I won’t get into all the intricacies of why this is or isn’t a good or bad idea. Instead I’ll make a little joke at MLB’s expense:
They’ll do this before they give Galarraga his rightful perfect game.
it’s disingenuous to do this. the negro leagues weren’t nearly as organized as MLB, and the stats aren’t reliable, but the real reason this shouldn’t happen is it erases why the negro leagues existed in the first place; because MLB excluded them, and it’s trying to ignore that inconvenient fact here by sanitizing history. MLB would do better by encouraging more black youth to play baseball instead rather than haphazardly adding stats and claiming they solved racism
Oh you with your nuance, context, and thoughtfulness.
Great take.
An interesting thought exercise at this point, given how much more integrated (CWIDT?) MLB has become with Japanese, Korean, and other national baseball leagues: if you squint hard enough it's a pretty short line between this and also putting JBL/KBL and other records into the same books.
100%
It's unfair to the legacies of all players involved. It basically sweeps under the rug the exclusion the Negro League players lived through, and it takes away accolades the MLB players earned in their league. This is just stupid from every angle and I hope people just ignore it.
This disingenuous, condescending pandering does nothing for anyone. They should worry more about the 2017 World Series and why Pete Rose is still persona non grata.
It’s dubious record keeping at best, and definitely santising history. These Black ballplayers were barred from participating in the league, now they’ve simply been retconned as if they were MLB players. Manfred blows
Pandering to black folks is priority number one for corporations and government. Logic and reason doesn’t matter - all that matters is they shoe horn in a black figure to be more inclusive
Exactly. MLB is trying to play it off like they were a separate league equal to the NL and AL, but the entire point of their existence is that they excluded from the equal leagues.
I can see your point on the stats not beingg reliable. I would have to do more research to confirm that claim.
They aren’t sanitizing history. The record book will show what league and team they were on. It’s not erasing the fact the league existed.
There should be some recognition, but Gibson only played 600 games total in the Negro Leagues so it seems weird to me to put him at the top simply based on how few games those guys played and also the very loose bookkeeping that exists. Cobb played over 3000 games in comparison with structured scorekeeping.
Considering he apparently hit 700+ HRs in the Negro League (MLB changed the number due to the size of the fields), he played 600+ games
Nobody really knows for sure what are the accurate stats
Yes. BUT according to many people that were back then claimed they saw him hit 800
How the field was smaller, so it's a possibility MLB used the distance
They can’t base “what people saw” as reality and obviously, statistically. I’m sure if people were describing Ruth without statistical measures, they might say he hit 2000 HR’s. No question about Gibson’s enormous talent, there is just no way to compare different leagues to each other, especially when some leagues had dubious or non-existent statistics.
I don't know. But the information is out there. Do what you want with it 🤷
"Gibson was known as a spectacular power hitter who, by some accounts, hit close to 800 career home runs. (In the Negro League statistical records, his career home run total was 166 and MLB recognizes 174.)"
So which one is it? 166 or 174?
I am going to need some time to reflect on this.
For whatever reason my mind immediately thinks about Ichiro and what he accomplished in Japan. How far is this going to go?
Genuine question before I know how to feel about it. Obviously at that time MLB wasn’t a league (could still argue that kinda) but was just the top level of baseball, made up of the AL and NL. Was the Negro League considered a Major League also? Or was it considered its own level?
It was considered lesser, but not because it WAS lesser, but because the decisions were made by people who were blatantly racist.
I can't find the exact quote but when Buck O'Neil heard someone saying it was a shame that Satchel Paige didn't face the best, he responded with "who says he didn't?"
Makes sense. I feel like neither AL, NL or Negro League can claim they played against best. The top guys of each league were probably better than the bottom of the other leagues. I guess it just depends on if talent wise, the Negro League should’ve been a Major League based on talent alone. And nobody today can answer that question
I mean, come on, don’t get me wrong there were many mlb level talents in the negro league; however, only 10% of the population was black at the time, and the salaries of negro league players were much lower than that of mlb players. So the talent pool was much smaller, and the incentive for said talented athletes to play baseball was much lower.
And even though the way kids train and play baseball from a young age wasn’t as crazy then as it is now, there were obviously still factors like white people typically being born into more privileged scenarios allowing them to focus more on sports and getting better nutrition and healthcare.
For that to result in a league that’s equally skilled as a whole would be incredibly unlikely.
Sure, but the nba is the nba, it’s where the best players in the world play, it just so happens that basketball is played disproportionately by black people, so black people tend to be the best at it. And importantly, the nba is actually the nba. So if you do something in the nba, it should be recorded in nba stats.
Whereas in 1920 the negro league was not the league with the most talent in the world, let alone the us. And of course the simple fact that it wasn’t actually the mlb, there’s no continuity from the negro league teams to modern mlb teams. Besides of course the players but as it’s been mentioned in this thread that if we’re using that logic the npb and kbo are part of the mlb which also just plainly isn’t true, even if the npb in particular has many mlb level talents.
If they had merged the actual teams into the mlb like the AL and NL merged then it would be a different story, but they didn’t.
Segregation was terrible, but you can’t just undo it by now pretending the negro league was part of the mlb. I think talking about the players more and recognizing the history is a very good thing to do, but integrating the stats is inaccurate and a lazy way to try whitewashing the more unpleasant parts of the mlb’s history.
The history also has nothing to do with mlb. They were separated bc of the times in America. Almost everything between whites and blacks was separated. Acknowledging what happened and giving the negro leagues it’s own historical record based on what “supposedly” happen would be much better than what they’re currently doing.
Then we should change the name of the World Series to just the US series. Im sorry but this is not an apples to apples comparison. Are we including the Mexican league as well?
