It feels like a group of people today are trying to correct the mistakes of the past, which of course they can’t do. They’re attempting to whitewash history, and in the process cheapening what these great players were denied. I can acknowledge the Negro Leagues as a major league, but they weren’t MLB. That’s the point. They were robbed of that. They never played in the organization known as MLB because that organization denied them of that. Merging the stats makes little sense, and will force modern day analysts, historians and fans to “talk down” Negro League stats to provide the context that’s missing. Shorter schedules, Gibson having a fraction of the PAs of his MLB counterparts, a large percentage of box scores missing, making the comparisons flawed.
One issue that the analyst community will need to address in coming years, hopefully without emotion and bias in either direction, is that of depth. There is no doubt that the best of these players were the equal of their counterparts in MLB. The question though was the depth they faced equal? All the highest BA’s coming from the Negro Leagues, including Josh Gibson hitting .466 in 1943, suggests there’s a potentially wider gap between the best and the rest in the league. I could be wrong on that. I don’t know the answer. None of us do. The sabermetric community should begin to dive into this area now that we have more numbers to build the case in either direction.
The positive here is greater recognition for players unfairly locked out of MLB. The negative is the forced integration of these stats with so much missing. There is no apples to apples here since MLB prevented that. This small group can’t correct that injustice no matter how hard they try.
So like many, I have both positive and negative thoughts about what and how it was done. A complex topic.
Joe, at least a few MLB stars played in Negro League baseball. Roy Campanella, for instance, just picked up an additional 10 years of stats. And obviously Jackie Robinson, but only one season. Do you have any idea which Black ballplayers we regard as mainly MLB players will be significantly affected?
The cricket T20 World Cup (20 overs a team, over in 3 hours) is being partially staged in the US starting this weekend, was wondering if you were going to write about it all, I enjoy your writing when you get out of your comfort zone
On one hand, it's a gesture to legitimize the accomplishments of the Negro League Players.
And yet, I can't help but feel as though there's a distortion of reality going on. The odds that Josh Gibson really hit .373 (the number in BR today) are so low that we can all confidently say he didn't. There's two major and insurmountable obstacles: a) all the official Negro League games haven't been documented, and b) most of the games Gibson played weren't official games (they were barnstorming). This compares to Cobb and the rest in the NL and AL, whose numbers were documented meticulously. Declaring Gibson the new all-time batting champ is simply nonsense. Utter and complete nonsense.
It's like taking two guys running a race. The first is timed with a stopwatch to the hundredth of a second, and his time is 45.87 seconds. The second isn't timed at all, but somebody was doing some Mississippis in his head and declares: "It was about 40 seconds." And then declaring the second guy the winner. It's nonsense. In reality, there's simply no way to know who ran faster. And the only honest thing to do is admit it. One was documented, the other wasn't.
I think we also lose some of the most interesting things about the Negro Leagues when we obsess with trying to revise the record book. Even if their results were documented as meticulously as the AL and NL did, the Negro Leagues were a very different thing. Official games on most weekends. Barnstorming all over the US the rest of the time. It's just completely different than how the AL and NL worked. Pretending that the stats (as we can find them) are equivalent is, again, silly. And we lose the uniqueness of the Negro Leagues by pretending they're the same.
Yes, it was tragic these terrific players were denied the chance to play the AL and NL. At the same time, it's pretty neat that they still formed their own teams and played baseball in a way that was organized very differently.
Organizationally, modern MLB is directly connected to all the records of the AL and NL. The number of games per year has changed only slightly. They scheduling is basically the same (no barnstorming games). And so the only record book that has relevant continuity with modern players is what is recorded in AL and NL. The Negro Leagues operated so differently that it would be silly to say any of their records are comparable to modern MLB. And that's even if the games were documented well, which we all know didn't happen.
It's fun to think about players like Josh Gibson and Oscar Charlton. It's fun to see the stats that have been documented. It's worth looking at their stats and remembering that they were highly skilled players. It's really cool to see Gibson's hitting record and, it's worth wondering if he really could have pulled off a higher batting average than Cobb and more home runs that Ruth combo.
But to declare that his .373 the new all-time lifetime batting average record is simply revisionist nonsense.
True. But Federalist league also operated very similarly to AL and NL.
