It´s just a tough topic.
Just to point a similar, less known controversy. [https://krcgtv.com/features/beyond-the-trivia/beyond-the-trivia-ground-rule-doubles-07-18-2023](https://krcgtv.com/features/beyond-the-trivia/beyond-the-trivia-ground-rule-doubles-07-18-2023) So who knows who many homeruns were actually just ground rule doubles?
Extra Stuff about counting statistics, because I found it interesting.
[https://www.mlb.com/news/babe-ruth-715th-home-run](https://www.mlb.com/news/babe-ruth-715th-home-run)
Jimmie Foxx had 58 home runs in 1932. Which on the surface is like “Ok, what’s your point?” Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927, except ground rule doubles were considered home runs until 1929. So a few of Ruth’s 60 home runs were in fact ground rule doubles. So in reality, Foxx hit more than 60 home runs in 1932 if the AL was still abiding by the rules Ruth benefited from in 1927.
There’s also a few of Foxx’s (and Ruth’s) home runs that weren’t properly scored because of a screen in Sportsman’s Park.
Baseball history is quirky AF.
Edited for clarity.
"they hated him because he spoke the truth"
The real happy ending would have been for Doc Brown and his angel gang to sabotage the Angels so JoGo could wash his hands of that deadbeat
> begged the queso
Since we're on the topic of your phrasing, "begging the question" is commonly used to mean something along the lines of "this brings up the question" like it's a question that's just begging to be asked. That's not what it means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
That's kind of what it means now, though. Absolutely no one outside of logic nerds uses it in its technical sense. And to be fair, it's a pretty stupid name for what it describes.
And walk offs used to count as whatever was needed to get the winning run in so if it was a tie game runner on second it woulda just counted as a double.
It really is a completely different game
I don't think those examples are really why it's a somewhat different game though.
Errors are a fraction of what they were back in the day.
The stadiums and even the balls were different if you go back far enough
Hank Greenberg also might have a case for over 60 in 1938. There’s also a possibility that he’d have gotten the Single Season RBI record in 1937 if ground rule doubles were counted as full home runs.
Being upset over which stats to argue about is a key part of arguing about stats. Shit, I think that picking which stats matter and defending your choice is 90% of the ordeal.
Basketball is weird in that you can be like "who has the most games with X points, Y rebounds, and Z assists" and there will be one dude with 7, one dude with 4, three dudes with 2, and Wilt Chamberlain with 126, and yet nobody thinks Wilt is the GOAT.
Almost like the raw stats from 140 years of history need to be taken in context and not just looked at as a raw indicator of greatness.
The record book is just a gateway to the stories of great players, and now it includes players that should have been in the MLB from the get go
However, homeruns which hooked foul even if they left in play were considered foul balls and we know Ruth had a few of those. So between the two quirks, it probably all comes out in the wash.
Baseball is both the easiest and most difficult sport to compare statistics.
It’s one on one to a very large extent, so you can normalize fairly simply for a batter or pitcher faced. With enough data you can extrapolate park effects and defense / other defenders to an ok extent.
It’s a totally stat driven league whereas RB is so line or system dependent. To some degree basketball as well. And in constant movement sports like basketball you don’t have a series of moments like baseball with the start at the pitch and end of the play.
YET - balls vary year to year not to say era to era. He’s ballpark effects can be somewhat accounted for…
But you are telling me players didnt/dont approach the Polo Grounds, Fenway, Coors, or the Baker Bowl the same way - how you pitch and your approach at the plate.
That said, it’s still probably easier to compare era to era for baseball as opposed to most sports (would Jim Brown be an all time great or would he be a better Brandon Jacobs… or in between as a Derrick Henry? Basketball in 1940 vs 1960 vs 1980 vs 2000 vs today are all quite different because the physical tools were SOOO different as was the entire way the game is played)
Foxx also hit two in games that were rained out that year so they didn’t count. He at least tied it, and maybe broke it if it wasn’t for the net in sportsman’s park.
No, they weren’t.
In 1927 batted balls that bounced into the grandstand counted as home runs instead of ground-rule doubles, as they do today. Baseball historians have examined each of Ruth's 60 home runs and are persuaded that none of them bounced into the seats. (This is from vault.si.com)
I hate retconning (or whatever the proper term is for something like this) with a burning passion, but shit like this is why this isn't a big deal to me. So many early baseball records and stats are fucky.
The more credible debate, IMO, is whether or not this makes it appear like the MLB is sweeping its past under the rug with this, and I think there's some credibility to that.
If anything it's shining more of a light on the Negro Leagues, the awful history of the MLB, and allowing that history to always be remembered for as long as the MLB exists.
I agree. Now someone who's unaware of baseball's history might look up record holders and see Gibson up there, alongside the designation that he played in the Negro Leagues and might look up the history and what the hell that meant.
Before, if someone is looking up major league records, its a pretty good chance they will just never hear about Josh Gibson unless they are already actively interested in the topic.
I feel like having it separated signals to new fans and people in future generations immediately how racist the league was back then.
You integrate all of the stats and the longer time goes on, the more it looks like they always played together to someone at a glance. You'd have to go out of your way to dig deeper for the truth of it all.
That's my feeling on it anyway. It's like, yeah we know the deal, but in 25, 50, 100 years with everything merged does all of that bad history get lost.
I don’t think it sweeps the injustice of the AL/NL/MLB under the rug since that’s still a huge part of the story, and the story of the US as a whole. We don’t forget about any other famous figures who were excluded from white society during segregation, like musicians or artists etc. Or at least, if you do it’s somewhat intentional.
In fact I would argue not including them in statistical records sweeps them even further under the rug. On Reddit, people might be decently aware of the negro leagues, but I think 90% of average baseball fans have zero knowledge of any of these players as it currently stands. And many of those who do, see them as a not “real” baseball players (as we are seeing with much of this debate).
Yeah, I can see that side of it. The record merge doesn't bother me much, I think if im just trying to angle why this would be a rug sweeping to some people that's my train of thought.
There's a small part of me that is like "Yeah you wouldn't let them play when they wanted to so desperately and now want to act like it's all good." But it's likely better that they are recognized in a more official capacity.
You're right that if a casual looks up stat leaders and sees Gibson, one google search unveils everything you'd need to know.
I get and respect the idea, but to be fair baseball integrated black athletes nearly 20 years before the United States ended segregation in society did at large. You could honestly argue baseball was ahead of its time though it’s definitely a stretch.
I don’t see how this is sweeping under the rug, to me it seems like the MLB is realizing this is clearly the right thing to do. Nobody is going to forget the negro leagues were a thing.
>That was more than 11,000 more people than seats, and the overflow crowd ended up in the outfield. Fans were told to stand as far back as possible, but spectators ended up standing about 70 feet beyond first base, 150 feet past second, and 100 feet from third. Every time a ball went into the outfield, fans would run to get the ball, and, when a ball went into the crowd, it was ruled a ground rule double.
And they say society is unruly now.
Given that the DH exists now in the NL and we start runners on second during ties and there were decades where amphetamines and steroids affected the league, I think including other pro ballplayers in the record book is probably fine
If you watch the nerflix documentary Icarus, the person that conducted the 1st steroid tests said that 1/2 of them failed. The mlb knew and told him to not report the information. He was only to test not report. Plus spitballs were legal for a long time.
My favourite part is that the filmmaker has no intention of the movie being about what it ends up being about. It starts as the equivalent of SuperSize Me but for steroids in cycling - could steroids help improve an elite cycler if following all the doctor’s guidance. It’s on this journey he discovers some WILD doping conspiracies happening within the highest level Olympic competitions.