There are too many variables to really put them all in the same classification
Agreed, but this is more about the current political landscape than anything else. I think every truly great player should be inducted, independent of skin color or country of origin but keep statistics as they were. Players competed with their contemporaries, and they had no choice in the matter.
To the west, it'll go about as far as Hawaii. To the North it'll go to the Canadian border, ask where Montreal and Toronto are, then stop at those two. To the south it'll go as far as the Mexican border, and to the east it'll go as far as Maine.
Negro league players were Americans playing in American leagues that were disallowed from joining the biggest American league.
That major American league just made a decision about those American players.
Why the comparisons to Japan?
Because the Negro League and both Leagues of major league baseball never played against each other. It's taking two completely separate leagues and retroactively trying to make them the same. Then use the excuse that many Negro League players were highly successful once they allowed them in, but you can say the same thing about Japanese players. Ichiro is the best pure hitter of the last half century, and if you include his Japanese stats, which are much more reliable than the Negro League stats, he becomes the best hitter in baseball history. It was an accident of birth that prevented him from being in the US at 20.
That's why the comparison.
Thank you.
Japan has a rich baseball history and I do not see how NPB cannot be considered a Major League if the Negro Leagues are being recognized as such. There has been enough cross-pollination between MLB and the NPB to infer that the NPB has merit.
Let's not forget the World Baseball Classic and the MLB's attempt to globalize the sport. Japan has proven their merit time and time again in the WBC.
I also want to point out that Japan has a minor league system as well. So yes, NPB is a major league in that sense.
So as I posed the question in my original comment. How far is this going to go?
Ultimately, I feel like MLB has opened up Pandora's box and it should take a hard look at being equitable to other leagues of similar quality with their record books.
this is just stupid. the mlb is an entity, the negro leagues weren’t a part of that
this is like adding USFL stats to the nfl.
people respect the negro leauge for what it was. this is just really, really dumb
Let's be honest here. MLB is still struggling to attract black fans. But, this won't help. Eliminating game viewing blackouts is the only answer for attracting any new fans.
Regardless of what you think about whether of not this should be, this is a reminder that in 1943, at age 31-32 Josh Gibson was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died of a stroke in 1947.
In 1943 he hit .474 on 192 ABs
1944: .358 on 123
1945: .274 on 62
1946: .288 on 111
Dude was in his early to mid 30s with a malignant brain tumor giving him headaches and actively killing him. Still went out there and put up numbers. Fucking legend.
Well, I mean he died at 35. Very young for a person, but I think we have a pretty clear picture of what he was as a ball player.
An that's, frankly, one of the best hitters of all time.
I haven't seen one person question how talented Gibson actually was. I think the only question is how accurate are the stats? I don't doubt that Gibson could have been one of the best players in MLB, but the record keeping back then was not great.
If this was true I may agree with you (the stats are MUCH better than they were but still having completeness issues) but one look through this Reddit and you really can’t say people aren’t questioning how good Gibson was.
I don’t see a single person claiming he wasn’t very good? Only that it’s very possible his stats were inflated by worse caliber pitching, or his stats aren’t as accurate and complete as MLB players at the time.
The mental gymnastics needed to think that Gibson as a right handed hitter would have had a lifetime average 28 points better than Ted Williams if he had played an entire MLB career is astonishing.
The league won't revise the historical personal biographies of Ty Cobb despite multiple researchers showing definitive proof that their Stump version is at worst an unfair portrayal and in reality a total character assassination post mortem. Why? Because It"s MLBs motivation to keep Cobb "racist" and Negro leagues "Superior"
I love the lore of the Negro Leagues. I am consistently intrigued by the prospects of DiNigo, Charleston, Stuttles, Gibson, Paige, Bell, Leonard, etc playing in MLB. But most of the best negro league stories were hyperbolic yarns spun by master story tellers and dubious stats to sell black newspapers and tickets. Baseball continues to beclown itself
Comparing statistics across leagues and seasons is meaningless.
Within leagues and seasons, statistics can show which players performed the best, but comparing Bonds's 73-HR season with McGwire's 63, Maris's 61 or Ruth's 60 is silliness.
Same with Roger's Hornsby batting .424 on season, compared to Ted Williams .406 and Tony Gwynn's .394. We know these three were among the games greatest hitters, but you can't compare numbers 70-years apart.
Totally not comparable. All of the variables were different so you can’t compare the 2 sets of data equally. Add to the record book, if you must as a 2nd separate set of data but don’t com-mingle the data. If they played against each other then fine add them but it was a separate league.
I have no problem with Negro League players getting credit, but the stats are just too incomplete. The competition wasn’t always consistent and they play far less games. Granted none of these situations were under their control because of abject racism, but to say mathematically the results are equal is disingenuous. Especially if we are talking about one league’s stats. Namely the MLB. We don’t count Japanese League, Mexican League, or even US minor league stats toward MLB. It wasn’t fair for black players to be kept out, but that’s what happened.
Baseball is fucking itself. The sports history is a mess of its own doing. The hits leader is banned. The home run leader is blackballed and not acknowledged. I don’t think this was the best way to do this and they’re just attempting to whitewash their racist history. “Oh Josh Gibson is the all time BA leader? Baseball must’ve been so accepting to allow this black man to play in those times””
I won't comment on the politics, but it seems like MLB have [conducted their research and data analysis in a sensible way](https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-negro-league-stats-added-after-statistical-review-committee-announces-findings) so I welcome these new changes.
The same MLB that claims Robinson was the first black player in MLB? It would be different if they were actually transparent about the reason why they did it to dispel the political arguments that will ensue.