• Same # of games
• Same structure (play only teams in league, no mix of league play and barnstorming)
• The stats were meticulously tracked
The issue isn't that Negro Leagues shouldn't or should count. Nor whether the players were worthy or not. The issue is that it's impossible to treat the stats in the Negro Leagues as the same thing as in the AL and NL. Pretending otherwise is nonsense.
BBR says that Jimmy Walsh hit .308 with 10 HR for the Baltimore Terrapins in 1914
BBR says Oscar Charleston hit .308 with 10 HR for the Harrisburg Giants in 1926
In reality, Walsh likely really DID end up with those numbers that season.
In contrast, there's a 100% guarantee that Charleston did NOT actually have those numbers.
That's the issue. Pretending Charleston's stats are real (and the other Negro Leaguers') is silly. It's simply not true. They are simply incomplete, AND the Negro Leagues operated completely different than the AL and NL. I believe that reality matters.
19th century stats are quoted, so single season BA was listed as Hugh Duffy in 1894. He played in a league where teams did not play uniform schedules.
All stats before 1947 will always be “ suspect”.
I bet the PCL also diluted talent - had to be players who preferred the West Coast weather and the longer season to playing for a lousy East coast team.
I plan on wasting no time arguing Josh Gibson vs Babe Ruth
Neither player competed against the top talent of the day in any official game.
i'm thrilled to see Negro League stats and records acknowledged; for too long, some of the best baseball players in history were denied a chance to share a field w/their white peers, truly a travesty...
I practiced reading as a kid with the sports pages of the NYC tabloids. Ten years plus after his retirement, the sportswriters STILL were writing about Jackie Robinson. When he was elected to the Hall of Fame, the pages were filled with his exploits, why this honor was long overdue etc. Various mentions of Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Larry Doby etc. et. al. were easy to find.
Since we’re all spitballing here, my view is the stats that survive and get included likely ARE inflated. Why? Well, the papers that would have printed them LONG ago faded and died. The scrapbooks, local libraries etc. would contain only the best stories, games, accomplishments and therefore numbers.
My thought is: So what?
Why? Very few show the replay of Willie Mays’ centerfield misplay in the 1973 World Series. Everyone on this blog has seen the Vic Wertz long fly out video a dozen times at least. THAT is the video that frames Willie Mays…the very best of his amazing defensive skills on display. It’s no surprise to me that what survives after all these years are the best (newspaper) stories.
If I’m right, Josh Gibson’s numbers likely go down as the project finds more and more stories and data. Eventually, the wells will run dry. And - up or down - that’s where everyone’s numbers will land.
BUT: We will have preserved what we could of these people and what they did under circumstances that a lot of us on this blog likely never experienced and likely never will.
I truly don't know what to write. I've always loved and appreciated Joe's passion for the Negro League, and him picking up where Buck left off. He's always showed me a side of baseball that i didn't know about growing up in rural South Dakota.
Side Note: I think what I love most about Joe's writing is that he brings us back to our childhoods. Back to when we were kids dreaming about stepping up to the plate with 2 on in the bottom of the ninth... His writing captures that joy and pure magic we feel as kids. Believe me I've played in Iowa, on the Field of Dreams, and Joe brings that magic rushing back. It's unparalleled.
Including Negro League stats initially brought questions to my mind. Were they really equal leagues? Were they the same seasons, stadiums, equipment, etc. Did they play enough? Did have to play 2?
BUT I don't think that's really the issue here. The questions actually help shed light on this blight on baseball's past. They allow people to dig deeper and discover the pure awesomeness of these players. They are no longer myths, but actual ballplayers with real statistics. Joe Gibson right next to Ty Cobb who could have imagined?!
Joe is right to thank Manfred. In baseball our records are hallowed ground. History is treasured, not to be touched, and we never believe anyone can measure up to the heroes of old. Yet, here we are. We now have new all time greats to compare today's superstars to. Baseball history has literally been rewritten. With our extreme devotion to the heroes of yesteryear, that in itself is a historic accomplishment.
To the extent that anyone is being wronged by officially incorporating the Negro League stats - and I don’t think anyone is - that seems more than offset by the fact that Cobb and Ruth have a massive head start in terms of recognition over anyone from the Negro Leagues. Shining a brighter light on Josh Gibson doesn’t diminish Ruth or Cobb. Nobody will forget them any more than Cobb was forgotten when Rose passed him.
What's funny is I'm afraid to post, that's never happened to me before, anywhere. I'm also afraid to post about being afraid to post, but I'll get myself over that. with this click right here.