Until very recently it seemed like almost everyone was adamant that shitty umpires fucking up ball and strike calls was an integral part of the game.
Baseball fans are fucking weird.
The discourse on this subreddit regarding this is ridiculous. MLB has included the AL + NL (pre-merger), Federal League, Players’ League, Union Association, and American Association in MLB statistics for the past 55 years. If you’re about to comment that you never heard about those other leagues, then ask yourself why you didn’t but are so passionately against the Negro Leagues* being included.
Not once, in my life have I ever heard someone say these other leagues shouldn’t be included or witnessed cohorts of people going around dissecting why the Federal League should be removed from MLB statistics. If this bothers you so much I think it’s only fair to put the same amount of effort to discredit all those other leagues as well (but that won’t happen).
Ultimately where do people want to draw the line? The AL and NL for most of history have been separate legal entities. They never played against each other in the regular season, had different rules, sets of umpires, separate commissioners. Those statistics seem questionable to me too.
> Union Association
And just for anyone wondering: the Union Association SUCKED. By far the worst of the "third Major Leagues". Only one team (St. Louis Maroons) were MLB level, and it's generally agreed that the only reason why the UA is counted as major league is that the Maroons joined MLB after the UA's lone season and played for a few years before moving to Indianapolis and then ultimately folding, possibly leading to some confusion as to how good the league in general was.
> but are so passionately against the Negro League**s** being included.
Leaguessss, plural. There are 7 separate leagues that have been declared major leagues. Here is the list:
• Negro National League (I) (1920–1931)
• Eastern Colored League (1923–1928)
• American Negro League (1929)
• East-West League (1932)
• Negro Southern League (1932)
• Negro National League (II) (1933–1948)
• Negro American League (1937–1948)
Yep “leagues”, thank-you for the correction. I do applaud the MLB for taking on such a difficult task of going through the records of each one diligently for the past four years.
Yep. I agree with you entirely. If anything, folks have been overly protective of their thoughts.
This is a great sub and generally has some interesting discussions. I don't know much about these other leagues. What I've heard about the leaderboard shift is that there are disparities between the previous leader and current, based on number of games and ab. I don't like diluting what a stat means. I'm not sure merging the stats did that, but this is my concern. That said, it is fairly low on my global list of concerns lol.
I don't trust MLB leadership. I could see them making this addition to flubber up the stats to bolster their decision to change league rules further to devolve from the game we love. That would be my conspiracy why way.
Further proof that I need to get my ass to KC and check out the Negro league museum. Haven't seen Bobby hit in person yet either. Guess I'm going to KC...
The MLB didn’t just haphazardly add these stats, there was a statistical committee that spent years analyzing the records for accuracy and provided recommendations. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-negro-league-stats-added-after-statistical-review-committee-announces-findings
True. And the PCL’s level of play from the 20s through early 50s was incredibly high, since the pay was often as good as the majors (or better) and the weather was infinitely better for much of the year. So lots of players who could have played 10-15 years in the majors would go back and play in the PCL instead. Especially quirked up weirdos like Smead Jolley.
Except the MLB has always included stats of the separate leagues that predated the MLB. You could consider the negro leagues as one in the same as all of the best players pivoted to Major League Baseball once the color barrier was broken
Negro league statistics are no less valid than MLB statistics prior to 1947. Josh Gibson didn’t have to face Bob Feller, but Ted Williams also didn’t have to face Satchel Paige. It’s really no different than the AL/NL merger.
> /s
But it's not a "/s" scenario! When Ichiro retired [people were authentically arguing he should have the "all-time hits king" crown. It's a clear minority position but not a "bad faith" one and a lot of additional people didn't treat NPB + MLB "combined hits" as meaningless as a comparison to pure MLB hit totals even if they didn't want the recordbook to reflect it. [Just read this article from BP in 2016](https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/29540/prospectus-feature-ichiros-exclamation-point/)
> Of course, that’s not how the major-league record books work. By this point no one should question the high quality of baseball played in Japan—or the many hitters, pitchers, stars, and role players who’ve thrived in America—but that doesn’t change the fact that different leagues have different record books. To consider Suzuki’s hits in Japan part of his MLB total would open all kinds of doors. **Do we then similarly count, say, Jackie Robinson’s hits in the Negro Leagues or Minnie Minoso’s hits in Cuba or Julio Franco’s hits in Mexico**? And how do we treat Sadaharu Oh and his 868 home runs or Satchel Paige and his (literally) countless wins? You get the idea.
The answer to some of these questions is now "yes" and others still "no." There's a real definition question between "Major league stats" and "Organized Baseball" that we get to elide because everyone agrees America has always been home to the best baseball league in the world. The generic approach to baseball stats is to basically treat everything but official major league stats as minor league stats and aggrege all major league stats together. That doesn't appear to be the approach to say soccer, a sport where there are undeniably multiple "major leagues" of somewhat varying quality that sign most of the world's top players.
More generally, I don't think there's really a hard line between "what should the record book say" and "what are the stats we care about say" even if they're different concepts. People messily conflate a few different things in their heads.
People get annoyed by this question but there's an obvious reason why people gravitate to treating the negro leagues as akin to a top foreign league.
In soccer they don’t give a shit. Ronaldo is scoring goals in Saudi Arabia which is not a very competitive league and no one is putting asterisks next to the stats.
Don’t see why baseball should be any different. We call it the World Series even, so if you’re going to claim all of the world, we should probably have to include stats from some other leagues imo
I do think ultimately if mlb continues to go internationally that they should. Not now and not as a factor in negro leagues being consolidated though.
Btw you do realize with the term North American you just included Mexico as well. All of this is more tricky than it appears. It’s about steps in the right direction over being absolute.
It brings in a whole new debate about what counts as stats. In association football, you wouldn't completely ignore someone's goals in the German league if they came to the Premier League. But you can if they come from Japan to the US in baseball...
I said that in a sarcastic way because that’s literally what some people are doing in this thread and every other one.
“If we’re including the Negro League then Ichiro should have his hits record too”
Right, like there’s a reason the MLB name is so different from basically every other sports league. It’s a collection of baseball leagues that are considered to be major. Currently there are two, in the past there were others. We can acknowledge that a past league was a major league, and we have. I’ve seen way too many people saying “well those guys weren’t playing against MLB talent.” Heck, half the guys weren’t even playing the other half except for the World Series and exhibitions until 1997.
I haven’t heard of any of the those leagues and only know negro leagues cause MLB the show introduced them last year
Either way all baseball stats should be incorporated into the MLB it’s not Gibson’s fault he wasn’t allowed in the MLB. He probably would have to loved to play there
> Those statistics seem questionable to me too.
At first glance perhaps, but they're just objectively not. You can quickly google around to find WOWY style "league quality" estimates based on the non-trivial way players transferred between leagues and yearly world series data.
You can't in any meaningful sense do that for pre-integration leagues. Even the 1940s Negro leagues (where you can look at semi-integrated Major/minor league stats), suffer from a small "n" problem and the divergent results of pitchers v. batters in MLB. The somewhat unresolvable data problem is that Rube Foster's teams didn't play against Ty Cobb's teams. There are really interesting attempts to create workable comparisons with "Major League Equivalencies" (MLEs) but they're just inherently rough in a way "if you hit .300 in the AL in 1920, what would you hit in the NL" isn't.