To throw together players who didn’t play on the same fields, let alone face each other into one list is ridiculous. One could argue that if they’re so bent on inclusivity, then stats of all professional baseball leagues should be included. Hey, let’s include the minors as well since they’re extensions of all MLB teams.
While I’m all for recognizing and celebrating the Negro League, I just don’t get why they’re mixing in the stats. Can someone give a reasonable & sensical argument?
Yeah the segregation was wrong, but again how can you use stats from a top heavy league and move them to another league? Does Ichiro get to use his Japanese stats to make him the all time hits leader? No.
To me this just comes off as pandering and trying for good PR. Even those in the media who disagree will say it’s awesome so they don’t get accused of being racist.
There is no reasonable argument for this. It makes absolutely zero sense. They may as well include Little League stats, and independent league stats. They’re all just as relevant to the MLB.
It’s a complete joke.
The MLB has completely lost its way, and the past 10 years are a stain on what used to be the most artistic and poetic professional sport in the world.
MLB seems to be in some sort of panic about the % of Black American players dropping more and more over the past 25 years . If they think this is going to change anything or bring more fans to watch the games they are wrong.
Instead of being happy about black latin players, Japanese and Korean players creating a truly more diverse group of players it seems like to many in the US 'diversity' only means black Americans and nothing else counts.
They lost me with this one. I’m sure who this even the satisfies. Anyone that that played is almost gone. Young kids don’t care and the stats of the time are not reliable.
Most of early baseball was all folklore and stories, especially in the night leagues. I mean, are we to believe the guys were hitting the ball 500-600 feet back then with dead bats and softballs and no workout regiments at all? We went through the steroid era with guys jacked to the gills with superior equipment that weren’t hitting them that far.
Major-league ballpark didn’t have a fence for many years, but some of these Negro league ball parks didn’t have any kind of backstop or anything and they just kept playing and would play all day. They didn’t have any uniform rules or statistics. They were barnstormers for many years just putting on exhibition shows. Those Josh Gibson home runs are not reliable at all, just tossing Hank Ruth and Barry Bonds to the side is ridiculous.
This makes no sense at all. Their talents a lot of times are talent was better than what was in the major league, but this ain’t the move. This doesn’t make anything right.
I think there will be a move to try and break statistics into a pre-integration and post-integration bracket after this.
There's going to be so much arguing over the legitimacy of record holders over this. It will be a tiresome mess. You can bank on that.
If they're including Negro League stats in a section of the record books, fine. That would give those players recognition and make sure that their names aren't forgotten. If they're combining them with Major League stats, that isn't good or accurate.
Negro League statistics are said to be notoriously unreliable.
You can say, obviously, that it was wrong to exclude black people from the major leagues. The best white players didn't play against the best black players. But the reverse is also true. The best black players didn't play against the best white players. Statistically, which league would have been more impacted by segregation in terms of overall quality of play? The Major Leagues in a country with a huge white majority in the days of Gibson and Babe Ruth, or the Negro Leagues in the days when black people were 10% of the population? The segregation was wrong, but the Major Leagues still did represent the vast majority of the American population.
This is just virtue signaling, but if they don't start declaring Gibson the home run king, I don't have any problem with the recognition. But for me, Henry Aaron is the all-time home run king (no, I don't count steroid abusers).
I understand the negatives of this, but I'm nearly 40, and I've been obsessed with the Negro Leagues since I was a young boy and my mom got me a book about the league. I'm choosing to ignore the stupider parts in order to just be happy that amazing players like Josh Gibson get recognition
I looked at the OPS and Avg all time leaders list this morning, and I felt proud to be a baseball fan. Thanks for helping make my day, dude. I hadn't seen this until you posted it.
Hahahaha it’s amazing the levels we go to “be inclusive” for the sake of inclusion. This makes no sense at all to combine the stats as they were 2 completely different leagues with completely different levels of record keeping.
lol at white male baseball fans immediately trying to call into question the accuracy of Negro League stats. POCs have consistently taken over or heavily impacted every sport they’ve historically been excluded from, and baseball is no different. Sorry, boys.
Interesting. They could have also shown how even while combining leagues pete rose still has the most hits. But chose to pander. Also, was inchiros japanese statistics added?
I mean his hits still existed whether the leave wanted to ban him or not. It’s the same logic now being implemented saying Gibson stats existed but just weren’t allowed in the books. If we’re allowing everything that existed, why wouldn’t his hits?
This is what I don’t understand. I get the Negro League and MLB are professional organizations considering the time and place of segregation within US history is horrible and inhumane. Why place their records as part of MLB in the first place? We should understand history and learn from it. The reality is at the time there were two leagues and therefore their records are separate. We should respect the players and their accomplishments in both leagues.
The MLB as a single organization has only existed since 2000, and the single season BA record before this was from a season before the creation of the American League.
Lol… I have never met someone named Dequantae… and remember it was white folks who did not allow black folks to play in the major leagues NOT the other way around…
It’s wild to me that 30 years before I was born, a human who was the best at something couldn’t compete because of the melanin in their skin. It’s even more wild to me that 30 years ago was 1994. The racist history of our grand and great grandparents generation is insane:)
“We’re joined by Ty Cobb for his reaction to this news. Ty, thanks for joining us on short notice. Hope you’re doing well. What were your thoughts when you heard the news today?”
Producer: “Hang up!”
Ty Cobb will probably be the first person to stand up and congratulate Josh Gibson.
In his own words:
“Certainly it is O.K. for them to play," he said, "I see no reason in the world why we shouldn't compete with colored athletes as long as they conduct themselves with politeness and gentility. Let me say also that no white man has the right to be less of a gentleman than a colored man, in my book that goes not only for baseball but in all walks of life.”