In terms of stats, it's a blip, a whisper, but (and forgive me if I missed something) another element of this I haven't seen anyone comment on is that this means that for the first time, women will have a place in MLB stat books because the Negro League actually had a handful of female players. Way, way down the lists maybe - none of them is going to show up at the top of any all-time stat lists - but as a woman who was one of only two girls in her entire baseball league as a child and who founded an amateur adult league (and then watched it get turned into a men's-only league after stepping down from being its commissioner a couple of years later), this fact is really hitting me in an emotional place.
Actually, the three women who played in the Negro Leagues didn’t play until the 1950s, which was after integration that caused the talent level to fall to the point where it is considered minor league. Therefore, no women have played in the major leagues.
It’s confusing because we refer to the “Negro Leagues” but I forget that it was comprised of several individual leagues like the Negro National League, the Negro American League and a few others. It appears that the years from 1920-1948 inclusive are considered major leagues and timeframes outside those years are not. I assume that as more records are discovered that this might change.
I was talking to my father about this earlier this evening. In sharing with him some of the limited knowledge I have of the Negro Leagues I mentioned the fact that as the leagues were folding they had women players. I stopped and said this means there are women now in the MLB stats. How awesome is this!? Now little girls every where, like my 1 year old daughter, will know that they too can play in the Bigs! It’s hitting me in an emotional place also.
The biggest problem are the plate appearances. Gibson - now the alltime batting leader had fewer than 3000 plate appearances or about 4 MLB seasons worth, vs. Cobb's more than 11,000 plate appearances. This is a kind gesture and makes some people feel good but it sadly just makes a mess out of the stats.
I don’t believe it makes a mess of the stats. I believe it adds layers of nuance that will shine a light on players that have been often overlooked or even ignored. It doesn’t discount anything that Cobb, Williams, or Ruth accomplished. It will make people ask questions and search for answers. That’s usually a good thing.
The point of stats - especially baseball stats - is an attempt to compare apples and apples (at least as best as possible), this is hard enough to do over eras and making this apples to oranges comparison is the mess to which I refer by adding stats from a league with sketchy records and very ambigous understanding of its overall quality in comparison to the majors. Of course, there were obviously many Negro League players with major league skill, but much as we want to change history, we are left with the history we have. Including these stats seems like not just a mistake, but a colossal one.
TheAthletic.com Daily Windup had a good quote: “While some might argue that Negro Leagues’ shortened schedules led to numbers that didn’t stand the test of the brutal triple-digit schedules of MLB seasons, baseball did count the stats from the shortened 60-game 2020 season (among others). And while barnstorming games weren’t counted, their toll on players’ bodies — not to mention the more arduous living conditions for Black players during segregation — was real. It’s not as if their endurance wasn’t put to the test.”
I agree that a 60 game sample might be an unfair comparison, but only if it were 60 consecutive games. However, sampling every third game in a season is probably going to give you similar stats, and the extra barnstorming games, doubleheaders and overall crappy travel experience made the Negro Leagues schedule so much harder. Their 60 game sample stats are more than adequate as a comparison, and are far more reliable than a 60 game hot streak.
This has ALWAYS been an issue, though, papered over by the fact that Cobb - the #1 guy - HAPPENED to have a lot of PAs. Joe Jackson - formerly #3 all-time - has less than 5700 PAs. Lefty O'Doul, former #4, had less than 3,700. This has ALWAYS BEEN AN ISSUE. Also, FWIW, b-ref doesn't actually list Gibson first. Cobb is still first, Charleston second, and Gibson has too few PAs to qualify. I'm not going to go store this on every post below, so I'm hoping others mentioning this same thing see this.
We seem to be getting off on some non-productive tangents. One thing I think we can agree on is that the AL, the NL and Negro Leagues all had super-stars, good players, average players and below average players. Yet when we comparing two players from different leagues we seem to say "my guy was better because the other guy didn't have to face the best hitters/pitchers as the case may be from my guy's league." And then they stop. They usually don't add "on the other hand the my guy didn't have to face the best hitters/pitchers as the case may be from the other guy's league." A subtle way of saying the guy they favor played in a better league. Truth is if we could have kept the number of teams to the total then in the NL and AL and merged the player pool we would have had an increase in the great and good players per team and fewer of the below average players. How would the stats have changed? Hard to tell. My initial guess is it would favor the pitchers, but then again players learn to adapt so it would be hard to say for sure. Whatever the case, there is no way to tell definitively whether the leagues were equal or not.
