jose Mendez's careers followed a similar path.

Cepeda is the most intriguing of my picks vis a vis this point. He refused to play in the Negro Leagues because he refused to be a part of a segregated society. So he expressly chose not to play in the Negro Leagues as a form of protest.

At the end of the day, all of the players I chose were excluded from playing in the Major Leagues because of their skin color, so for me, that is why they should be considered. Oh and Starfin don't meet that criteria.

[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by Jason19th

I think the above players, though unquestionable great players, actually poise a interesting question. How much should we value performances outside the US. After all it is the National baseball hall of fame and museum. We would never think about putting Sarahadru Oh or Victor Sarafin in the hall for there performance in japan. So should we think about putting Cepeda in for what he did in Puerto Rico and other Latin league. The same with Drake - if I am correct his stateside negro league experience is pretty limited. Pedro Formental played in the Cuban leagues throughout the 1950 and has many of the offensive career records. He was a great player - but should he really be considered for the American hall of fame

I've been thinking about this question and wonder whether Puerto Rico, which is a US Territory, should be viewed more similar to the Negro Leagues, or more similar to other areas... (or whether this should matter at all).

[darwinbulldog]

Just to play devil's advocate here, given the racial makeup of the country at the time, in the absence of any bias wouldn't one conclude that there should be approximately 10 white players of the era in the Hall for every Negro League player? And isn't the actual ratio far lower than that? Or is there compelling evidence to conclude (e.g., from exhibition games and post-integration data) that the top 100 black players were approximately as good as the top 100 white players in spite of there being a 90% smaller pool from which to draw the talent? And if so doesn't that suggest a remarkably (or astonishingly) large population level race difference in baseball skills?

[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

Just to play devil's advocate here, given the racial makeup of the country at the time, in the absence of any bias wouldn't one conclude that there should be approximately 10 white players of the era in the Hall for every Negro League player? And isn't the actual ratio far lower than that? Or is there compelling evidence to conclude (e.g., from exhibition games and post-integration data) that the top 100 black players were approximately as good as the top 100 white players in spite of there being a 90% smaller pool from which to draw the talent? And if so doesn't that suggest a remarkably (or astonishingly) large population level race difference in baseball skills?

It's an interesting point and one that others who are greater experts could probably speak on more but there are a number of lines of reasoning that would lead one to assume this:

1) Black players who played in the Negro Leagues and then went on to play in the Majors were successful disproportionate to their numbers. Obviously there was some selection bias but consider that this group includes Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Willie Mays, Minnie Miñoso and Ernie Banks. It's anecdotal to some degree, but just in this group you have some of the greatest of all-time in at least 4 positions (2nd base, catcher, center field and shortstop).

2) Competition between Negro League and Major League players - The book Outsider Baseball includes a ton of analysis on comparing the levels of quality and while no league matched the Majors in quality, it was far better than might be expected based on percentages in this country.

I imagine that when you combine players from other countries and territories (Cuba, Puerto Rico etc) it's not a 10:1 ratio. I also would guess that minorities who often had less options for either economic freedom as well as ways to pass the time, played baseball at a greater percentage.

It would also not surprise me if the sheer number of games they played in the Negro Leagues, and the fact that this was their livelihood, compelled them to play at a high level and get the most out of their talents. Players in the Majors would have had similar experiences to degree (albeit maybe without the level of desperation) but consider that at the highest levels the Negro Leagues had a decent number of teams (depending on the year) meaning that a larger percentage of minorities were playing at the "top level"

[ElCabron]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

Just to play devil's advocate here, given the racial makeup of the country at the time, in the absence of any bias wouldn't one conclude that there should be approximately 10 white players of the era in the Hall for every Negro League player? And isn't the actual ratio far lower than that? Or is there compelling evidence to conclude (e.g., from exhibition games and post-integration data) that the top 100 black players were approximately as good as the top 100 white players in spite of there being a 90% smaller pool from which to draw the talent? And if so doesn't that suggest a remarkably (or astonishingly) large population level race difference in baseball skills?

Apply that math to the NBA and let me know how the results look.

-Ryan

[Kenny Cole]

You really can't apply statistics to that sort of stuff anymore because Ryan is exactly right, If you applied that analysis, we would have a lot more white and hispanic players and far fewer black basketball players. But we don't. There is a reason why.

Baseball was basketball back in the day, It was one of the (few) ways out. That is clear if you read any of the histories of black baseball. I don't know how you quantify that. but I do know intuitively that some sort of 10% threshold is and has always been bullshit. I can name off the top of my head at least 10 guys who are deserving of at least serious review, despite the fact that they weren't in the top 10% as perceived by mostly white voters during the intermittent period that they were actually even being considered.

[packs]

I just hope Perucho Cepeda gets in. He more than deserves it and his anti-segregation attitude and refusal to play in a segregated league were decades ahead of his time. His commitment to fighting that injustice should be recognized. If he had sacrificed his principles and played in the Negro Leagues he might already be in.

Here's my card:

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by ElCabron

Apply that math to the NBA and let me know how the results look.