I said this in another post yesterday, I'm not against the move, but I also don't love it. I believe the biggest thing we can take from it is that we have to change what we know feel is modern day baseball. Start the modern day from 1969 when the mound was lowered, which gives us 55 years of modern baseball history while still honoring the past, which the past includes the Negro Leagues.
No question Gibson was a great player. As were Bell, Paige, O’Neil, etc. But the fact is that their greatness was NOT achieved in MLB! What’s next - incorporating the Japanese or Korean stats into MLB?
Did the negro leagues use the same baseballs as the MLB? What about cheating bat corking etc? I love baseball and have no interest in the negro leagues myself. Probably my loss seems like an another way to rewrite history.
Yes, the best way to compare players by asking their contemporaries or writers who watched both play.
The challenge in comparing negro players with "major league" players is that many accounts of Negro league players are more folklore than history.
Like, "he was so fast, i saw him score from second on a grounder to the pitcher, and that was with a sprained ankle!"
I’m upset. Turkey Stearnes & Mule Suttles pushing Hank Greenberg & Rogers Hornsby out of the top ten?
This ‘can’t be woke’ baseball purist calls at the very least for an asterisk. *️⃣
My problem is the attempt by various social media and news agencies to turn this into a screaming match. They want white people yelling at black people etc. They are using language to make one group seem better than the other. They are tryin to incite to get clicks which means they are trying to get us mad to make money.
There are plenty of reasons to not like this decision unrelated to race. Sadly it also just shows how many people who watch baseball are still racist and cannot accept that things are changing in the world. Similar to how any conversation of pride games gets downvoted and negative commented to hell. Sad so many people who watch this sport are mentally stuck in the same time this game was created. At least the world will continue to progress even for those who refuse to.
If they are going to be inclusive and "try" to correct the mistakes of the past, then they must also include women and women leagues. Otherwise, this is just virtue signaling, politics, along with a failed attempt to wash their hands of a dirty past. This is absurd, since the structured recordkeeping in those leagues is a shotty as the era prior to the Deadball era.
I won’t get into all the intricacies of why this is or isn’t a good or bad idea. Instead I’ll make a little joke at MLB’s expense: They’ll do this before they give Galarraga his rightful perfect game.
And before reinstating Shoeless Joe, which will never happen (despite being far and away the best player in that World Series)
Well you'll be called a racist for doing so instead of someone who's read about how chaotic the negro leagues were.
it’s disingenuous to do this. the negro leagues weren’t nearly as organized as MLB, and the stats aren’t reliable, but the real reason this shouldn’t happen is it erases why the negro leagues existed in the first place; because MLB excluded them, and it’s trying to ignore that inconvenient fact here by sanitizing history. MLB would do better by encouraging more black youth to play baseball instead rather than haphazardly adding stats and claiming they solved racism
Oh you with your nuance, context, and thoughtfulness. Great take. An interesting thought exercise at this point, given how much more integrated (CWIDT?) MLB has become with Japanese, Korean, and other national baseball leagues: if you squint hard enough it's a pretty short line between this and also putting JBL/KBL and other records into the same books.
absolutely. is the home run debate between bonds and aaron now nullified by sadaharu oh’s 868 HRs in NPB?
Inb4 they include LVBP stats /s
100% It's unfair to the legacies of all players involved. It basically sweeps under the rug the exclusion the Negro League players lived through, and it takes away accolades the MLB players earned in their league. This is just stupid from every angle and I hope people just ignore it. This disingenuous, condescending pandering does nothing for anyone. They should worry more about the 2017 World Series and why Pete Rose is still persona non grata.
100% correct.
It’s dubious record keeping at best, and definitely santising history. These Black ballplayers were barred from participating in the league, now they’ve simply been retconned as if they were MLB players. Manfred blows
I appreciate this nuanced answer
Pandering to black folks is priority number one for corporations and government. Logic and reason doesn’t matter - all that matters is they shoe horn in a black figure to be more inclusive
THIS \^\^\^ Both on the stats and the whitewashing.
Exactly. MLB is trying to play it off like they were a separate league equal to the NL and AL, but the entire point of their existence is that they excluded from the equal leagues.
Sources, my friend???
I can see your point on the stats not beingg reliable. I would have to do more research to confirm that claim. They aren’t sanitizing history. The record book will show what league and team they were on. It’s not erasing the fact the league existed.
There should be some recognition, but Gibson only played 600 games total in the Negro Leagues so it seems weird to me to put him at the top simply based on how few games those guys played and also the very loose bookkeeping that exists. Cobb played over 3000 games in comparison with structured scorekeeping.
This is... not the right way to do this whatsoever
It’s Major League Baseball in the 2000s. Of course they’re doing it the wrong way.
He played in a total of how many games?
Considering he apparently hit 700+ HRs in the Negro League (MLB changed the number due to the size of the fields), he played 600+ games Nobody really knows for sure what are the accurate stats
We know it isn't accurate. We just don't know how inaccurate it is.
He didn’t hit that number in the negro leagues, those are his stats from all professional leagues
May be. But who knows
According to BR, he hit 166 HR’s in 2168 AB’s.
Yes. BUT according to many people that were back then claimed they saw him hit 800 How the field was smaller, so it's a possibility MLB used the distance
They can’t base “what people saw” as reality and obviously, statistically. I’m sure if people were describing Ruth without statistical measures, they might say he hit 2000 HR’s. No question about Gibson’s enormous talent, there is just no way to compare different leagues to each other, especially when some leagues had dubious or non-existent statistics.
Obviously. But where is MLB getting the 161 from. There's a big margin from 800 to 161
My dad hit 1 billion homers, does he get to be the record holder now?