I think someone was mentioning that the primary issue people may have is the idea that statistics are inviolable and infallible. People had similar concerns when Pluto was downgraded from planet status (as if there was any being on Pluto who knows or cares what we may think), or when the brontosaurus I knew as a child was deemed to be really an apatosaurus (when my kids were learning about dinosaurs) and then later re-categorized again as a separate species again called brontosaurus (since 2015). We learn and adjust. As many have noted, many of our “infallible” baseball stats have changed decades later after we learned more. The inclusion of Negro League data is just adding new context to our knowledge. We’ll adapt.
I support this move, but there is one "anti" argument i have some sympathy fr, and I hope I can paraphrase it correctly:
We agree that the Negro Leagues were a major league of the same quality of AL ad the NL, but a large part of the story is that they weren't allowed to play official Major League Baseball. MLB now trying to say the Negro Leagues were always major leagues deletes an important part of that story. These great players were denied the opportunity to play in MLB, and you can't now sweep them in because it attempts to erase that stain on the game.
I don't agree with that argument, but I at least have sympathy for it. As Bill James said, as time goes by, players get reduced to the numbers on a page. And I would hate for MLB history to cover up the basic fact that these players were not allowed to play, for no reason other than the color of their skin.
I hear what you're saying, but do we really think we're at risk of that happening, even decades down the line—assuming the Earth isn't a smoldering ruin by then?
Is including these statistics and records now really going to result in a population of baseball fans in 2064 who have forgotten the significance of Jackie Robinson and who don't know that Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston and others weren't allowed to play in the American or National League with the best white players—especially in contrast to the much greater number of fans today who don't know much (or anything) about these players now? I'm skeptical of this.
And my first instinct is to say "No, of course not." But I think the lvel of dishonest argument we see these days, I can't be so sure.
I can honestly see someone 30 years from now saying, "What's the big deal? Josh Gibson wasn't denied an opportunity. He played in official Major League Baseball, just a different league. What's the problem?" It's abhorrent, but yes, I absolutely can someone making that argument.
I can too. There will always be people who doubt them for one reason or another.
My question is more about how many people who would otherwise be sympathetic and approving of the Negro Leagues players will go the other way by virtue of the statistics being included.
I'm old enough to remember a world where all major leaguers were stuck to the team they initially signed with until that team chose to release or trade them, with no exceptions. A world where pitchers batted every game unless pinch hit for. A world where players from the National League and the American League crossed paths at the All-Star Game (or games in my very early years) and the World Series. I was born when there were only 16 teams, none west of St. Louis (I don't remember the Dodgers and Giants moving west, but I do remember the first season of the Angels). I remember doubleheaders at least every Sunday. I remember only two teams in the postseason, a term that was never used because "World Series" was its more accurate synonym. I remember all World Series games were day games.
Every single one of these conditions (a) is important to the competitiveness of baseball as played; and (b) does not exist today.
I don't really care whose statistics mlb officially counts. It's more pc to me.
The relevance is if mlb truly cared they would celebrate Doby as much as they do Robinson. Instead they won't even let Cleveland celebrate him the way they've wanted to for years.
I'm not going to say anything bad about Rob Manfred for at least a week. This was a decision that was long overdue. In my opinion the two best position players were Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson. Their career OPS+ were 206 and 214 respectively. We'll never definitively know which league was tougher over all but we can safely say that both would have been great no matter what league they played in. My joy at including the Negro Leagues as a major league is not who holds the record in any given category. The joy is that we are considering, acknowledging and talking about the best of the best regardless of skin color. That is long overdue. My personal favorite thing about it is that John Jordan "Buck" O'Neill is now officially a major league player.
MLB has spoken. End of story. Ted Williams was not the last major leaguer to bat .400, Artie Wilson and Willard Brown were. And given Ted's HOF acceptance speech, if his head was still alive and could talk, I think he'd say he's OK with that.
It feels like a group of people today are trying to correct the mistakes of the past, which of course they can’t do. They’re attempting to whitewash history, and in the process cheapening what these great players were denied. I can acknowledge the Negro Leagues as a major league, but they weren’t MLB. That’s the point. They were robbed of that. They never played in the organization known as MLB because that organization denied them of that. Merging the stats makes little sense, and will force modern day analysts, historians and fans to “talk down” Negro League stats to provide the context that’s missing. Shorter schedules, Gibson having a fraction of the PAs of his MLB counterparts, a large percentage of box scores missing, making the comparisons flawed.
