Negro League Stats included in official MLB records

[Deertick]

Originally Posted by Republicaninmass

Quoting this as reference to the low level, gaslightimg, virtue signaling, scumbag piece of $hit you are.

A) I'm not sure you understand what gaslighting is, and
B) Honestly ask yourself why you chose that specific country as an example when composing your 'hot take'. It may help you grow as a human being.

[Misunderestimated]

I'm in favor of including the Negro League numbers.

Some stray thoughts about these numbers:
The stats that people have trouble with are (from my reading) all rate statistics -- high averages and percentages -- not counting stats. My sense is that Negro League's best players would have been as good/better than their AL/NL counterparts. This is what the anecdotal evidence says and it's supported by the level of excellence of the first waves of integrated players who include many of the greatest national Leaguers ever (Aaron, Mays, et al)

I'm not as sure if the Negro leagues as a whole -- I mean the hypothetical replacement players too -- were on par with the AL and NL at the same time. This may help account for the staggeringly high rate stats that the Negro League's best players (almost all hitters by the way) put up.

The Negro Leagues as a whole were definitely superior to the lesser leagues in the 19th Century and probably the Federal League in 1914-15. The Union Association of 1884 was far worse that any league and it's considered a major league... Look at how good that league made Fred Dunlap look. (BTW the National Association circa 1871-75 belongs as a major league unless we are going to bounce the UA and maybe a few years of he American Association when it was at its weakest)

I don't think the incompleteness of Negro Leagues data should exclude them from major league status. it is interesting that the numbers may be moving over the next few years -- e.g. Josh Gibson's BA could go up or down.

Many of the record-breaking seasons were during a particularly weird time in baseball history --> the WWII era when many American males (of all colors) were fighting the war. It stands to reason that this more limited pool of players would make ir easier for the best to stand out even more. Think of this: what would Ted Williams have hit if he had gotten to feast on the AL pitching in 1943-45 ? He hit .406 in 1941 -- I'm guessing he gets to .420 with a lot of BB if he plays those years although Hal Newhouser was pretty awesome in 1945-46. Of course, Josh Gibson may have been suffering from a brain tumor in the 1940's and he still put up those numbers.

--

Finally, the impact and import of baseball stats as an arbiter of greatness suffered a body blow during the PED era that it hasn't recovered from... Since Bonds, McGwire, and Clemens (and company) stats lost their allure to many people. This says nothing about the Negro Leaguers -- they weren't juicing. But it does make all of this less meaningful than it would have been if this decision had been made in 1997. Maybe it should have been made then, although I don't know how much data was available back then.

[Casey2296]

"There is a certain justice in Ty Cobb's .366 BA record being broken by a Negro Leaguer. While Cobb was not been as bad at the end of his life he had a history of racism during his playing years."

Other than Al Stumps debunked sensationalistic biography, can you give me some examples of Cobbs racism?

100% agree that after Bonds, stats really lost their significance.

[Tomi]

Buck O'Neil said Cobb used to barnstorm in Cuba with Cuban and Negro League players. Not something a racist would do.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=l7zYopq-...y0Lty8Qreg6yhf

[G1911]

Interesting brief counterargument: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...s-not-a-racist. There have been some good book length treatments with full citations in recent years that are much fairer biographies.

I'm not sure if people just repeat the Stump lies out of habit, or if people just really need some targets for their contemporary narratives and do not care whatsoever about evidence.

Trying to shovel contemporary narrative into the past and then vilifying the past for not being the present is a stupid game to play at all, but it's extra stupid when the chosen target was actually much more aligned with the contemporary narrative than the one of their own time and place.

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by G1911

Interesting brief counterargument: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...s-not-a-racist. There have been some good book length treatments with full citations in recent years that are much fairer biographies.

I'm not sure if people just repeat the Stump lies out of habit, or if people just really need some targets for their contemporary narratives and do not care whatsoever about evidence.

Trying to shovel contemporary narrative into the past and then vilifying the past for not being the present is a stupid game to play at all, but it's extra stupid when the chosen target was actually much more aligned with the contemporary narrative than the one of their own time and place.

I rarely see mention of a man like Frank "Home Run" Baker who prevented the lynching of a black man accused of assaulting his sister in law in 1924.

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by G1911

Interesting brief counterargument: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...s-not-a-racist. There have been some good book length treatments with full citations in recent years that are much fairer biographies.

I'm not sure if people just repeat the Stump lies out of habit, or if people just really need some targets for their contemporary narratives and do not care whatsoever about evidence.

Trying to shovel contemporary narrative into the past and then vilifying the past for not being the present is a stupid game to play at all, but it's extra stupid when the chosen target was actually much more aligned with the contemporary narrative than the one of their own time and place.

Here is a short piece by Charles Leerhsen, author of Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty that says: "But what about Cobb’s 19th-century Southern roots? How could someone born in Georgia in 1886 not be a racist? What I found—and again, not because I am the Babe Ruth of researchers, but because I actually did some research—is that Ty Cobb was descended from a long line of abolitionists. His great-grandfather was a minister who preached against slavery and was run out of town for it. His grandfather refused to fight in the Confederate army because of the slavery issue. And his father was an educator and state senator who spoke up for his black constituents and is known to have once broken up a lynch mob.