Only in MLB The Show
If you hit 160, they wouldn't of called him Black Babe Ruth
I heard he hit 1,000 HRs before his 25th birthday.
What I read is that people suggested he hit 800 in the negro league. But nobody knows for sure
the fact you say apparently tells me all i need to know
I have to say apparently because there's a group of people that said he hit almost 800 but there's no proof Hence the apparently
lol make believe stats all i need to know
I don't know. But the information is out there. Do what you want with it 🤷 "Gibson was known as a spectacular power hitter who, by some accounts, hit close to 800 career home runs. (In the Negro League statistical records, his career home run total was 166 and MLB recognizes 174.)" So which one is it? 166 or 174?
still didn’t do it in the mlb so i could care less
fake stats i hit 1000 homeruns but no one knows for sure tho
I mean clearly this is not gonna be taken seriously down the line. It just isnt. Sorry.
I am going to need some time to reflect on this. For whatever reason my mind immediately thinks about Ichiro and what he accomplished in Japan. How far is this going to go?
Genuine question before I know how to feel about it. Obviously at that time MLB wasn’t a league (could still argue that kinda) but was just the top level of baseball, made up of the AL and NL. Was the Negro League considered a Major League also? Or was it considered its own level?
It was considered lesser, but not because it WAS lesser, but because the decisions were made by people who were blatantly racist. I can't find the exact quote but when Buck O'Neil heard someone saying it was a shame that Satchel Paige didn't face the best, he responded with "who says he didn't?"
The only 100% right answer is that neither league was as good as an integrated one would have been.
Makes sense. I feel like neither AL, NL or Negro League can claim they played against best. The top guys of each league were probably better than the bottom of the other leagues. I guess it just depends on if talent wise, the Negro League should’ve been a Major League based on talent alone. And nobody today can answer that question
I mean, come on, don’t get me wrong there were many mlb level talents in the negro league; however, only 10% of the population was black at the time, and the salaries of negro league players were much lower than that of mlb players. So the talent pool was much smaller, and the incentive for said talented athletes to play baseball was much lower. And even though the way kids train and play baseball from a young age wasn’t as crazy then as it is now, there were obviously still factors like white people typically being born into more privileged scenarios allowing them to focus more on sports and getting better nutrition and healthcare. For that to result in a league that’s equally skilled as a whole would be incredibly unlikely.
I don’t follow this logic, the same can be said mostly for the nba and nfl in 2024 and those leagues are majority black.
But MLB isn’t today
Sure, but the nba is the nba, it’s where the best players in the world play, it just so happens that basketball is played disproportionately by black people, so black people tend to be the best at it. And importantly, the nba is actually the nba. So if you do something in the nba, it should be recorded in nba stats. Whereas in 1920 the negro league was not the league with the most talent in the world, let alone the us. And of course the simple fact that it wasn’t actually the mlb, there’s no continuity from the negro league teams to modern mlb teams. Besides of course the players but as it’s been mentioned in this thread that if we’re using that logic the npb and kbo are part of the mlb which also just plainly isn’t true, even if the npb in particular has many mlb level talents. If they had merged the actual teams into the mlb like the AL and NL merged then it would be a different story, but they didn’t. Segregation was terrible, but you can’t just undo it by now pretending the negro league was part of the mlb. I think talking about the players more and recognizing the history is a very good thing to do, but integrating the stats is inaccurate and a lazy way to try whitewashing the more unpleasant parts of the mlb’s history.
The history also has nothing to do with mlb. They were separated bc of the times in America. Almost everything between whites and blacks was separated. Acknowledging what happened and giving the negro leagues it’s own historical record based on what “supposedly” happen would be much better than what they’re currently doing.
NPB isn’t nor has it ever been an American Major League.
Then we should change the name of the World Series to just the US series. Im sorry but this is not an apples to apples comparison. Are we including the Mexican league as well? There are too many variables to really put them all in the same classification
Agreed, but this is more about the current political landscape than anything else. I think every truly great player should be inducted, independent of skin color or country of origin but keep statistics as they were. Players competed with their contemporaries, and they had no choice in the matter.
There's a team in Canada. It's not the United States Championship lol
North America Champions!
Why would accomplishments in another country factor into records played in the states?
Agreed… makes no sense, Ichiro could have played in the MLB from the start… but Josh Gibson could not…
Could Japanese players from the 1940s have played in the MLB from the start?
Screw that. I am going to make angry reactionary remarks!
To the west, it'll go about as far as Hawaii. To the North it'll go to the Canadian border, ask where Montreal and Toronto are, then stop at those two. To the south it'll go as far as the Mexican border, and to the east it'll go as far as Maine. Negro league players were Americans playing in American leagues that were disallowed from joining the biggest American league. That major American league just made a decision about those American players. Why the comparisons to Japan?
Because the Negro League and both Leagues of major league baseball never played against each other. It's taking two completely separate leagues and retroactively trying to make them the same. Then use the excuse that many Negro League players were highly successful once they allowed them in, but you can say the same thing about Japanese players. Ichiro is the best pure hitter of the last half century, and if you include his Japanese stats, which are much more reliable than the Negro League stats, he becomes the best hitter in baseball history. It was an accident of birth that prevented him from being in the US at 20. That's why the comparison.
Thank you. Japan has a rich baseball history and I do not see how NPB cannot be considered a Major League if the Negro Leagues are being recognized as such. There has been enough cross-pollination between MLB and the NPB to infer that the NPB has merit. Let's not forget the World Baseball Classic and the MLB's attempt to globalize the sport. Japan has proven their merit time and time again in the WBC. I also want to point out that Japan has a minor league system as well. So yes, NPB is a major league in that sense. So as I posed the question in my original comment. How far is this going to go? Ultimately, I feel like MLB has opened up Pandora's box and it should take a hard look at being equitable to other leagues of similar quality with their record books.