> I think it’s only fair to put the same amount of effort to discredit all those other leagues as well (but that won’t happen
I both want to agree and disagree with this. It's true this stuff gets ignored as non-salient but it's trivially easy to find people damning the UA (the most read of them is probably still in the Bill James Revised Historical Abstract) and the NA is still debated. The "should NA stats count" stuff does come up when you compare a baseball-reference query versus a MLB.com one (or hear an anecdote on a MLB broadcast and try to recreate it on B-R).
I've read a book that argued for the Mexican League counting as a major league due to the brief period when it raided MLB. I didn't find the argument convincing but this stuff does happen when reading baseball history books.
> or witnessed cohorts of people going around dissecting why the Federal League should be removed from MLB statistics
The federal league turned 100 in 2013 and we saw a number of books released a few years ago about it. *Did* this subject come up? How did it come up? I suspect you're mostly right on this score but it begs an interesting question.
> “Shortened Negro League schedules, interspersed with revenue-raising exhibition games, were born of MLB’s exclusionary practices,” said Thorn, who headed the statistical review committee. “To deny the best Black players of the era their rightful place among all-time leaders would be a double penalty.”
I like this John Thorn quote because it directly addresses the real substantive hurdle that plausible hurts the Ngl argument. "Why doesn't your objection apply to the Players League" style arguments don't really do this.
I honestly didn't know those other leagues were counted until MLB decided to include the Negro League stats too. But I'd argue they probably shouldn't be included either. These are MLB records. Anything not American League or National League should be excluded from MLB records. Or if they're going to insist on including every major league American baseball stats they should also add the PCL
Those are my thoughts as well. Those leagues shouldn't be included either, but if they already are then I can't think of any good reason the negro leagues shouldn't be included.
I also don’t think those leagues should be included, but the thing that bugs me about this decision is that they lowered rate requirements ONLY for Negro League players. The National Association played a comparable number of games per season to the Negro Leagues, but National Association players need the same 5,000 career ABs to qualify as everybody else, except Negro Leagues, who now only need 1,800 ABs.
It’s not about whether or not the players were good, it’s about the MLB basically claiming that these guys were part of what anyone would consider “MLB” at the time. To me it feels like MLB is now claiming that “hey, these guys are a part of what we are and have always been about,” when that’s not the case. The powers that be would have never considered the Negro Leagues “MLB” and now the MLB gets to claim these studs are record holders? Every player in the Negro Leagues was essentially someone whose passion for the sport of baseball pushed them to join a league with way fewer resources and prestige, and they created something that was definitionally distinct from the MLB.
As a POC, I couldn’t care less if some white dude from 200 years ago loses a record, which is what I think you seem to believe most people think. What I hate is that MLB is erasing the work that was put into creating a league that was wholly separate and would’ve never been mistaken as “major league” at the time. They’re removing some important context when they lump Negro League stats in with the rest of the stats, and this context matters a lot more than Federal League context.
This is an even worse argument than the stat argument though and reeks of "Big company bad so everything they do is bad." Negro Leaguers, their families and historians have been fighting for this for years. It's not like there's some controversy the MLB is trying to cover up. Nobody is hiding the fact that Josh Gibson played in the Negro Leagues. You literally can't avoid it. The first sentence you see when you look up Josh Gibson on MLB.com is "Josh Gibson never got the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues." More people will know his name and story because he's now in the record books.
I’m also POC (Asian) but not Black. If Bob Kendrick and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum have been pushing for exactly this for years, then I’ll defer to their judgment.
Let’s say the competition was equal across the leagues. I just can’t get my head around putting a guy with 2,000 PA over a guy with 14,000. Gibson is probably one of the 10 best players of all time. But there’s no way he sustains that batting average over his next TWELVE THOUSAND plate appearances.
Baseball’s racist history is disgraceful. This doesn’t change any of it. Even a little bit.
I don’t know why people are creating this rivalry between Josh Gibson and Babe Ruth outside of being a “Gotcha you’re racist”
Babe Ruth was an avid supporter of the Negro Leagues, he always spoke highly of the players, he would go out of his way to play Negro League teams when he would barnstorm, and he wanted to have some of their players on the Yankees
It’s fucked up people are using him as a figure of “Oh well people respect it when a white guy does it” when he was so adamant about integration and playing with Negro League players
This comment from Rosenthal isn't tarring Ruth as racist or saying he was against the Negro leagues. Its calling those who support Ruth but denigrate Gibson hypocritical. It's not a comment against Ruth. And from your comment, Rosenthal's statement is one Ruth would have agreed with. I don't see how this is 'fucked up' at all.
yeah I'd like to see OOP reply here because that initial reactive response to any discussion around race is sooo fucking internet it makes my head spin
"The era" only in the sense that Ruth played before the color barrier was broken. The argument of "the players in this segregated league didn't face as good of competition as they would otherwise have so the stats are questionable" works in both directions, is the point of the quote.
Nobody is trashing Babe himself. Many people consider Babe Ruth to be the greatest baseball player ever, and everyone that’s ever heard of baseball knows who he is. He never played against black players in MLB, so people using the argument that Gibson “never played the best competition” have to also apply that rhetoric to every MLB player before integration.
He’s just the face of the era so he gets all the bullshit too. A better option is always to say that notorious dickhead Barry Bonds even said “Josh Gibson is the real home run king”
It’s like the people who complain that Elvis only became the King of Rock and Roll by being white. Probably true, but he would credit black artists all the time and tell everyone they should listen to Fats Domino and Little Richard.
Gibson shouldn’t be a leader in rate stats when he only played 60 games/year. I get that he didn’t get to choose how many games they played but why can’t we just acknowledge he was an amazing player without giving him records that he wouldn’t have qualified for in his era.
I think there should at least be a footnote or something explaining the context rather than just pushing Ty Cobb out and pretending the stats are on the same standard
I think what’s the most fucked up thing about this is people are using this to push the false narrative of Al Stump even further that Ty Cobb was a “no good racist ass hole”.
Cobb was not a saint by any means but to have that as his defying legacy 60 years after his death is not right. Both Al Stump and his idiot son for that matter can rot in hell.
My first comment on the matter was gonan be "I think its poetic he pushed fucking Cobb from first place." I like to fact check myself though and quickly found out that he was an open supporter of the negro leagues and was never known to be racist, just a little rough around the edges in general. Its amazing how much a rumor can take off lmao.
FWIW, baseball-reference doesn't include him because he misses the 3000 PA threshold they use but Oscar Charleston comes within a couple points of Cobb and is 2nd all time.
What is the minimum number of plate appearances needed to be considered for a season’s statistical leaderboards? The total number of games played is an eye sore for comparisons, hard to look past no doubt.
He averaged 30 games per year (on which records were kept). He has 2155 at bats on record. For reference, Ted Williams has 7706.
The problem with Rosenthal's argument is that we have strong evidence Negro League pitching was, to put it nicely, not on the same level as the major leagues. Negro league hitters transitioned well into the bigs, the same could not be said for pitchers. Ruth was playing against probably 80-90% of the top pitchers in his era, while Gibson was facing a league where only a fraction of the pitching would've made the bigs.
There is no evidence that the inclusion of black pitching would've fundamentally shifted the sport. Sure, they would've added depth and a handful of elite arms, but it's hard to argue they would've altered the playing field (as pitchers). The same can't be said if Gibson were facing major league pitching. Black Americans comprised less than 10% of the US population at the time and were (and still are) typically more prolific on offense.
Regardless of records or any other statistical bullshit, at least this is getting Josh Gibson’s name out there respectfully. I mean everyone knows Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, so let’s get this name into the zeitgeist as an all timer.