-Ryan

By my calculation, 68% of the top 50 players in NBA history have been black men, compared to about 12% of the U.S. population (demographic average across the history of the NBA), so the average American black man is about 5.6 times as likely to be an elite basketball player as his white counterpart. Presumably you were aware of the outcome, though perhaps not its precise magnitude, a priori. In any case, it's a good point, even if you intended it rhetorically, and perhaps a baseball Hall of Fame in which the average black man in the pre-integration era is 5.6 times as likely as the average white man to be included in the Hall could serve as a good upper bound. And the NHL on the other hand (at 0%) could serve as the strictest lower bound. The correct number, then, if we were to theoretically construct a Hall without any racial bias in the selection process should fall somewhere between those two extremes.

Probably the NFL gives a better comparison than either the NBA or NHL, and in that case, I calculate that 52% of elite players are black, which would suggest that indeed the numbers of white and black Hall of Fame players from pre-integration era baseball should be basically equal.

Someone should check my numbers here, but what I come up with if you throw out the people who were inducted as umpires/executives is that there are 129 white men in the Hall who played exclusively or primarily in the pre-integration era. This is compared to 31 men from the Negro Leagues, so while the black men make up a disproportionately high percentage of the Hall members relative to their demographic numbers, they are well below the NFL proportion.

A better number to look at than the NFL though is from baseball itself. Just look at who made it to the Hall from the 1950s and 1960s. There you find 13 black men and 28 white men. And that, I would suggest, is a better guideline for what the pre-integration ratio should look like if we could judge the players fairly on their merits.

So if we set aside the fact that there are both some bad inclusions and bad omissions among the pre-integration white players and just accept that the 129 number is about right, then there should be 60 Negro League players -- and we should induct 29 more than we have already.

But, if you want to compare the different techniques I walked through above, here's what would be most appropriate based on each ratio:

NBA indicates: We should add 133 Negro Leaguers.
NHL indicates: We should remove 31 Negro Leaguers.
NFL indicates: We should add 98 Negro Leaguers.
MLB indicates: We should add 29 Negro Leaguers.

[aljurgela]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

By my calculation, 68% of the top 50 players in NBA history have been black men, compared to about 12% of the U.S. population (demographic average across the history of the NBA), so the average American black man is about 5.6 times as likely to be an elite basketball player as his white counterpart. Presumably you were aware of the outcome, though perhaps not its precise magnitude, a priori. In any case, it's a good point, even if you intended it rhetorically, and perhaps a baseball Hall of Fame in which the average black man in the pre-integration era is 5.6 times as likely as the average white man to be included in the Hall could serve as a good upper bound. And the NHL on the other hand (at 0%) could serve as the strictest lower bound. The correct number, then, if we were to theoretically construct a Hall without any racial bias in the selection process should fall somewhere between those two extremes.

Probably the NFL gives a better comparison than either the NBA or NHL, and in that case, I calculate that 52% of elite players are black, which would suggest that indeed the numbers of white and black Hall of Fame players from pre-integration era baseball should be basically equal.

Someone should check my numbers here, but what I come up with if you throw out the people who were inducted as umpires/executives is that there are 129 white men in the Hall who played exclusively or primarily in the pre-integration era. This is compared to 31 men from the Negro Leagues, so while the black men make up a disproportionately high percentage of the Hall members relative to their demographic numbers, they are well below the NFL proportion.

A better number to look at than the NFL though is from baseball itself. Just look at who made it to the Hall from the 1950s and 1960s. There you find 13 black men and 28 white men. And that, I would suggest, is a better guideline for what the pre-integration ratio should look like if we could judge the players fairly on their merits.

So if we set aside the fact that there are both some bad inclusions and bad omissions among the pre-integration white players and just accept that the 129 number is about right, then there should be 60 Negro League players -- and we should induct 29 more than we have already.

But, if you want to compare the different techniques I walked through above, here's what would be most appropriate based on each ratio:

NBA indicates: We should add 133 Negro Leaguers.
NHL indicates: We should remove 31 Negro Leaguers.
NFL indicates: We should add 98 Negro Leaguers.
MLB indicates: We should add 29 Negro Leaguers.

Pretty interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing. I do believe that the 1950s may not be the best time to look at black participation as many MLB teams still would only "allow" one or two black players on the team, thereby constraining to opportunity for many other players (who could have potentially made it to the HOF). You could argue that only the best black stars were allowed the MLB opportunity and therefore there are a disproportionate amount of them were successful (as they were already the cream of the crop).... though I imagine it has always been tougher for blacks in MLB than white (think the Aaron run up to the Ruth record)

Another point, I do not believe that we can include the NHL at all as the economics of hockey have been the main reason for the dearth of African American, in my opinion.

I do not pretend to know the answers or even be an arm chair historian, but I am convinced that there are many other Negro Leaguers who were likely far superior baseball players than some of those already enshrined in Cooperstown, and it would be fair to given them another look.

Nonetheless, interesting "math", and a fascinating perspective.