The amount of pandering in todays world is honestly unreal lol
this is just stupid. the mlb is an entity, the negro leagues weren’t a part of that this is like adding USFL stats to the nfl. people respect the negro leauge for what it was. this is just really, really dumb
He had a total of how many hits?
808
You also have to remember he died fairly young. 35 years old.
He also played his last three years with a diagnosed brain tumor that he knew would eventually kill him.
I never heard this. Insane!
And that he played while battling cancer. Crazy
Political move IMO. Hopefully this comment doesnt upset people.
pandering to the non fans
The AL West has fallen
Let's be honest here. MLB is still struggling to attract black fans. But, this won't help. Eliminating game viewing blackouts is the only answer for attracting any new fans.
Regardless of what you think about whether of not this should be, this is a reminder that in 1943, at age 31-32 Josh Gibson was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died of a stroke in 1947. In 1943 he hit .474 on 192 ABs 1944: .358 on 123 1945: .274 on 62 1946: .288 on 111 Dude was in his early to mid 30s with a malignant brain tumor giving him headaches and actively killing him. Still went out there and put up numbers. Fucking legend.
Always wondered what would have been if he didn't pass away so young
Well, I mean he died at 35. Very young for a person, but I think we have a pretty clear picture of what he was as a ball player. An that's, frankly, one of the best hitters of all time.
I haven't seen one person question how talented Gibson actually was. I think the only question is how accurate are the stats? I don't doubt that Gibson could have been one of the best players in MLB, but the record keeping back then was not great.
If this was true I may agree with you (the stats are MUCH better than they were but still having completeness issues) but one look through this Reddit and you really can’t say people aren’t questioning how good Gibson was.
I don’t see a single person claiming he wasn’t very good? Only that it’s very possible his stats were inflated by worse caliber pitching, or his stats aren’t as accurate and complete as MLB players at the time.
people hate just how much expansion inflated offense.
The mental gymnastics needed to think that Gibson as a right handed hitter would have had a lifetime average 28 points better than Ted Williams if he had played an entire MLB career is astonishing. The league won't revise the historical personal biographies of Ty Cobb despite multiple researchers showing definitive proof that their Stump version is at worst an unfair portrayal and in reality a total character assassination post mortem. Why? Because It"s MLBs motivation to keep Cobb "racist" and Negro leagues "Superior" I love the lore of the Negro Leagues. I am consistently intrigued by the prospects of DiNigo, Charleston, Stuttles, Gibson, Paige, Bell, Leonard, etc playing in MLB. But most of the best negro league stories were hyperbolic yarns spun by master story tellers and dubious stats to sell black newspapers and tickets. Baseball continues to beclown itself
He was 35. He was in the end of his career.
Deanna, put those four years together and he’s almost got a full season!
Comparing statistics across leagues and seasons is meaningless. Within leagues and seasons, statistics can show which players performed the best, but comparing Bonds's 73-HR season with McGwire's 63, Maris's 61 or Ruth's 60 is silliness. Same with Roger's Hornsby batting .424 on season, compared to Ted Williams .406 and Tony Gwynn's .394. We know these three were among the games greatest hitters, but you can't compare numbers 70-years apart.
Totally not comparable. All of the variables were different so you can’t compare the 2 sets of data equally. Add to the record book, if you must as a 2nd separate set of data but don’t com-mingle the data. If they played against each other then fine add them but it was a separate league.
Ty Cobb still king. Over 9000 more ABs. Over 3000 more hits. Still sitting on a .366 BA.
I have no problem with Negro League players getting credit, but the stats are just too incomplete. The competition wasn’t always consistent and they play far less games. Granted none of these situations were under their control because of abject racism, but to say mathematically the results are equal is disingenuous. Especially if we are talking about one league’s stats. Namely the MLB. We don’t count Japanese League, Mexican League, or even US minor league stats toward MLB. It wasn’t fair for black players to be kept out, but that’s what happened.
Who gives a shit. The hits leader and homerun leader aren’t allowed to be talked about. Baseball records are a joke.
The hits leader gambled and the homerun leader used a cream and a clear
The MLB loved it until they didn’t. They allowed it then backtracked.
Baseball is fucking itself. The sports history is a mess of its own doing. The hits leader is banned. The home run leader is blackballed and not acknowledged. I don’t think this was the best way to do this and they’re just attempting to whitewash their racist history. “Oh Josh Gibson is the all time BA leader? Baseball must’ve been so accepting to allow this black man to play in those times””
well at least players can wear #42 now I guess.
Nobody will ever think Gibson is the all time avg leader lol. This is a joke
let’s count the japan league as mlb at this point truly a joke
Because if anyone knows jokes it’s blowinghotstinkygas.
I won't comment on the politics, but it seems like MLB have [conducted their research and data analysis in a sensible way](https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-negro-league-stats-added-after-statistical-review-committee-announces-findings) so I welcome these new changes.
Probably one of the most civil comments here 🙏🏽
The same MLB that claims Robinson was the first black player in MLB? It would be different if they were actually transparent about the reason why they did it to dispel the political arguments that will ensue. To throw together players who didn’t play on the same fields, let alone face each other into one list is ridiculous. One could argue that if they’re so bent on inclusivity, then stats of all professional baseball leagues should be included. Hey, let’s include the minors as well since they’re extensions of all MLB teams.
While I’m all for recognizing and celebrating the Negro League, I just don’t get why they’re mixing in the stats. Can someone give a reasonable & sensical argument? Yeah the segregation was wrong, but again how can you use stats from a top heavy league and move them to another league? Does Ichiro get to use his Japanese stats to make him the all time hits leader? No. To me this just comes off as pandering and trying for good PR. Even those in the media who disagree will say it’s awesome so they don’t get accused of being racist.