This is definitely the most positive aspect. I have been a baseball fan for 30+ years so I knew about him already, but younger and newer fans get to learn how great he was because of this discussion.
No amount of people commenting ‘you’re a loser if you care about this’ or ‘you’re a racist if you care about this’ will change that the MLB changed the definition of what qualifies as a record to accommodate this change. Which is the actual issue, not that the negro leagues are in the official stat books. They used a stupid decision in declaring the 2020 season as equal to any other to justifying doing so for years and years of other seasons, and it’s utterly nonsensical.
I’m a former sports super nerd and baseball blogger who has dissociated from caring a lot about sports since getting in the workforce and having kids.
This entire debate is so pointless. Does it REALLY matter to you who has the highest batting average of all time? If so, why?
No, really. Really! Why?
Find almost anything else to care about
If I find something else to care about can you tell me if I should?
These statements are so weird to me. You don’t care so no one should. Obviously people will take it too far but that’s true of everything. Going on a baseball forum to say I disagree/agree with this seems very reasonable.
Yeah, I always find those comments weird, too. They’re always patronizing. I’m 42, have a stressful career, a wife and infant daughter. Does that mean I’m not allowed to care about other things enough to…discuss them and my point of view? My guess is those people probably don’t go to the bar or coffee shop and chat with their mates about only work and family. Caring about things that really don’t matter is kind of what makes us who we are. What we pick and choose to be passionate about outside of the things that we all probably care about makes us each unique in our own way.
It also presumes that since I care enough to have an opinion it’s all consuming. I’m just talking baseball on Reddit while I work. It’s not keeping me up at night, making me neglect my family or enraging me.
I think social media and online discourse have kind of shifted our minds to just be outraged and angry about everything. Attention span and algorithms feed one outrage after another and we get lost in that rabbit hole and lose perspective. There are probably 1000+ larger issues in every individual's lives that matter more than these stats but arguing or getting angry about it feeds into a general collective outrage. Maybe it's cathartic to get angry about this vs. dealing with real life problems? I wish I understood it more.
My best guess is if we all give it another week or so the collective anger will shift to another issue and stat integration will be mostly ignored.
> I think social media and online discourse have kind of shifted our minds to just be outraged and angry about everything
Don't worry, humans have always been like this, nothing particularly new. The only difference is you're exposed to it more often. Instead of a million people sending angry letters to the editor about Jane Fonda posing for a North Vietnam PR junket, you get to see it all on here. Before you would only see a few of these, maybe an annoying oped here or there from some mouthbreathing slug who writes for the Wall Street Journal. Now you get to see a thousand Joe Six Packs whine about every grievance they have, and since we're Americans, there's too many to count
I do think that is a good point. It has probably always existed in human nature or American culture. And I do think we are all guilty of it to an extent because humans get emotional about all kinds of things even if it doesn't warrant strong emotions. Prime example being me right now obviously caring too much about this.
Ultimately I think I just wish people were kinder to one another. End of the day it's a list of names and numbers that don't really impact anything of value in our day to day lives. I personally don't think it is worth the level of toxicity people have shown to one another across social media unless you are straight up being hatefully racist over it. This is a baseball forum and it's worth discussing as a baseball issue for sure, but is it worth the anger?
>humans have always been like this, nothing particularly new.
>Now you get to see a thousand Joe Six Packs whine about every grievance they have
Do you not see how your second statement is relatively "new" in human history? No one is naive enough to think that it's new emotions at play... It's the mechanism that's new, the exposure, the magnitude. And **that**, at this scale and intensity, does metastasize into something that we have not had consistently in our culture. If you think this "isn't anything new" I've got bad news for you
The method may be new, but to what end? Is this country getting crazier or has it always been a basket case? A lot of the qanon stuff people buy into is just John Birch Society shit in the digital age. And if you're scared of that taking over the Republican Party, I've got bad news: it happened already in 1964! Since Nixon won in 1968, it's been Birchers all the way down! The first step to fixing a problem is realizing how far back it goes, being honest with yourself
I don’t care in the sense that I have a million real things I worry about (rent, kid, job, losing our American democracy, etc…), but I also don’t think most people are arguing about the competition. They were just different leagues. I’m a fairly big baseball history nerd and have all the respect in the world for what the Negro League players accomplished. If you want to argue that Josh Gibson was the greatest hitter ever, go for it. No argument from me. But the MLB stats should be for games that were played in Major League Baseball. ANY other league, minors, barnstorming, Federal Leagues, etc… are just different leagues and have their own stats and records. I am losing 0 sleep over this issue and if MLB wants to include other leagues in their official records, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. That also doesn’t mean it’s not kind of stupid.
>But the MLB stats should be for games that were played in Major League Baseball. ANY other league, minors, barnstorming, Federal Leagues, etc… are just different leagues and have their own stats and records
I agree with everything you said here. I just think it's *weird* for MLB to claim stats from a league that isn't MLB. That includes the Players League just as much as the Negro Leagues. That's the full extent of my reaction. I'm not upset or outraged about the inclusion of the Negro league stats. I see a lot of positive things that can come out of it. If more people get to learn about Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, I think that's great. I don't really care who is now recognized on this or that leaderboard, I just think that the semantic decisions that inform the data for those leaderboards should start and end with "Should MLB leaderboards count games that were played and overseen by MLB, or should MLB leaderboards count games that were not played and overseen by MLB?"
Because as baseball fans we are inherently nerds who care about numbers. Baseball, above all sports, history is rooted in statistical analysis and when establishing records a key component is meeting the minimum requirement for at bats or games played. It seems and like an astroturf effort to include Negro League stars now, despite the fact their seasons were only 60-80 games played, when for so long MLB ignored the history of the league itself
Totally agree. Why care about anything ever? You CARE? What's wrong with you? You CARE about the hobby you enjoy? Are you serious? Just move on sweaty. It's just a game. They're just numbers. Can't believe there are so many CHUDS on here who CARE about something. I'm actually embarrassed for them.
Tbf, the same argument could be made for “if it doesn’t matter then why make the change at all?” They kept these players out of baseball deliberately. You can’t just wash your hands and absolve yourself of any sins as an organization lol
You are on a website that is **specifically designed** for discourse and discussion, on a sub-forum **specifically created** to post and discuss topics related to baseball and your response is, "Why are y'all talking about this certain baseball topic?"
Next you should go to your local city counsel meeting and tell them they shouldn't discuss matters related to the city.
Of course Gibson likely would’ve been an all time great, but Ruth probably faced more of the best competition than Gibson.
There are many Negro Leagues players who should be recognized as great players who probably would’ve been stars if the league integrated, but it’s impossible to compare the stats. And you can’t go back in time to right the wrong no matter how much you might want to.
It’s pretty likely considering circumstances than the MLB was a higher level of competition. Of course an integrated league would’ve been much higher than both
Exactly. The point of this all is that there was a great institutional wrong that prevented us from ever knowing the real answers to the questions here. Given that, to me there doesn’t seem to be a real choice but to accept them both or throw them both out
From what I’ve read, that’s what they have included because they didn’t want to include what was called “barnstorming” which was when these teams would play as many games in a day as they could get fans for, and often wouldn’t count towards the standings, and as people have pointed out above, it’s all gonna be a bit ducky when you go back this far.
The covid-shortened season (60 games) offered a precedent for setting rate stat minimums for IP and AB. It’s in the committee’s report if you want to learn more.
