How do you rate the Negro League greats when discussing the history of baseball?

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by Fred

Agreed

My 2 cents

Based on many articles and other available information, it's obvious the black players were just as good as the white players.

I just find it hard to integrate the stats and make comparisons between the Negro League stats and MLB stats because the Negro league stats are not even close to being complete, which is a total shame.

Believe me, I'm not inferring that the Negro League stats are meaningless. For all we know with complete stats, Oscar Charleston could be the lifetime batting average leader but there will never be that apples to apples comparison available.

Yes, it is impossible to make an apples to apples comparison between players in the Negro Leagues and those in MLB. But by acknowledging the stats of the 7 Major Negro Leagues, Baseball Reference is bringing more recognition to these great players, which I think is both long overdue and fair.

Because Baseball Reference only counts the 7 Major Negro Leagues, which had the best competition, the counting stats are very low, so you have Josh Gibson with 165 career Home Runs, rather than the ~800 Home Runs he may have hit when you consider all his games. And Gibson doesn't qualify for career Batting Average because he had fewer than 3,000 plate appearances in Major Negro League Play.

But its tricky, like you say, when saying Oscar Charleston had the 2nd best career batting average ever at .364 with 3,920 Plate Appearances. Its tricky to compare Oscar Charleston to Ty Cobb, Hornsby, etc. but I still think it is the right thing to do, given the similarity of stats between the 7 Major Negro Leagues and the MLB, and the quality of players/teams.

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

I completely exclude Negro Leaguers when talking of this era, the only reason being that I need solid numbers to look at, not incomplete stats and a lot of homespun exaggeration. "I saw Josh Gibson hit a ball 800 feet blindfolded using only a toothpick!" Yeah, OK... Thankfully, people are certainly trying to complete those stats as best as is possible, but still... It's just difficult to look at career stats that were recorded as properly as possible vs. the unfortunate shambles that we've been left with for the Negro Leaguers. It's not fair to those players, but I wasn't there to witness their prowess and have to have something concrete to rely on if I can speak with any accuracy.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by BillyCoxDodgers3B

I completely exclude Negro Leaguers when talking of this era, the only reason being that I need solid numbers to look at, not incomplete stats and a lot of homespun exaggeration. "I saw Josh Gibson hit a ball 800 feet blindfolded using only a toothpick!" Yeah, OK... Thankfully, people are certainly trying to complete those stats as best as is possible, but still... It's just difficult to look at career stats that were recorded as properly as possible vs. the unfortunate shambles that we've been left with for the Negro Leaguers. It's not fair to those players, but I wasn't there to witness their prowess and have to have something concrete to rely on if I can speak with any accuracy.

The stats recognized by Baseball Reference and SABR are solid. A painstaking and thorough process by Seamheads and others took place to gather them.

[packs]

If you believe Satchel Paige was perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time, then why not trust what he has to say about players only he and players like him got to see?

Francisco Coimbre was perhaps the greatest player Puerto Rico ever produced right up until Clemente. Clemente himself said Coimbre had no equal on the diamond.

And this is what Satchel had to say about him: “Coimbre could not be pitched to. No one gave me more trouble than anyone I ever faced, including Josh Gibson and Ted Williams.”

[z28jd]

I think what a lot of people here say is true and it can be compared to something like picking out players from a specific state now to play against everyone else. They would still have great players, but overall the talent would be lacking.

Everyone has to remember how popular baseball was back then and how small a percentage of the population was able to play in the Negro Leagues. If you right now made a team just of players born in Texas, they would have great players and their All-Star team could beat other MLB teams. But if you tried to put together a 30-team MLB league of just players born in Texas, you would have a lot of guys well below MLB quality. The greats would still be great though, regardless of the league. Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, etc would still be Hall of Famers, not doubt.

I think that's a lot like what integration would have been. I sometimes find it comical when people use that excuse to talk down Babe Ruth. How many Negro League players would be good enough for the majors back then? Let's say 35, while remembering the small size of MLB back then. Half of those players would be in the NL and never face him. Half of that remaining 17-18 would be position players. You have eight players left for eight teams, and how many do you think the Yankees would have? Probably the best available 1-2 guys. Then figure in that how much better would those players be than the guys they were replacing? Probably not a huge difference when you're getting down to about 5-6 guys. You're talking about 20-30 at-bats a season where he's facing slightly better MLB pitchers. Maybe his stats suffer a little, but so would everyone else and he would still be that much better than them.