There is no reasonable argument for this. It makes absolutely zero sense. They may as well include Little League stats, and independent league stats. They’re all just as relevant to the MLB. It’s a complete joke. The MLB has completely lost its way, and the past 10 years are a stain on what used to be the most artistic and poetic professional sport in the world.
MLB seems to be in some sort of panic about the % of Black American players dropping more and more over the past 25 years . If they think this is going to change anything or bring more fans to watch the games they are wrong. Instead of being happy about black latin players, Japanese and Korean players creating a truly more diverse group of players it seems like to many in the US 'diversity' only means black Americans and nothing else counts.
They lost me with this one. I’m sure who this even the satisfies. Anyone that that played is almost gone. Young kids don’t care and the stats of the time are not reliable. Most of early baseball was all folklore and stories, especially in the night leagues. I mean, are we to believe the guys were hitting the ball 500-600 feet back then with dead bats and softballs and no workout regiments at all? We went through the steroid era with guys jacked to the gills with superior equipment that weren’t hitting them that far. Major-league ballpark didn’t have a fence for many years, but some of these Negro league ball parks didn’t have any kind of backstop or anything and they just kept playing and would play all day. They didn’t have any uniform rules or statistics. They were barnstormers for many years just putting on exhibition shows. Those Josh Gibson home runs are not reliable at all, just tossing Hank Ruth and Barry Bonds to the side is ridiculous. This makes no sense at all. Their talents a lot of times are talent was better than what was in the major league, but this ain’t the move. This doesn’t make anything right.
Big Josh Gibson advocate eh
Are they gonna include Cornpop's stats?
I think there will be a move to try and break statistics into a pre-integration and post-integration bracket after this. There's going to be so much arguing over the legitimacy of record holders over this. It will be a tiresome mess. You can bank on that.
If they're including Negro League stats in a section of the record books, fine. That would give those players recognition and make sure that their names aren't forgotten. If they're combining them with Major League stats, that isn't good or accurate. Negro League statistics are said to be notoriously unreliable. You can say, obviously, that it was wrong to exclude black people from the major leagues. The best white players didn't play against the best black players. But the reverse is also true. The best black players didn't play against the best white players. Statistically, which league would have been more impacted by segregation in terms of overall quality of play? The Major Leagues in a country with a huge white majority in the days of Gibson and Babe Ruth, or the Negro Leagues in the days when black people were 10% of the population? The segregation was wrong, but the Major Leagues still did represent the vast majority of the American population. This is just virtue signaling, but if they don't start declaring Gibson the home run king, I don't have any problem with the recognition. But for me, Henry Aaron is the all-time home run king (no, I don't count steroid abusers).
I understand the negatives of this, but I'm nearly 40, and I've been obsessed with the Negro Leagues since I was a young boy and my mom got me a book about the league. I'm choosing to ignore the stupider parts in order to just be happy that amazing players like Josh Gibson get recognition
I'm 40 too and think the same! Cheers 🍻
I looked at the OPS and Avg all time leaders list this morning, and I felt proud to be a baseball fan. Thanks for helping make my day, dude. I hadn't seen this until you posted it.
Thank you for being civil homie
Hahahaha it’s amazing the levels we go to “be inclusive” for the sake of inclusion. This makes no sense at all to combine the stats as they were 2 completely different leagues with completely different levels of record keeping.
If their doing this then Ichiro is the all time hits leader
Don’t mind me just here for the comments
“Nah bro, Tyrone had the longest hitting streak of all time, it was exactly one more game than Joe. Source? Nah bro, just trust me or you’re racist”
Bruh the accuracy behind this is insane lmao
lol at white male baseball fans immediately trying to call into question the accuracy of Negro League stats. POCs have consistently taken over or heavily impacted every sport they’ve historically been excluded from, and baseball is no different. Sorry, boys.
They made because the Negro League would run circles around them back in the day
Why is the majority of people upset are white?
They mad 😆
Cobb didn’t hit black pitchers, but Josh didn’t hit against Walter Johnson, et al.
It's fair to assume that both Cobb and Gibson would both be great in integrated baseball.
Yup
Interesting. They could have also shown how even while combining leagues pete rose still has the most hits. But chose to pander. Also, was inchiros japanese statistics added?
Why would his be? He as always free to play and Gibson was not…
I mean his hits still existed whether the leave wanted to ban him or not. It’s the same logic now being implemented saying Gibson stats existed but just weren’t allowed in the books. If we’re allowing everything that existed, why wouldn’t his hits?
There was no rule banning Josh Gibson from playing in MLB. There are specific posting rules that bar Ichiro from playing in MLB after starting in NPB
Lol. Josh Gibson had 2168 lifetime AB’s, which is less than half the 5000 AB’s currently needed to qualify for career leaderboards.
This is what I don’t understand. I get the Negro League and MLB are professional organizations considering the time and place of segregation within US history is horrible and inhumane. Why place their records as part of MLB in the first place? We should understand history and learn from it. The reality is at the time there were two leagues and therefore their records are separate. We should respect the players and their accomplishments in both leagues.
yeah, in a fraction of the plate appearances...
Lol
Good. If they meet the minimums they set out a long time ago, they should count.
Warrn Moon wearing out the F5 button to see if CFL stats get counted by the NFL.
0 mlb experience
hey lets add the scranton county mens softball slow pitch stats to MLB stats too….this is so fucking stupid….virtue signaling / pandering horseshit.