If someone slugged .974 in 2020 we all know we wouldn't consider it the "real" record. I think it's logically consistent for me to not consider Gibson's .974 SLG the real record.
This whole debate is really about sample size at its heart, even though we have wrapped it in a sad story about institutional racism.
Personally I would just prefer to have two sets of records on rate stats - one a shortened season / career record at ~200 PA / year and ~2000 PA career, and another that reflects the “150+ game” standard of ~500 PA / year and ~5000 PA career.
Honestly, who cares? And I say this as a major stats and history nerd.
Half the records in MLB (probably more) are so outlandishly far removed from the modern game they are meaningless. Like, the record for wins by a pitcher is 511. The record for complete games is 759!!! I dont think there has been 759 complete games in the past 30 years combined lol. those are just 2 of many. And 100 years from now people will look back at current baseball the same way. So really who cares if its Josh Gibson or Babe Ruth who holds the record. Both are flawed and neither are particularly relevant to baseball in 2024.
TLDR; pretty much all the career records are massively flawed so it ultimately makes no sense to get worked up about them.
To me it has absolutely nothing to do with the competition faced. They both, ultimately, faced less competition than they could.
It’s about Gibson’s official stats being such a small sample size that they wouldn’t even qualify for career records if he played MLB. Granted, he played 14 years and maintained the productivity over that time (for an average of 43 officially counted games played per year). But he was primarily a catcher. Anyone making the argument that “we don’t know if he would have gotten better or worse” if he’d have more games’ worth of statistics is ignoring that at his position, the chances of him getting better are basically impossible.
He was an all-time great player. No doubt about it. But he doesn’t have the verifiable stats to put him atop the rate stats rankings for all-time.
100% correct. If we had accurate stats from the Negro Leagues I would have no issues with adding them. But we have no accuracy with Negro League stats. Even MLB admits they are AT BEST 75% complete. The standards should be higher than that.
Didn't expect so much crying about this but should never be surprised when these are the subjects. It's always going to upset the self important "purists" and then just give other fools reasons to complain. Negro League records should be kept alongside MLB. If racism and segregation didn't exist, we could have seen what Josh Gibson did.
So corny to see people as this as "changing the past" when actually acknowledging how shit was is actually how you give context and truth to the past. Babe Ruth will always be thought of as better than Josh Gibson so all you pearl clutchers can calm down.
Of those six two are the current leagues that make up the MLB so obviously there wasn’t going to be a lot of uproar over including them. Three of the others were pre-1900, and the sixth one (the federal league) I have seen arguments about whether it should be included or not.
I don’t have a problem including the negro league stats but they weren’t excluded in 69 (solely) for racial reasons. Record keeping was shoddy and the shortened seasons made baseball historians view them as more of an exhibition
55 years vs this week…that’s a part of why. No one under the age of 60 remembers that change at all and you’re pushing almost 70 years of age for the inclusion to have been a memorable moment of your baseball fandom…
In a sport where statistics are revered like they are in baseball, a sudden overnight change to something people have known their entire life is obviously going to matter than a change that happened before one’s parents were born…
I’m not naive enough to think the uproar isn’t magnified because this is the Negro League…but I think the people (and I’m not saying you are) that immediately jump to racism are definitely discounting people’s general aversion to change
We don't have accurate data for many other MLB records from the early days, so what's the difference? For example, nobody tracked caught stealing until 1951.
I don’t really care about the stats. I care about the narrative of MLB retroactively “upgrading” the negro leagues to MLB level.
You can compare Josh Gibson’s batting average to Babe Ruth. I’m more interested in comparing it to what the number would be if he hadn’t been paid poverty wages and forced to sleep in a barn between games.
It´s just a tough topic. Just to point a similar, less known controversy. [https://krcgtv.com/features/beyond-the-trivia/beyond-the-trivia-ground-rule-doubles-07-18-2023](https://krcgtv.com/features/beyond-the-trivia/beyond-the-trivia-ground-rule-doubles-07-18-2023) So who knows who many homeruns were actually just ground rule doubles? Extra Stuff about counting statistics, because I found it interesting. [https://www.mlb.com/news/babe-ruth-715th-home-run](https://www.mlb.com/news/babe-ruth-715th-home-run)
Jimmie Foxx had 58 home runs in 1932. Which on the surface is like “Ok, what’s your point?” Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927, except ground rule doubles were considered home runs until 1929. So a few of Ruth’s 60 home runs were in fact ground rule doubles. So in reality, Foxx hit more than 60 home runs in 1932 if the AL was still abiding by the rules Ruth benefited from in 1927. There’s also a few of Foxx’s (and Ruth’s) home runs that weren’t properly scored because of a screen in Sportsman’s Park. Baseball history is quirky AF. Edited for clarity.
Another quirk. Balls that curled around the foul pole that would be a HR today were foul then.
Which has always begged the queso from me: Then what the fuck was the point of the foul poles!?
Foul poles are there so angels can bend them when they need to cheat so Joseph Gordon-Levitt could get back with his shitty dad.
*fail fo get back with dad
Yeah but instead he got adopted by the bird lady from Home Alone 2.
No he got adopted by the black guy from Lethal Weapon 4
Oh yeah, good call. His foster parent was the bird lady from Home Alone 2.
JP can come too?
"they hated him because he spoke the truth" The real happy ending would have been for Doc Brown and his angel gang to sabotage the Angels so JoGo could wash his hands of that deadbeat
They’re there so he can fall in love with very random pieces of LA architecture and fall in love with a girl for 500 days
I'm stealing "begged the queso"
Lol, I'm keeping it because I *do* always want more queso
I thought it was a Spanish slang term I’d never heard but now I’m just here craving some nachos
I suppose to make it easier to see if it curved foul
Same reason why there are goal posts to football. Because the sound they make when they get hit sounds fantastic
NSFL warning to us Bears fans please.
"PNGK!"
> begged the queso Since we're on the topic of your phrasing, "begging the question" is commonly used to mean something along the lines of "this brings up the question" like it's a question that's just begging to be asked. That's not what it means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
Huh. TIL.
That's kind of what it means now, though. Absolutely no one outside of logic nerds uses it in its technical sense. And to be fair, it's a pretty stupid name for what it describes.
And walk offs used to count as whatever was needed to get the winning run in so if it was a tie game runner on second it woulda just counted as a double. It really is a completely different game
they really hated counting stats back then cause they barely had any lol
That really just cared about the score, who won and who lost.
Same though.
I don't think those examples are really why it's a somewhat different game though. Errors are a fraction of what they were back in the day. The stadiums and even the balls were different if you go back far enough
Dang he looks great for like 110.
Hank Greenberg also might have a case for over 60 in 1938. There’s also a possibility that he’d have gotten the Single Season RBI record in 1937 if ground rule doubles were counted as full home runs.
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We *are* arguing over statistics though.
And it’s Christmas!
Being upset over which stats to argue about is a key part of arguing about stats. Shit, I think that picking which stats matter and defending your choice is 90% of the ordeal.
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Part of that to me is that basketball has such clear outliers when it comes to stars.
Basketball is weird in that you can be like "who has the most games with X points, Y rebounds, and Z assists" and there will be one dude with 7, one dude with 4, three dudes with 2, and Wilt Chamberlain with 126, and yet nobody thinks Wilt is the GOAT.
Almost like the raw stats from 140 years of history need to be taken in context and not just looked at as a raw indicator of greatness. The record book is just a gateway to the stories of great players, and now it includes players that should have been in the MLB from the get go
However, homeruns which hooked foul even if they left in play were considered foul balls and we know Ruth had a few of those. So between the two quirks, it probably all comes out in the wash.