If you look at it the other way though, those Negro League players would be facing much better players on average, so their stats would suffer more, plus they would still being seeing the best players of their own league.

I think the population size and ability to play ball often gets overlooked. Segregation wasn't just happening in the majors, it was everywhere at the time, and that affected the ability to play ball regularly for some. Think of how many white players got to play college baseball, then they went out to the minors or semi-pro and played during the summer

[packs]

I don't really agree with that perspective. A player like Alejandro Oms played in multiple professional leagues and against competition faced nowhere else. If you were in MLB at the same time, you played only white American players.

I don't think there is a way to quantify a percentage of quality players from either MLB or the Negro Leagues in terms of a superstar for every X player, so I don't think there's any reason to make assumptions about the more elite talent either.

Players from Latin America are among the best in the game and have been for quite some time. Many of them come from very little, both in an economic sense and an organized competitive sense, and are elite anyway. Is there anything to suggest the same hasn't always been true?

[Exhibitman]

The best record for evaluating the issue is what happened as MLB integrated over the decades after 1947 (took the BoSox until 1959). We all focus on the stars and superstars who emerged from the Negro Leagues (Aaron, Banks, Campanella, Doby, Mays, Minoso, Newcombe, Jackie Robinson, etc.) and the guys who lost careers (Paige, Charleston, Gibson, etc.). To better address the question of what MLB would have looked like without the racism, we probably should focus on the guys who were brought up in the 1950s-1970s when the teams were de-segregated and actively looking for talent of color. Not just stars like Clemente, Frank Robinson, Gibson, Brock, Stargell, McCovey, Jenkins, and so on, but also the guys who were average or who were bench warmers. I think there are some studies out there that American-born black players had their highest level of representation in MLB in the late 20th century and have fallen back substantially since then, primarily losing ground to Latin American players. I think we'd have had a similar situation in the prewar era, with a variety of players from superstars down to bench warmers, as a part of the picture, competitive but not necessarily the dominant part.

As far as assigning a % of pop who woulda been stars, there is a structural bias to that analysis. The early integrating teams were very concerned with having too many black players, so they staggered MLB call-ups (the Dodgers), avoided having majority black line-ups, and consequently left the lesser caliber players out of integration. There really weren't 24 roster spots for black players, more like a handful per team. The result is that the early black MLB players were of a much higher caliber on average than their white teammates. They had to be, or they were gone. Look at the MVP voting from 1949-1959 in the NL: white guys won in 50 and 52. Makes it look like the black guys were dominating MLB. A handful of superstars were, but there were very few back players who weren't really good who stayed on MLB rosters. The Yankees weren't going to use up their 'black roster spot' with a lousy player., so they got Ellie Howard (MVP, 1963). Like the term or not, it really was a form of structural racism that remained in place for many years after the color barrier was broken.

[z28jd]

Originally Posted by packs

I don't really agree with that perspective. A player like Alejandro Oms played in multiple professional leagues and against competition faced nowhere else. If you were in MLB at the same time, you played only white American players.

I don't think there is a way to quantify a percentage of quality players from either MLB or the Negro Leagues in terms of a superstar for every X player, so I don't think there's any reason to make assumptions about the more elite talent either.

Players from Latin America are among the best in the game and have been for quite some time. Many of them come from very little, both in an economic sense and an organized competitive sense, and are elite anyway. Is there anything to suggest the same hasn't always been true?

Players from Latin America now get with trainers at an extremely early age and they are playing an extreme amount of baseball against the best players. That happens at an early age because they can sign at 16 years old and agree to deals as young as 14 years old. Those trainers take 30-40% of their bonuses, so they put money into those kids to help them get better. There's nothing like that happening in the U.S.

I think what you're seeing now in the Dominican actually helps prove my point. They play a lot against the best players and everyone plays baseball there. In the U.S., a recent nationwide poll said that just 9% of the 18&under crowd considered baseball to be their favorite sport, which is a continuation of the decline of the sport. Fewer kids are also playing baseball, despite the population of the country on the rise. That means it is harder for kids to get games going and the best players are spread thinner, so they are playing against mediocre talent coming up, except for the few baseball hotbeds still around.

There is a clear decline in the quality of play in the majors and minors because of that, but there are also more young international players coming up that are top talent, which helps make up for the decline. If MLB right now was just American-born players, the level of play would be even worse than it is now.

I'd also point out that MLB was not all white Americans at any point in its history. That's the same thing people who use the segregation crutch say about Ruth, but minimal research disproves.