Negro Leagues Recognized As Major

[The Nasty Nati]

Did any Negro League players get 3,000 hits or 500 home runs?

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by The Nasty Nati

Did any Negro League players get 3,000 hits or 500 home runs?

Willie Mays

[The Nasty Nati]

Originally Posted by Casey2296

Willie Mays

I meant besides the players that eventually played in the MLB. I believe there aren't any.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by The Nasty Nati

I meant besides the players that eventually played in the MLB. I believe there aren't any.

But the stats are woefully incomplete, see discussion just above of Gibson.

[The Nasty Nati]

I wouldn't be mad if MLB stopped recognizing Cap Anson's stats.

That guy was a terrible person and a big reason segregation happened in MLB.

[prewarsports]

Originally Posted by The Nasty Nati

I wouldn't be mad if MLB stopped recognizing Cap Anson's stats.

That guy was a terrible person and a big reason segregation happened in MLB.

Segregation happened in baseball because America was segregated. Cap Anson had little to do with this except for his status as the most famous player in America. Octavius Catto could not get a team into white baseball long before Anson was in grade school and Kennesaw Landis was pushing segregation for nearly three decades after Anson was dead.

History is ugly, but if we are going to institute moral standard for Hall of Famers based on how we feel they should have lived their lives, I hate to break it to you, but some of the early Negro Leaguers would fall short as well. As society changes, we will be kicking out new guys every decade or so until eventually the only ones left are the boring ones nobody cares about anyways.

[Fred]

Originally Posted by The Nasty Nati

I wouldn't be mad if MLB stopped recognizing Cap Anson's stats.

That guy was a terrible person and a big reason segregation happened in MLB.

History is what it is - why try changing it. Understand it, know the injustice occurred and try to find something positive. Why not look at people that tried to turn that injustice around. Guys like Branch Rickey or even Walter "Judge" McCredie.

Erasing history by erasing Anson's stats because of his views serves no good purpose. For that matter, I'm sure there were plenty of players with bigoted views, even some that are in the HOF. It would be pretty strange to erase the stats of bigoted players because you can't erase what happened.

[Aj-hman]

I wonder if the Negro League players had not been sold to MLB teams if they would have fielded a team(s) that would have won the World Series or multiple?

I think mlb remembered what happed when Jack Johnson was allowed to compete.

When does the MLB allow the Japanese League to compete for the “World Series”?

[Wanaselja]

Jay Jaffe has a good article on FanGraphs about this. I haven't read this thread much so I don't know if someone else posted this.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/wrestlin...ues-as-majors/

[Fred]

Originally Posted by Aj-hman

When does the MLB allow the Japanese League to compete for the “World Series”?

"Oh" boy, that's an interesting thought.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by The Nasty Nati

I meant besides the players that eventually played in the MLB. I believe there aren't any.

I think a good argument can be made that the pitching in the NL wasn't great. After Jackie broke the color line in 1947, it took 18 years before a black pitcher won 20 games (Mudcat Grant and Bob Gibson in 1965.) It was so rare for a black pitcher to win 20 in the Majors that Grant wrote a book about them titled "The Black Aces." I have a signed copy.

Grant, Gibson, Earl Wilson, Jenkins, Downing, Blue, Richard, Norris, Gooden, Stewart, and in 2005, Dontrelle Willis. In the 57 years since 1947, there were only 11 black 20 game winners. Of these 11, only 4 did it more than once (Gibson, Jenkins, Blue, Stewart.)

So for all the talk about the great black hitters back in the day, the pitching, by Major League standards, was much less impressive. And that had to help the hitters.

[Kenny Cole]

Don Newcombe won 20 games in 1951, 20 games in 1955, and 27 games in 1956.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Kenny Cole

Don Newcombe won 20 games in 1951, 20 games in 1955, and 27 games in 1956.

You're right. Looking again at the index of Grant's book, Sam Jones also did it in 1959. So that makes 13 in 57 years, 5 doing it more than once.

I think my point stands - the black hitters seem to have been well ahead of the pitchers.

[oldeboo]

Originally Posted by Mark17

I think my point stands - the black hitters seem to have been well ahead of the pitchers.

I could make a pretty decent argument that the best hitter of each decade from the 1960s onward, when integration really took hold, was a person that had a skin pigmentation other than white. (I'll give it to Trout over the last decade) Does this delegitimize all Major League statistics prior to integration? The Negro League hitters may have been ahead of the Negro League pitchers, but wouldn't it make sense that the Negro League hitters were likely ahead of Major League pitchers before integration as well?

There are many things that have impacted stats through the years that they all require an asterisks next to them when comparing. You can't compare steroid era, war years, dead-ball era, pre-integration, and Negro League to name a few. The stats deserve merit on their own.

[jason.1969]

Originally Posted by Mark17

You're right. Looking again at the index of Grant's book, Sam Jones also did it in 1959. So that makes 13 in 57 years, 5 doing it more than once.

I think my point stands - the black hitters seem to have been well ahead of the pitchers.

Not a strong take. Research the unwritten rules governing black pitchers in the early days of MLB integration.

[Ricky]

Originally Posted by Mark17

I think a good argument can be made that the pitching in the NL wasn't great. After Jackie broke the color line in 1947, it took 18 years before a black pitcher won 20 games (Mudcat Grant and Bob Gibson in 1965.) It was so rare for a black pitcher to win 20 in the Majors that Grant wrote a book about them titled "The Black Aces." I have a signed copy.

Grant, Gibson, Earl Wilson, Jenkins, Downing, Blue, Richard, Norris, Gooden, Stewart, and in 2005, Dontrelle Willis. In the 57 years since 1947, there were only 11 black 20 game winners. Of these 11, only 4 did it more than once (Gibson, Jenkins, Blue, Stewart.)

So for all the talk about the great black hitters back in the day, the pitching, by Major League standards, was much less impressive. And that had to help the hitters.

Juan Marichal? I know he was a Latin pitcher but segregation would have kept him out too.

[jason.1969]

Originally Posted by The Nasty Nati

I meant besides the players that eventually played in the MLB. I believe there aren't any.

None if we confine the stats to official league games, which is what MLB will recognize.