One issue that the analyst community will need to address in coming years, hopefully without emotion and bias in either direction, is that of depth. There is no doubt that the best of these players were the equal of their counterparts in MLB. The question though was the depth they faced equal? All the highest BA’s coming from the Negro Leagues, including Josh Gibson hitting .466 in 1943, suggests there’s a potentially wider gap between the best and the rest in the league. I could be wrong on that. I don’t know the answer. None of us do. The sabermetric community should begin to dive into this area now that we have more numbers to build the case in either direction.
The positive here is greater recognition for players unfairly locked out of MLB. The negative is the forced integration of these stats with so much missing. There is no apples to apples here since MLB prevented that. This small group can’t correct that injustice no matter how hard they try.
So like many, I have both positive and negative thoughts about what and how it was done. A complex topic.
Joe, at least a few MLB stars played in Negro League baseball. Roy Campanella, for instance, just picked up an additional 10 years of stats. And obviously Jackie Robinson, but only one season. Do you have any idea which Black ballplayers we regard as mainly MLB players will be significantly affected?
G’day Joe
The cricket T20 World Cup (20 overs a team, over in 3 hours) is being partially staged in the US starting this weekend, was wondering if you were going to write about it all, I enjoy your writing when you get out of your comfort zone
I have mixed feelings about this.
On one hand, it's a gesture to legitimize the accomplishments of the Negro League Players.
And yet, I can't help but feel as though there's a distortion of reality going on. The odds that Josh Gibson really hit .373 (the number in BR today) are so low that we can all confidently say he didn't. There's two major and insurmountable obstacles: a) all the official Negro League games haven't been documented, and b) most of the games Gibson played weren't official games (they were barnstorming). This compares to Cobb and the rest in the NL and AL, whose numbers were documented meticulously. Declaring Gibson the new all-time batting champ is simply nonsense. Utter and complete nonsense.
It's like taking two guys running a race. The first is timed with a stopwatch to the hundredth of a second, and his time is 45.87 seconds. The second isn't timed at all, but somebody was doing some Mississippis in his head and declares: "It was about 40 seconds." And then declaring the second guy the winner. It's nonsense. In reality, there's simply no way to know who ran faster. And the only honest thing to do is admit it. One was documented, the other wasn't.
I think we also lose some of the most interesting things about the Negro Leagues when we obsess with trying to revise the record book. Even if their results were documented as meticulously as the AL and NL did, the Negro Leagues were a very different thing. Official games on most weekends. Barnstorming all over the US the rest of the time. It's just completely different than how the AL and NL worked. Pretending that the stats (as we can find them) are equivalent is, again, silly. And we lose the uniqueness of the Negro Leagues by pretending they're the same.
Yes, it was tragic these terrific players were denied the chance to play the AL and NL. At the same time, it's pretty neat that they still formed their own teams and played baseball in a way that was organized very differently.
Organizationally, modern MLB is directly connected to all the records of the AL and NL. The number of games per year has changed only slightly. They scheduling is basically the same (no barnstorming games). And so the only record book that has relevant continuity with modern players is what is recorded in AL and NL. The Negro Leagues operated so differently that it would be silly to say any of their records are comparable to modern MLB. And that's even if the games were documented well, which we all know didn't happen.
It's fun to think about players like Josh Gibson and Oscar Charlton. It's fun to see the stats that have been documented. It's worth looking at their stats and remembering that they were highly skilled players. It's really cool to see Gibson's hitting record and, it's worth wondering if he really could have pulled off a higher batting average than Cobb and more home runs that Ruth combo.
But to declare that his .373 the new all-time lifetime batting average record is simply revisionist nonsense.
Federal League stats are counted as part of official MLB stats, so there is precedent.
True. But Federalist league also operated very similarly to AL and NL.
• Same # of games
• Same structure (play only teams in league, no mix of league play and barnstorming)
• The stats were meticulously tracked
The issue isn't that Negro Leagues shouldn't or should count. Nor whether the players were worthy or not. The issue is that it's impossible to treat the stats in the Negro Leagues as the same thing as in the AL and NL. Pretending otherwise is nonsense.
BBR says that Jimmy Walsh hit .308 with 10 HR for the Baltimore Terrapins in 1914
BBR says Oscar Charleston hit .308 with 10 HR for the Harrisburg Giants in 1926
In reality, Walsh likely really DID end up with those numbers that season.
