It is a shame that the baseball fans who genuinely argue for the inclusion of Negro League statistics as part of the major league record have had their arguments overshadowed by people who are solely interested in creating confrontation. For example, one Facebook commentator posted early-on in the debate that if you can’t accept the Negro League statistics as part of the major league record then, “You are a racist. It is that simple.” It is never that simple, but this debate has often been that ignorant.
The legitimate debate has been interesting and enlightening beginning with the reminder that several different leagues have been deemed “major” and have had their statistics included in the overall totals. In 1968-1969, Major League Baseball reviewed its list of what leagues were “major” in preparation for the publication of The Baseball Encyclopedia, a weighty tome (literally—it weighs 6.5 pounds) listing every major league player and his statistics up to that time. Leagues so designated as major included the American Association (1882-1891), the Union Association (1884), the Players’ League (1890), and the Federal League (1914-1915). I had never given it much thought until now, but why are the Union Association (1884) and the Players’ League—both of which lasted only one full season—considered “major?” Why are either of the other two, for that matter? Six of the twelve Union Association teams for example, never came close to completing their seasons. The National Association, the first professional baseball league (as opposed to the first professional team) was reclassified as a minor league because of the NA’s “erratic schedule and procedures,” according to the Negro Leagues Statistical Review Committee (NLSRC) quoting that 1968-1969 report. This is the committee that just released its own report declaring that Negro League statistics will be part of the Major League record, and it is this report that has stirred all the controversy.
Further in the report the NLSRC writes, “The parity of Negro League play with that of the American and National Leagues is beyond dispute.” Despite the committee’s disclaimer, there is a great deal of “dispute” out there among fans and scholars.
If the Negro Leagues were major and the statistics are to be considered as such, then I need more than a 17-person committee’s say-so. I know all about Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, et.al, but tell me about the average player; show me the performance of the league as a whole. I haven’t found it so far.
There is no link to any Negro League statistical data base on the MLB website. The Seamheads.com website has been working on Negro League statistics for several years, but there are no Negro League seasonal or career lists that I can find there. Random teams from random years have rosters with accompanying statistics on Seamheads.com, but that’s all I have come across. Baseball Reference.com now includes Negro Leaguers among its leader lists, but I can’t find a compilation of Negro League statistics for any Negro league in any season.
In fact, Tetalo Vargas now resides at the top of the single season batting average list for his .471 average in 1943. Josh Gibson is now listed second behind Vargas with a .466 average, also in 1943, but that in itself raises red flags concerning the quality of the league for at least that year. Not one, but two players hitting above .465 in the same season? Were these two that good or was the league akin to Senior Softball where everyone is expected to hit .400? Put another way, was the average player in the Negro Leagues similar to Mario Mendoza or Juan Soto?
Vargas’ team, the New York Cubans played a 34-game schedule in 1943, and the center fielder amassed 136 plate appearances. I wonder what the results would be if you took the best 34-game stretch of any number of players from Ty Cobb to George Brett to Luis Arráez. Would any of them top .471? If the NLSRC could tell me that no one in the history of the major leagues has ever enjoyed as productive a 34-game stretch, then such context would make Vargas’ accomplishment more meaningful—and more admirable.
Perhaps the most interesting statement in the NLSRC report is the following: “Today the 1920-1948 Negro Leagues records are estimated to be nearly 75% complete.” [Italics added.] Producing even 75% of those records would definitely provide some kind of context as to the validity of the Negro League statistics.
The next installment of this blog will examine the need for contextual consideration across all baseball statistics.
Austin Gisriel 
Entropy rules the universe in which all ordered states eventually result in disorder and chaos. Regrettably our beloved game of baseball has succumbed to the law of nature. Look at the state of uniforms and player appearance. It’s difficult to differentiate between major league city connect uniforms and circus clowns. Now my beloved Orioles uniform is being desecrated with corporate sponsor patches.
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Well said, Al. I want to watch poetry unfold on dirt and grass, but professional baseball offers up only jingles and what the odds are on how many hot dogs will be sold. And $10.00 hot dogs at that.
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I thought WordPress ate my comment yesterday. Good thing I copied it to my text editor…
“Were these two that good or was the league akin to Senior Softball where everyone is expected to hit .400?”
Or, war depleted rosters during World War II, which also affected the National and American Leagues, and the Negro Leagues would likely have been hit harder because war-related work, in the military or in factories, would have been more lucrative financially than baseball was. The 1943 season you cite looks like an outlier, but is it really any more of an outlier than, say, the 1945 National League season?
