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Tom L.Kenny,
I think that your arguments are somewhat off base for excluding the Negro Leagues from consideration as Major Leagues. I don't think that numbers on a team (not that many in the 1800s), training methods (looked at Ruth lately?), or pitching depth (seen the Orioles' current AAA depth on their major league roster?) are factors.
However, I think the two major arguments against including the Negro leagues are these:
1. The quality of each team overall was all over the boards. Obviously not the fault of the Negro League teams for a variety of historical, social and economic reasons, but you might have a AA quality SS playing next to a HOF 3d baseman. I think that the "average" player was probably high minors rather than major league. I don't have any facts to back this up other than what I've read. It's not fair, but that's what it was.
An analogous situation is probably the Japanese League today. Obviously some of their players are high major league caliber (I assume Ischiro will one day be a US HOFer, provided that he has a few more years of 200+ hits), but the average caliber of play is closer to AAA than Major League.
2. From a practical standpoint, the need to decide which leagues were "Major League" was driven by statistics. Baseball is just a little kids game without statistics (to poorly paraphrase Chadwick), and so, for example, I think that even if the National Association from baseball's early years was Major League caliber (it was, after all, the 'primary' league of its era, even though players were selected by membership rather than ability), it still wouldn't be included for the simple reason that there are no reliable statistics from the era.
Sadly, I think that the same thing applies to the Negro Leagues. Even if you could make the argument that the Negro Leagues were Major League caliber, the lack of reliable or consistent statistics would probably keep them out of the record books anyway. [For similar reasons, I think that the records of McGuire, Bonds, Conseco, and others need to be modified somehow to account for steroid use.]
Just my two cents,
Tom
06-17-2004, 10:57 AM
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