In contrast, there's a 100% guarantee that Charleston did NOT actually have those numbers.
That's the issue. Pretending Charleston's stats are real (and the other Negro Leaguers') is silly. It's simply not true. They are simply incomplete, AND the Negro Leagues operated completely different than the AL and NL. I believe that reality matters.
I suppose my take is who cares?
19th century stats are quoted, so single season BA was listed as Hugh Duffy in 1894. He played in a league where teams did not play uniform schedules.
All stats before 1947 will always be “ suspect”.
I bet the PCL also diluted talent - had to be players who preferred the West Coast weather and the longer season to playing for a lousy East coast team.
I plan on wasting no time arguing Josh Gibson vs Babe Ruth
Neither player competed against the top talent of the day in any official game.
i'm thrilled to see Negro League stats and records acknowledged; for too long, some of the best baseball players in history were denied a chance to share a field w/their white peers, truly a travesty...
I practiced reading as a kid with the sports pages of the NYC tabloids. Ten years plus after his retirement, the sportswriters STILL were writing about Jackie Robinson. When he was elected to the Hall of Fame, the pages were filled with his exploits, why this honor was long overdue etc. Various mentions of Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Larry Doby etc. et. al. were easy to find.
Since we’re all spitballing here, my view is the stats that survive and get included likely ARE inflated. Why? Well, the papers that would have printed them LONG ago faded and died. The scrapbooks, local libraries etc. would contain only the best stories, games, accomplishments and therefore numbers.
My thought is: So what?
Why? Very few show the replay of Willie Mays’ centerfield misplay in the 1973 World Series. Everyone on this blog has seen the Vic Wertz long fly out video a dozen times at least. THAT is the video that frames Willie Mays…the very best of his amazing defensive skills on display. It’s no surprise to me that what survives after all these years are the best (newspaper) stories.
If I’m right, Josh Gibson’s numbers likely go down as the project finds more and more stories and data. Eventually, the wells will run dry. And - up or down - that’s where everyone’s numbers will land.
BUT: We will have preserved what we could of these people and what they did under circumstances that a lot of us on this blog likely never experienced and likely never will.
They earned it.
They deserve it.
I truly don't know what to write. I've always loved and appreciated Joe's passion for the Negro League, and him picking up where Buck left off. He's always showed me a side of baseball that i didn't know about growing up in rural South Dakota.
Side Note: I think what I love most about Joe's writing is that he brings us back to our childhoods. Back to when we were kids dreaming about stepping up to the plate with 2 on in the bottom of the ninth... His writing captures that joy and pure magic we feel as kids. Believe me I've played in Iowa, on the Field of Dreams, and Joe brings that magic rushing back. It's unparalleled.
Including Negro League stats initially brought questions to my mind. Were they really equal leagues? Were they the same seasons, stadiums, equipment, etc. Did they play enough? Did have to play 2?
BUT I don't think that's really the issue here. The questions actually help shed light on this blight on baseball's past. They allow people to dig deeper and discover the pure awesomeness of these players. They are no longer myths, but actual ballplayers with real statistics. Joe Gibson right next to Ty Cobb who could have imagined?!
Joe is right to thank Manfred. In baseball our records are hallowed ground. History is treasured, not to be touched, and we never believe anyone can measure up to the heroes of old. Yet, here we are. We now have new all time greats to compare today's superstars to. Baseball history has literally been rewritten. With our extreme devotion to the heroes of yesteryear, that in itself is a historic accomplishment.
To the extent that anyone is being wronged by officially incorporating the Negro League stats - and I don’t think anyone is - that seems more than offset by the fact that Cobb and Ruth have a massive head start in terms of recognition over anyone from the Negro Leagues. Shining a brighter light on Josh Gibson doesn’t diminish Ruth or Cobb. Nobody will forget them any more than Cobb was forgotten when Rose passed him.
What's funny is I'm afraid to post, that's never happened to me before, anywhere. I'm also afraid to post about being afraid to post, but I'll get myself over that. with this click right here.
There's some disagreement here but I think people are generally being civil to each other. Share your thoughts! Face your fears!