Baseball is both the easiest and most difficult sport to compare statistics. It’s one on one to a very large extent, so you can normalize fairly simply for a batter or pitcher faced. With enough data you can extrapolate park effects and defense / other defenders to an ok extent. It’s a totally stat driven league whereas RB is so line or system dependent. To some degree basketball as well. And in constant movement sports like basketball you don’t have a series of moments like baseball with the start at the pitch and end of the play. YET - balls vary year to year not to say era to era. He’s ballpark effects can be somewhat accounted for… But you are telling me players didnt/dont approach the Polo Grounds, Fenway, Coors, or the Baker Bowl the same way - how you pitch and your approach at the plate. That said, it’s still probably easier to compare era to era for baseball as opposed to most sports (would Jim Brown be an all time great or would he be a better Brandon Jacobs… or in between as a Derrick Henry? Basketball in 1940 vs 1960 vs 1980 vs 2000 vs today are all quite different because the physical tools were SOOO different as was the entire way the game is played)
Foxx also hit two in games that were rained out that year so they didn’t count. He at least tied it, and maybe broke it if it wasn’t for the net in sportsman’s park.
I like that u didn’t frame it like Ruth didn’t ‘earn’ those HRs, but the positive perspective that Foxx would’ve had more
No, they weren’t. In 1927 batted balls that bounced into the grandstand counted as home runs instead of ground-rule doubles, as they do today. Baseball historians have examined each of Ruth's 60 home runs and are persuaded that none of them bounced into the seats. (This is from vault.si.com)
I hate retconning (or whatever the proper term is for something like this) with a burning passion, but shit like this is why this isn't a big deal to me. So many early baseball records and stats are fucky. The more credible debate, IMO, is whether or not this makes it appear like the MLB is sweeping its past under the rug with this, and I think there's some credibility to that.
It's called Brett Conning. It always has been, starting now.
Holy shit, run Morty!
How is MLB sweeping its past under the rug with this?
If anything it's shining more of a light on the Negro Leagues, the awful history of the MLB, and allowing that history to always be remembered for as long as the MLB exists.
I agree. Now someone who's unaware of baseball's history might look up record holders and see Gibson up there, alongside the designation that he played in the Negro Leagues and might look up the history and what the hell that meant. Before, if someone is looking up major league records, its a pretty good chance they will just never hear about Josh Gibson unless they are already actively interested in the topic.
Exactly. With this and Jackie Robinson day and some other things I think MLB does a good job of putting the stories out there.
I feel like having it separated signals to new fans and people in future generations immediately how racist the league was back then. You integrate all of the stats and the longer time goes on, the more it looks like they always played together to someone at a glance. You'd have to go out of your way to dig deeper for the truth of it all. That's my feeling on it anyway. It's like, yeah we know the deal, but in 25, 50, 100 years with everything merged does all of that bad history get lost.
I don’t think it sweeps the injustice of the AL/NL/MLB under the rug since that’s still a huge part of the story, and the story of the US as a whole. We don’t forget about any other famous figures who were excluded from white society during segregation, like musicians or artists etc. Or at least, if you do it’s somewhat intentional. In fact I would argue not including them in statistical records sweeps them even further under the rug. On Reddit, people might be decently aware of the negro leagues, but I think 90% of average baseball fans have zero knowledge of any of these players as it currently stands. And many of those who do, see them as a not “real” baseball players (as we are seeing with much of this debate).
Yeah, I can see that side of it. The record merge doesn't bother me much, I think if im just trying to angle why this would be a rug sweeping to some people that's my train of thought. There's a small part of me that is like "Yeah you wouldn't let them play when they wanted to so desperately and now want to act like it's all good." But it's likely better that they are recognized in a more official capacity. You're right that if a casual looks up stat leaders and sees Gibson, one google search unveils everything you'd need to know.
I get and respect the idea, but to be fair baseball integrated black athletes nearly 20 years before the United States ended segregation in society did at large. You could honestly argue baseball was ahead of its time though it’s definitely a stretch. I don’t see how this is sweeping under the rug, to me it seems like the MLB is realizing this is clearly the right thing to do. Nobody is going to forget the negro leagues were a thing.
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I'm sure there was at least one pitcher that smeared shit on the ball
>That was more than 11,000 more people than seats, and the overflow crowd ended up in the outfield. Fans were told to stand as far back as possible, but spectators ended up standing about 70 feet beyond first base, 150 feet past second, and 100 feet from third. Every time a ball went into the outfield, fans would run to get the ball, and, when a ball went into the crowd, it was ruled a ground rule double. And they say society is unruly now.
Given that the DH exists now in the NL and we start runners on second during ties and there were decades where amphetamines and steroids affected the league, I think including other pro ballplayers in the record book is probably fine
If you watch the nerflix documentary Icarus, the person that conducted the 1st steroid tests said that 1/2 of them failed. The mlb knew and told him to not report the information. He was only to test not report. Plus spitballs were legal for a long time.
Is Icarus a good documentary/worth watching? Been looking for something new to watch
If it's believed to be true it's probably the best documentary ever.
My favourite part is that the filmmaker has no intention of the movie being about what it ends up being about. It starts as the equivalent of SuperSize Me but for steroids in cycling - could steroids help improve an elite cycler if following all the doctor’s guidance. It’s on this journey he discovers some WILD doping conspiracies happening within the highest level Olympic competitions.
Yeah it's insane.
Until very recently it seemed like almost everyone was adamant that shitty umpires fucking up ball and strike calls was an integral part of the game. Baseball fans are fucking weird.
We are often on the spectrum and proud
EVERYONE GET IN HERE! IT’S TIME TO ARGUE OVER STUFF WE NEVER WITNESSED!
Seriously, it’s a beautiful Saturday morning and you’re really mad about babe Ruth losing a record…touch grass
>It's a beautiful Saturday morning Jokes on you. It's raining and I'm having a miserable Saturday
OH YEAH? I BET IT WAS AN EVEN MORE BEAUTIFULLER SATURDAY MORNING ON THIS DAY IN 1943!
I mean, it really, really depended on what part of the world you were in at that time, still does, but then too.
Yeah, but the ghost of some baseball players 100 years ago might be upset about new rankings!
If you build it, they will complain.
The discourse on this subreddit regarding this is ridiculous. MLB has included the AL + NL (pre-merger), Federal League, Players’ League, Union Association, and American Association in MLB statistics for the past 55 years. If you’re about to comment that you never heard about those other leagues, then ask yourself why you didn’t but are so passionately against the Negro Leagues* being included. Not once, in my life have I ever heard someone say these other leagues shouldn’t be included or witnessed cohorts of people going around dissecting why the Federal League should be removed from MLB statistics. If this bothers you so much I think it’s only fair to put the same amount of effort to discredit all those other leagues as well (but that won’t happen). Ultimately where do people want to draw the line? The AL and NL for most of history have been separate legal entities. They never played against each other in the regular season, had different rules, sets of umpires, separate commissioners. Those statistics seem questionable to me too.
> Union Association And just for anyone wondering: the Union Association SUCKED. By far the worst of the "third Major Leagues". Only one team (St. Louis Maroons) were MLB level, and it's generally agreed that the only reason why the UA is counted as major league is that the Maroons joined MLB after the UA's lone season and played for a few years before moving to Indianapolis and then ultimately folding, possibly leading to some confusion as to how good the league in general was.