Cobb himself was never asked about segregation until 1952, when the Texas League was integrating, and Sporting News asked him what he thought. “The Negro should be accepted wholeheartedly, and not grudgingly,” he said. “The Negro has the right to play professional baseball and whose [sic] to say he has not?” By that time he had attended many Negro league games, sometimes throwing out the first ball and often sitting in the dugout with the players. He is quoted as saying that Willie Mays was the only modern-day player he’d pay to see and that Roy Campanella was the ballplayer that reminded him most of himself.

A similar piece by MLB.com echoes the above sentiments, stating that "We have zero evidence to suggest that Cobb was a racist."

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

It's utterly confounding that this information about Cobb took so many years to come to light. He has descendants. If the ancestors, and Cobb himself, had this type of history, it's very strange that the family wouldn't have been more vocal against what had sadly been accepted as the more awful account of the "truth".

I have not yet read the Leerhsen book. Does he give a differing account of the story of Cobb going into the stands to attack the crippled heckler who allegedly called him the N word?

[Misunderestimated]

The Stump (and Alexander and Tommy Lee Jones) versions of Cobb are unfair. The revisionist account by Leerhsen paints a fairer and far more flattering picture of the man. (Perhaps it "overcorrects?") By the end of his life Cobb was positively progressive on race. But my understanding is that his fury as a young man (a very very southern young man in the early 20th century who lived and worked in the north) often had a racial edge.... The incident with the handicapped heckler comes to mind. I can't think of anything else off-hand though -- maybe I'm remembering things from the Alexander bio although I read the Leershen book more recently.
Perhaps I'm overstepping in calling the young Cobb racist... I'll retract that.

[Deertick]

Originally Posted by Misunderestimated

I'm in favor of including the Negro League numbers.

Some stray thoughts about these numbers:
The stats that people have trouble with are (from my reading) all rate statistics -- high averages and percentages -- not counting stats. My sense is that Negro League's best players would have been as good/better than their AL/NL counterparts. This is what the anecdotal evidence says and it's supported by the level of excellence of the first waves of integrated players who include many of the greatest national Leaguers ever (Aaron, Mays, et al)

I'm not as sure if the Negro leagues as a whole -- I mean the hypothetical replacement players too -- were on par with the AL and NL at the same time. This may help account for the staggeringly high rate stats that the Negro League's best players (almost all hitters by the way) put up.

The Negro Leagues as a whole were definitely superior to the lesser leagues in the 19th Century and probably the Federal League in 1914-15. The Union Association of 1884 was far worse that any league and it's considered a major league... Look at how good that league made Fred Dunlap look. (BTW the National Association circa 1871-75 belongs as a major league unless we are going to bounce the UA and maybe a few years of he American Association when it was at its weakest)

I don't think the incompleteness of Negro Leagues data should exclude them from major league status. it is interesting that the numbers may be moving over the next few years -- e.g. Josh Gibson's BA could go up or down.

Many of the record-breaking seasons were during a particularly weird time in baseball history --> the WWII era when many American males (of all colors) were fighting the war. It stands to reason that this more limited pool of players would make ir easier for the best to stand out even more. Think of this: what would Ted Williams have hit if he had gotten to feast on the AL pitching in 1943-45 ? He hit .406 in 1941 -- I'm guessing he gets to .420 with a lot of BB if he plays those years although Hal Newhouser was pretty awesome in 1945-46. Of course, Josh Gibson may have been suffering from a brain tumor in the 1940's and he still put up those numbers.

--

Finally, the impact and import of baseball stats as an arbiter of greatness suffered a body blow during the PED era that it hasn't recovered from... Since Bonds, McGwire, and Clemens (and company) stats lost their allure to many people. This says nothing about the Negro Leaguers -- they weren't juicing. But it does make all of this less meaningful than it would have been if this decision had been made in 1997. Maybe it should have been made then, although I don't know how much data was available back then.

I didn't want to truncate your quote, as I feel it would diminish it. This conveys my opinion nearly completely.

The only thing I would add is that I would be against this move 25 years ago. Why? Not because I believed the NL didn't deserve the recognition, but because the method of baseball stats delivery was via BOOKS and rudimentary sort features! I was calculating 162 game comparables back in the mid 70's. The DH rocked my world, as it created a disparity in comparing AL/NL. It annoyed me (and to some extent, still does) when playoff 'records' were broken and didn't account for playoff expansion. I loved reading old contemporary news story accounts, recollections, and biographies of past players. I was fascinated by the challenge of trying to accurately gauge how a deadball vs. liveball vs. WWII vs. Negro League vs. post expansion player would fare against one another. As I know now, it is a fruitless folly. Just watch a game from the 80's on youtube. The level of play (NOT the 'game') now is tremendously greater. And that is within my lifetime.

Now do I believe that the greats would be great regardless? Yes. Just not as great.

My point is , stats are stats. They give insight, not proof of superiority across generations. Inclusion of the Negro League stats are fine with me. As long as I can sort them, just as I did with the 18th century players decades ago.

P.S. If I recall correctly they were italicized

[Deertick]

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