That also touches on why Negro League seasons were short. Teams played their league schedule, and they played as many or even more games than their league schedule as barnstorming exhibitions where the money was good. And then you had some major league owners in on it, too, because Negro League money was good for them–Clark Griffith in Washington paid for equipment for the Homestead Grays because they outdrew his Senators, he got a cut of the take, and the Grays money kept his team profitable. (There’s a whole book about the relationship between the Grays, the Senators, Griffith, and integration, In the Shadow of the Senators, which I recommend.)
And this brings us back to your basic point–the Negro Leagues need context that the raw stats don’t provide. I know and understand some of that context because I’ve cared to learn it, and I think you understand it too because you’re questioning it, but someone going to the MLB website for the first time to read up on, for example, Buck Leonard, isn’t automatically going to get the nuances you cite.
I firmly believe that Josh Gibson deserves every one of the accolades MLB has just awarded him. If I had a time machine, he’s the player before my time I’d most want to see. (Three-Finger Brown would be a close number two, though. Maybe the Merkle’s Boner game, because then I’d get to see Christy Mathewson, too.) But I also know enough to not scoff when people disagree. Heck, Scott Simon and Howard Bryant both expressed some uneasy skepticism about the Negro League statistics a few weeks ago on Weekend Edition Saturday–uneasy, because they know that Gibson was that good; skepticism, because they too know the pitfalls of the statistical record.
The problem you identify, ultimately, is that MLB has decided what belongs in the history of top-level professional baseball in the United States, but they’re leaving it to others, historians and scholars, to say what it means, I think because trying to explain it themselves would mean confronting the messiness of their past.
For myself, I need to find my Homestead Grays hat. Harrisburg is having a Negro League throwback game on Saturday, with a Harrisburg Giants jersey giveaway… and it just occurred to me that Harrisburg can now be considered a former major league city (Eastern Colored League), just like Providence (National League, Providence Grays) and Buffalo (Federal League, Buffalo Buffeds).
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Well-said, Allyn. It seems to me that MLB WANTS the Negro Leagues to be considered major league, but just wanting it to be doesn’t make it so. It reminds me of when I was researching book publicity when I first started writing. Almost universally the first page of any guide book was, “Write a book about something. Now that you’ve done that, get 1,000 followers on Facebook . . .” Okay . . . you skipped a couple of key items there!
Anyway, Winchester and Harrisburg have an interesting connection in the person of Spottswood Poles: https://youtu.be/4v43FmpQvhQ?si=6cED2nb8H7ZORrCc
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Speaking of Poles, Andy Linker, a beat reporter back in the day for the Harrisburg newspaper and lately an official scorer for the Eastern League, wrote a couple of books on Harrisburg baseball, and one of them, <i>One Patch of Grass</i>, has a chapter on Poles. During a rain delay some years ago I was chatting with Andy about his books, and I said to him that I thought someone should make a Spot Poles (“the black Ty Cobb”) movie, and not just for the baseball aspect, because Poles’ story is also an entrance into the black experience during World War I as a soldier in the Harlem Hellfighters. (Which were not called that at the time–they were known as the Black Rattlers–but when legend becomes fact, print the legend…) I had a vision, but as I said to Andy, I also don’t feel it’s my story to tell.
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That would make a great movie.
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This shoehorning of largely nonexistent, apples to oranges statistics into the record books is just more virtue signaling, woke strongarming by the corrupted institutions and corporations. If baseball history were a piece of property, this is eminent domain……because the highway is for the “greater good”. That’s the hopeless predicament we find ourselves in, in post-truth America.
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And the little boy said that the emperor was not wearing any clothes.
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Austin, I had a lengthy comment on this article that got lost somehow and I don’t recall enough to reproduce. BUT, I do recall a thought about the short window of opportunity you noted.
It would take some really exhaustive research go look into 30 game windows so it would take a real stats nerd to get with it. I would bet BidenBux to donuts (Query: which is more valuable?) one would find dozens of examples of better than .470 over 30 games. One might even be Ted Williams. He certainly did not bat .407 the entire season. There were ups and downs. Did any of the “ups” exceed .470? More than one player has had miserable season starts and still finished in the .300’s. There almost would have to have been big spurts to make up the ground.
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Oh, yeah. Another thought I thought I lost. Considering the success that average minorities have in today’s game relative to Whites, I am thinking the average Black players likely compared favorably to average White players. None of them had access to formalized training / conditioning. They all played on natural ability.
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Everyone was certainly playing on natural ability in the early decades of the game. How much did the undernourishment of the Depression affect ballplayers of the ’30s and even early ’40s? Good thoughts as always, Jerry. P. S. I’ll take the donuts.
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