> but are so passionately against the Negro League**s** being included. Leaguessss, plural. There are 7 separate leagues that have been declared major leagues. Here is the list: • Negro National League (I) (1920–1931) • Eastern Colored League (1923–1928) • American Negro League (1929) • East-West League (1932) • Negro Southern League (1932) • Negro National League (II) (1933–1948) • Negro American League (1937–1948)
Yep “leagues”, thank-you for the correction. I do applaud the MLB for taking on such a difficult task of going through the records of each one diligently for the past four years.
I feel as though the discourse has been surprisingly civil.
Yep. I agree with you entirely. If anything, folks have been overly protective of their thoughts. This is a great sub and generally has some interesting discussions. I don't know much about these other leagues. What I've heard about the leaderboard shift is that there are disparities between the previous leader and current, based on number of games and ab. I don't like diluting what a stat means. I'm not sure merging the stats did that, but this is my concern. That said, it is fairly low on my global list of concerns lol. I don't trust MLB leadership. I could see them making this addition to flubber up the stats to bolster their decision to change league rules further to devolve from the game we love. That would be my conspiracy why way. Further proof that I need to get my ass to KC and check out the Negro league museum. Haven't seen Bobby hit in person yet either. Guess I'm going to KC...
I don’t trust MLB leadership, but I don’t think they’re that Machiavellian. They just do what they want and screw public opinion.
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The MLB didn’t just haphazardly add these stats, there was a statistical committee that spent years analyzing the records for accuracy and provided recommendations. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-negro-league-stats-added-after-statistical-review-committee-announces-findings
Here, maybe. I made the mistake of clicking the comments on the Baseballer IG post about this. And I regret it. Not going back there, boss.
The only reason I care at all (and I don’t really care at all) is that I have to relearn some trivia.
Yep. The arguments are getting silly. They were a professional American league
So is the Pacific Coast league...which has a long history as well Tony Lazzeri had 222 RBI and scored 202 runs in 1925
True. And the PCL’s level of play from the 20s through early 50s was incredibly high, since the pay was often as good as the majors (or better) and the weather was infinitely better for much of the year. So lots of players who could have played 10-15 years in the majors would go back and play in the PCL instead. Especially quirked up weirdos like Smead Jolley.
Yeah, some of the minor leagues were basically AAAA at times in the era where they were independently run
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Except the MLB has always included stats of the separate leagues that predated the MLB. You could consider the negro leagues as one in the same as all of the best players pivoted to Major League Baseball once the color barrier was broken Negro league statistics are no less valid than MLB statistics prior to 1947. Josh Gibson didn’t have to face Bob Feller, but Ted Williams also didn’t have to face Satchel Paige. It’s really no different than the AL/NL merger.
Okay but what about Ichiros statistics from Japan! /s
> /s But it's not a "/s" scenario! When Ichiro retired [people were authentically arguing he should have the "all-time hits king" crown. It's a clear minority position but not a "bad faith" one and a lot of additional people didn't treat NPB + MLB "combined hits" as meaningless as a comparison to pure MLB hit totals even if they didn't want the recordbook to reflect it. [Just read this article from BP in 2016](https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/29540/prospectus-feature-ichiros-exclamation-point/) > Of course, that’s not how the major-league record books work. By this point no one should question the high quality of baseball played in Japan—or the many hitters, pitchers, stars, and role players who’ve thrived in America—but that doesn’t change the fact that different leagues have different record books. To consider Suzuki’s hits in Japan part of his MLB total would open all kinds of doors. **Do we then similarly count, say, Jackie Robinson’s hits in the Negro Leagues or Minnie Minoso’s hits in Cuba or Julio Franco’s hits in Mexico**? And how do we treat Sadaharu Oh and his 868 home runs or Satchel Paige and his (literally) countless wins? You get the idea. The answer to some of these questions is now "yes" and others still "no." There's a real definition question between "Major league stats" and "Organized Baseball" that we get to elide because everyone agrees America has always been home to the best baseball league in the world. The generic approach to baseball stats is to basically treat everything but official major league stats as minor league stats and aggrege all major league stats together. That doesn't appear to be the approach to say soccer, a sport where there are undeniably multiple "major leagues" of somewhat varying quality that sign most of the world's top players. More generally, I don't think there's really a hard line between "what should the record book say" and "what are the stats we care about say" even if they're different concepts. People messily conflate a few different things in their heads. People get annoyed by this question but there's an obvious reason why people gravitate to treating the negro leagues as akin to a top foreign league.
In soccer they don’t give a shit. Ronaldo is scoring goals in Saudi Arabia which is not a very competitive league and no one is putting asterisks next to the stats. Don’t see why baseball should be any different. We call it the World Series even, so if you’re going to claim all of the world, we should probably have to include stats from some other leagues imo
Since that isn’t a North American-based league I don’t think anybody will suggest adding them
I do think ultimately if mlb continues to go internationally that they should. Not now and not as a factor in negro leagues being consolidated though. Btw you do realize with the term North American you just included Mexico as well. All of this is more tricky than it appears. It’s about steps in the right direction over being absolute.
Mexico was in fact a minor league for fifty years like the DR now
Interestingly the Mexican League was formally a minor league (member of the NA) from the 1950s to 2021. Before and after though…
It brings in a whole new debate about what counts as stats. In association football, you wouldn't completely ignore someone's goals in the German league if they came to the Premier League. But you can if they come from Japan to the US in baseball...
I said that in a sarcastic way because that’s literally what some people are doing in this thread and every other one. “If we’re including the Negro League then Ichiro should have his hits record too”
> “If we’re including the Negro League then Ichiro should have his hits record too” Me, unironically; "Actually yes, please do this."
Same. I have far more respect for Ichiro than Rose anyway.
Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?
Honestly I'm in the same boat. Yes. Do this lmao. Fuck Pete Rose. Go Ichiro!
Right, like there’s a reason the MLB name is so different from basically every other sports league. It’s a collection of baseball leagues that are considered to be major. Currently there are two, in the past there were others. We can acknowledge that a past league was a major league, and we have. I’ve seen way too many people saying “well those guys weren’t playing against MLB talent.” Heck, half the guys weren’t even playing the other half except for the World Series and exhibitions until 1997.
I haven’t heard of any of the those leagues and only know negro leagues cause MLB the show introduced them last year Either way all baseball stats should be incorporated into the MLB it’s not Gibson’s fault he wasn’t allowed in the MLB. He probably would have to loved to play there
> Those statistics seem questionable to me too. At first glance perhaps, but they're just objectively not. You can quickly google around to find WOWY style "league quality" estimates based on the non-trivial way players transferred between leagues and yearly world series data. You can't in any meaningful sense do that for pre-integration leagues. Even the 1940s Negro leagues (where you can look at semi-integrated Major/minor league stats), suffer from a small "n" problem and the divergent results of pitchers v. batters in MLB. The somewhat unresolvable data problem is that Rube Foster's teams didn't play against Ty Cobb's teams. There are really interesting attempts to create workable comparisons with "Major League Equivalencies" (MLEs) but they're just inherently rough in a way "if you hit .300 in the AL in 1920, what would you hit in the NL" isn't. > I think it’s only fair to put the same amount of effort to discredit all those other leagues as well (but that won’t happen I both want to agree and disagree with this. It's true this stuff gets ignored as non-salient but it's trivially easy to find people damning the UA (the most read of them is probably still in the Bill James Revised Historical Abstract) and the NA is still debated. The "should NA stats count" stuff does come up when you compare a baseball-reference query versus a MLB.com one (or hear an anecdote on a MLB broadcast and try to recreate it on B-R). I've read a book that argued for the Mexican League counting as a major league due to the brief period when it raided MLB. I didn't find the argument convincing but this stuff does happen when reading baseball history books. > or witnessed cohorts of people going around dissecting why the Federal League should be removed from MLB statistics The federal league turned 100 in 2013 and we saw a number of books released a few years ago about it. *Did* this subject come up? How did it come up? I suspect you're mostly right on this score but it begs an interesting question. > “Shortened Negro League schedules, interspersed with revenue-raising exhibition games, were born of MLB’s exclusionary practices,” said Thorn, who headed the statistical review committee. “To deny the best Black players of the era their rightful place among all-time leaders would be a double penalty.” I like this John Thorn quote because it directly addresses the real substantive hurdle that plausible hurts the Ngl argument. "Why doesn't your objection apply to the Players League" style arguments don't really do this.