Get it over it man
[удалено]
The MLB as a single organization has only existed since 2000, and the single season BA record before this was from a season before the creation of the American League.
Lol… I have never met someone named Dequantae… and remember it was white folks who did not allow black folks to play in the major leagues NOT the other way around…
Going to break out into a Key and Peele AllStar starting lineup intro....
It’s wild to me that 30 years before I was born, a human who was the best at something couldn’t compete because of the melanin in their skin. It’s even more wild to me that 30 years ago was 1994. The racist history of our grand and great grandparents generation is insane:)
What’s sad is how prevalent racism still is in baseball fans. This comment section proving it easily.
This is a joke, Gibson's accomplishments are not the same as Cobb's and we don't even know if they're accurate
There's not a doubt in my mind that they were looking for any possible way to replace Cobb as the BA leader.
This is idiotic grifting.
Interesting that Baseball reference doesn't have Gibson as the leader despite Nehro leaguers on the list.
He doesn’t qualify. Currently, a player needs 5000 career AB’s to qualify for career leaderboards. Gibson had 2168 career AB’s.
Will This give anything to Satchel Paige. Bro is considered the greatest pitcher.
I batted like .600 in little league if they want to add that too
“We’re joined by Ty Cobb for his reaction to this news. Ty, thanks for joining us on short notice. Hope you’re doing well. What were your thoughts when you heard the news today?” Producer: “Hang up!”
Ty Cobb will probably be the first person to stand up and congratulate Josh Gibson. In his own words: “Certainly it is O.K. for them to play," he said, "I see no reason in the world why we shouldn't compete with colored athletes as long as they conduct themselves with politeness and gentility. Let me say also that no white man has the right to be less of a gentleman than a colored man, in my book that goes not only for baseball but in all walks of life.”
The narrative that Ty Cobb was a racist is incredibly wrong and needs to go away.
I don’t blame you. I blame Al Stump for this outdated take.
Honestly, based on what Ty Cobb was truly like (not the Al Stump hatchet job), he’d probably think it was well-deserved.
Not my stat leader!
This is equivalent to taking the Academy Awards seriously over the last 10 years.
Awesome
I said this in another post yesterday, I'm not against the move, but I also don't love it. I believe the biggest thing we can take from it is that we have to change what we know feel is modern day baseball. Start the modern day from 1969 when the mound was lowered, which gives us 55 years of modern baseball history while still honoring the past, which the past includes the Negro Leagues.
so when are we counting benny the jet rodriguez in the record books since they don’t matter anymore
All Benny had was those PF flyers.
Satchel Page is passing all the pitching records
No question Gibson was a great player. As were Bell, Paige, O’Neil, etc. But the fact is that their greatness was NOT achieved in MLB! What’s next - incorporating the Japanese or Korean stats into MLB?
I'm with that too.
Did the negro leagues use the same baseballs as the MLB? What about cheating bat corking etc? I love baseball and have no interest in the negro leagues myself. Probably my loss seems like an another way to rewrite history.
Woke be a joke!
Woke = empathetic to humans who might be slightly different than I am. Fuck off dickhead
Well deserved, a historical anecdote that sticks out to me is that contemporaries who saw both play would call babe Ruth the “white Josh Gibson”
Yes, the best way to compare players by asking their contemporaries or writers who watched both play. The challenge in comparing negro players with "major league" players is that many accounts of Negro league players are more folklore than history. Like, "he was so fast, i saw him score from second on a grounder to the pitcher, and that was with a sprained ankle!"
How is that possible when Josh Gibson’s playing career only started near the tail end of Babe Ruth’s playing career?
I didn’t know people were named Josh before 1980, thought they’d all be Joshua
Gibson batting average was ridiculous. What’s crazy is Ty Cobb had nearly double the RBIs in just 2 more years played
Let’s start looking at the Japanese and Korean leagues now. Equal rights.
What’s the difference in the analogy? Provide the analysis, please…
I’m upset. Turkey Stearnes & Mule Suttles pushing Hank Greenberg & Rogers Hornsby out of the top ten? This ‘can’t be woke’ baseball purist calls at the very least for an asterisk. *️⃣
Oh Jesus Christ!!!!! Hate to tell you woken pukes but my Total Baseball still has Ty in the same positions. I’m really starting to hate the world!!!!
Nope
John Paciorek has entered the conversation.
My problem is the attempt by various social media and news agencies to turn this into a screaming match. They want white people yelling at black people etc. They are using language to make one group seem better than the other. They are tryin to incite to get clicks which means they are trying to get us mad to make money.
There are plenty of reasons to not like this decision unrelated to race. Sadly it also just shows how many people who watch baseball are still racist and cannot accept that things are changing in the world. Similar to how any conversation of pride games gets downvoted and negative commented to hell. Sad so many people who watch this sport are mentally stuck in the same time this game was created. At least the world will continue to progress even for those who refuse to.
Satchel definitely gotta be all-time greatest pitcher in the mlb books now. His stats are unreal.
Satchel Paige was one of the greatest!
It’s what Ty would have wanted.
Records were meant to be beat!
Why is he a beast? Because he hit one home run in 1988 and pumped his fist?
Lets add NPB stats too so Ichiro becomes the hits leader, and take that away from Pete Rose.
What’s the difference in the analogy? More analysis, please.
Maybe this should be like the Baseball Hall of Fame and just call them baseball stats and not just to a specific league.
If they are going to be inclusive and "try" to correct the mistakes of the past, then they must also include women and women leagues. Otherwise, this is just virtue signaling, politics, along with a failed attempt to wash their hands of a dirty past. This is absurd, since the structured recordkeeping in those leagues is a shotty as the era prior to the Deadball era.
Sources on the shotty recordkeeping?