In terms of stats, it's a blip, a whisper, but (and forgive me if I missed something) another element of this I haven't seen anyone comment on is that this means that for the first time, women will have a place in MLB stat books because the Negro League actually had a handful of female players. Way, way down the lists maybe - none of them is going to show up at the top of any all-time stat lists - but as a woman who was one of only two girls in her entire baseball league as a child and who founded an amateur adult league (and then watched it get turned into a men's-only league after stepping down from being its commissioner a couple of years later), this fact is really hitting me in an emotional place.
Actually, the three women who played in the Negro Leagues didn’t play until the 1950s, which was after integration that caused the talent level to fall to the point where it is considered minor league. Therefore, no women have played in the major leagues.
Ah. I hadn't seen anything that mentioned the cut-off date.
It’s confusing because we refer to the “Negro Leagues” but I forget that it was comprised of several individual leagues like the Negro National League, the Negro American League and a few others. It appears that the years from 1920-1948 inclusive are considered major leagues and timeframes outside those years are not. I assume that as more records are discovered that this might change.
I was talking to my father about this earlier this evening. In sharing with him some of the limited knowledge I have of the Negro Leagues I mentioned the fact that as the leagues were folding they had women players. I stopped and said this means there are women now in the MLB stats. How awesome is this!? Now little girls every where, like my 1 year old daughter, will know that they too can play in the Bigs! It’s hitting me in an emotional place also.
Wow! I never considered that we now have women in MLB stats! Nice comment!
The biggest problem are the plate appearances. Gibson - now the alltime batting leader had fewer than 3000 plate appearances or about 4 MLB seasons worth, vs. Cobb's more than 11,000 plate appearances. This is a kind gesture and makes some people feel good but it sadly just makes a mess out of the stats.
I don’t believe it makes a mess of the stats. I believe it adds layers of nuance that will shine a light on players that have been often overlooked or even ignored. It doesn’t discount anything that Cobb, Williams, or Ruth accomplished. It will make people ask questions and search for answers. That’s usually a good thing.
The point of stats - especially baseball stats - is an attempt to compare apples and apples (at least as best as possible), this is hard enough to do over eras and making this apples to oranges comparison is the mess to which I refer by adding stats from a league with sketchy records and very ambigous understanding of its overall quality in comparison to the majors. Of course, there were obviously many Negro League players with major league skill, but much as we want to change history, we are left with the history we have. Including these stats seems like not just a mistake, but a colossal one.
TheAthletic.com Daily Windup had a good quote: “While some might argue that Negro Leagues’ shortened schedules led to numbers that didn’t stand the test of the brutal triple-digit schedules of MLB seasons, baseball did count the stats from the shortened 60-game 2020 season (among others). And while barnstorming games weren’t counted, their toll on players’ bodies — not to mention the more arduous living conditions for Black players during segregation — was real. It’s not as if their endurance wasn’t put to the test.”
I agree that a 60 game sample might be an unfair comparison, but only if it were 60 consecutive games. However, sampling every third game in a season is probably going to give you similar stats, and the extra barnstorming games, doubleheaders and overall crappy travel experience made the Negro Leagues schedule so much harder. Their 60 game sample stats are more than adequate as a comparison, and are far more reliable than a 60 game hot streak.
This has ALWAYS been an issue, though, papered over by the fact that Cobb - the #1 guy - HAPPENED to have a lot of PAs. Joe Jackson - formerly #3 all-time - has less than 5700 PAs. Lefty O'Doul, former #4, had less than 3,700. This has ALWAYS BEEN AN ISSUE. Also, FWIW, b-ref doesn't actually list Gibson first. Cobb is still first, Charleston second, and Gibson has too few PAs to qualify. I'm not going to go store this on every post below, so I'm hoping others mentioning this same thing see this.
We seem to be getting off on some non-productive tangents. One thing I think we can agree on is that the AL, the NL and Negro Leagues all had super-stars, good players, average players and below average players. Yet when we comparing two players from different leagues we seem to say "my guy was better because the other guy didn't have to face the best hitters/pitchers as the case may be from my guy's league." And then they stop. They usually don't add "on the other hand the my guy didn't have to face the best hitters/pitchers as the case may be from the other guy's league." A subtle way of saying the guy they favor played in a better league. Truth is if we could have kept the number of teams to the total then in the NL and AL and merged the player pool we would have had an increase in the great and good players per team and fewer of the below average players. How would the stats have changed? Hard to tell. My initial guess is it would favor the pitchers, but then again players learn to adapt so it would be hard to say for sure. Whatever the case, there is no way to tell definitively whether the leagues were equal or not.
I think someone was mentioning that the primary issue people may have is the idea that statistics are inviolable and infallible. People had similar concerns when Pluto was downgraded from planet status (as if there was any being on Pluto who knows or cares what we may think), or when the brontosaurus I knew as a child was deemed to be really an apatosaurus (when my kids were learning about dinosaurs) and then later re-categorized again as a separate species again called brontosaurus (since 2015). We learn and adjust. As many have noted, many of our “infallible” baseball stats have changed decades later after we learned more. The inclusion of Negro League data is just adding new context to our knowledge. We’ll adapt.
On behalf of Earth, I apologize to all Plutons. Ed does not speak for us!
But who speaks for the brontosaurus?
Certainly not Carl Everett
I support this move, but there is one "anti" argument i have some sympathy fr, and I hope I can paraphrase it correctly:
We agree that the Negro Leagues were a major league of the same quality of AL ad the NL, but a large part of the story is that they weren't allowed to play official Major League Baseball. MLB now trying to say the Negro Leagues were always major leagues deletes an important part of that story. These great players were denied the opportunity to play in MLB, and you can't now sweep them in because it attempts to erase that stain on the game.
I don't agree with that argument, but I at least have sympathy for it. As Bill James said, as time goes by, players get reduced to the numbers on a page. And I would hate for MLB history to cover up the basic fact that these players were not allowed to play, for no reason other than the color of their skin.
I hear what you're saying, but do we really think we're at risk of that happening, even decades down the line—assuming the Earth isn't a smoldering ruin by then?
Is including these statistics and records now really going to result in a population of baseball fans in 2064 who have forgotten the significance of Jackie Robinson and who don't know that Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston and others weren't allowed to play in the American or National League with the best white players—especially in contrast to the much greater number of fans today who don't know much (or anything) about these players now? I'm skeptical of this.
And my first instinct is to say "No, of course not." But I think the lvel of dishonest argument we see these days, I can't be so sure.
I can honestly see someone 30 years from now saying, "What's the big deal? Josh Gibson wasn't denied an opportunity. He played in official Major League Baseball, just a different league. What's the problem?" It's abhorrent, but yes, I absolutely can someone making that argument.
I can too. There will always be people who doubt them for one reason or another.
My question is more about how many people who would otherwise be sympathetic and approving of the Negro Leagues players will go the other way by virtue of the statistics being included.
I'm old enough to remember a world where all major leaguers were stuck to the team they initially signed with until that team chose to release or trade them, with no exceptions. A world where pitchers batted every game unless pinch hit for. A world where players from the National League and the American League crossed paths at the All-Star Game (or games in my very early years) and the World Series. I was born when there were only 16 teams, none west of St. Louis (I don't remember the Dodgers and Giants moving west, but I do remember the first season of the Angels). I remember doubleheaders at least every Sunday. I remember only two teams in the postseason, a term that was never used because "World Series" was its more accurate synonym. I remember all World Series games were day games.
Every single one of these conditions (a) is important to the competitiveness of baseball as played; and (b) does not exist today.
The significance of Larry Doby has already been forgotten.
And Doby would be ... more remembered if his statistics didn't "count?"
I don't really care whose statistics mlb officially counts. It's more pc to me.
The relevance is if mlb truly cared they would celebrate Doby as much as they do Robinson. Instead they won't even let Cleveland celebrate him the way they've wanted to for years.
I'm not going to say anything bad about Rob Manfred for at least a week. This was a decision that was long overdue. In my opinion the two best position players were Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson. Their career OPS+ were 206 and 214 respectively. We'll never definitively know which league was tougher over all but we can safely say that both would have been great no matter what league they played in. My joy at including the Negro Leagues as a major league is not who holds the record in any given category. The joy is that we are considering, acknowledging and talking about the best of the best regardless of skin color. That is long overdue. My personal favorite thing about it is that John Jordan "Buck" O'Neill is now officially a major league player.
I’ve started a countdown on your Rob Manfred week. Manfred is going to do what Manfred does ;-)
I may have to back off if the need to let off steam overwhelms me, but so far I've made about 5 hours. Only 163 more to go!!!
MLB has spoken. End of story. Ted Williams was not the last major leaguer to bat .400, Artie Wilson and Willard Brown were. And given Ted's HOF acceptance speech, if his head was still alive and could talk, I think he'd say he's OK with that.
There's a universe in Futurama where that is happening.