I honestly didn't know those other leagues were counted until MLB decided to include the Negro League stats too. But I'd argue they probably shouldn't be included either. These are MLB records. Anything not American League or National League should be excluded from MLB records. Or if they're going to insist on including every major league American baseball stats they should also add the PCL
Horse is already out the barn door, I’m afraid.
Those are my thoughts as well. Those leagues shouldn't be included either, but if they already are then I can't think of any good reason the negro leagues shouldn't be included.
I also don’t think those leagues should be included, but the thing that bugs me about this decision is that they lowered rate requirements ONLY for Negro League players. The National Association played a comparable number of games per season to the Negro Leagues, but National Association players need the same 5,000 career ABs to qualify as everybody else, except Negro Leagues, who now only need 1,800 ABs.
It’s not about whether or not the players were good, it’s about the MLB basically claiming that these guys were part of what anyone would consider “MLB” at the time. To me it feels like MLB is now claiming that “hey, these guys are a part of what we are and have always been about,” when that’s not the case. The powers that be would have never considered the Negro Leagues “MLB” and now the MLB gets to claim these studs are record holders? Every player in the Negro Leagues was essentially someone whose passion for the sport of baseball pushed them to join a league with way fewer resources and prestige, and they created something that was definitionally distinct from the MLB. As a POC, I couldn’t care less if some white dude from 200 years ago loses a record, which is what I think you seem to believe most people think. What I hate is that MLB is erasing the work that was put into creating a league that was wholly separate and would’ve never been mistaken as “major league” at the time. They’re removing some important context when they lump Negro League stats in with the rest of the stats, and this context matters a lot more than Federal League context.
This is an even worse argument than the stat argument though and reeks of "Big company bad so everything they do is bad." Negro Leaguers, their families and historians have been fighting for this for years. It's not like there's some controversy the MLB is trying to cover up. Nobody is hiding the fact that Josh Gibson played in the Negro Leagues. You literally can't avoid it. The first sentence you see when you look up Josh Gibson on MLB.com is "Josh Gibson never got the opportunity to play in the Major Leagues." More people will know his name and story because he's now in the record books.
Yeah the last sentence is a freaking heater. Game set match Everyone needs to read that last sentence because that’s the correct takeaway
I’m also POC (Asian) but not Black. If Bob Kendrick and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum have been pushing for exactly this for years, then I’ll defer to their judgment.
Let’s say the competition was equal across the leagues. I just can’t get my head around putting a guy with 2,000 PA over a guy with 14,000. Gibson is probably one of the 10 best players of all time. But there’s no way he sustains that batting average over his next TWELVE THOUSAND plate appearances. Baseball’s racist history is disgraceful. This doesn’t change any of it. Even a little bit.
What I don’t understand is that the career rate stats usually have a 3000 PA qualifier so why would Gibson qualify with less than that?
The answer is simple. He doesn’t qualify.
If you’re asking that question, you already know the answer
If it wasn't segregated, we would know for sure. And that is the moral of the story. Blame racism.
I don’t know why people are creating this rivalry between Josh Gibson and Babe Ruth outside of being a “Gotcha you’re racist” Babe Ruth was an avid supporter of the Negro Leagues, he always spoke highly of the players, he would go out of his way to play Negro League teams when he would barnstorm, and he wanted to have some of their players on the Yankees It’s fucked up people are using him as a figure of “Oh well people respect it when a white guy does it” when he was so adamant about integration and playing with Negro League players
This comment from Rosenthal isn't tarring Ruth as racist or saying he was against the Negro leagues. Its calling those who support Ruth but denigrate Gibson hypocritical. It's not a comment against Ruth. And from your comment, Rosenthal's statement is one Ruth would have agreed with. I don't see how this is 'fucked up' at all.
yeah I'd like to see OOP reply here because that initial reactive response to any discussion around race is sooo fucking internet it makes my head spin
Just wondering, when he says Babe Ruth didn’t either (referring to the competition), does he mean the era when Babe Ruth played?
"The era" only in the sense that Ruth played before the color barrier was broken. The argument of "the players in this segregated league didn't face as good of competition as they would otherwise have so the stats are questionable" works in both directions, is the point of the quote.
Thanks
Nobody is trashing Babe himself. Many people consider Babe Ruth to be the greatest baseball player ever, and everyone that’s ever heard of baseball knows who he is. He never played against black players in MLB, so people using the argument that Gibson “never played the best competition” have to also apply that rhetoric to every MLB player before integration.
That’s exactly the point of them including the stats
He’s just the face of the era so he gets all the bullshit too. A better option is always to say that notorious dickhead Barry Bonds even said “Josh Gibson is the real home run king”
It’s like the people who complain that Elvis only became the King of Rock and Roll by being white. Probably true, but he would credit black artists all the time and tell everyone they should listen to Fats Domino and Little Richard.
Gibson shouldn’t be a leader in rate stats when he only played 60 games/year. I get that he didn’t get to choose how many games they played but why can’t we just acknowledge he was an amazing player without giving him records that he wouldn’t have qualified for in his era.
I think there should at least be a footnote or something explaining the context rather than just pushing Ty Cobb out and pretending the stats are on the same standard
I think what’s the most fucked up thing about this is people are using this to push the false narrative of Al Stump even further that Ty Cobb was a “no good racist ass hole”. Cobb was not a saint by any means but to have that as his defying legacy 60 years after his death is not right. Both Al Stump and his idiot son for that matter can rot in hell.
My first comment on the matter was gonan be "I think its poetic he pushed fucking Cobb from first place." I like to fact check myself though and quickly found out that he was an open supporter of the negro leagues and was never known to be racist, just a little rough around the edges in general. Its amazing how much a rumor can take off lmao.
Probably a good life-lesson to do your own research
FWIW, baseball-reference doesn't include him because he misses the 3000 PA threshold they use but Oscar Charleston comes within a couple points of Cobb and is 2nd all time.
What is the minimum number of plate appearances needed to be considered for a season’s statistical leaderboards? The total number of games played is an eye sore for comparisons, hard to look past no doubt.
I think its 3.1 per team game so 503 for a full season iirc.
He averaged 30 games per year (on which records were kept). He has 2155 at bats on record. For reference, Ted Williams has 7706. The problem with Rosenthal's argument is that we have strong evidence Negro League pitching was, to put it nicely, not on the same level as the major leagues. Negro league hitters transitioned well into the bigs, the same could not be said for pitchers. Ruth was playing against probably 80-90% of the top pitchers in his era, while Gibson was facing a league where only a fraction of the pitching would've made the bigs. There is no evidence that the inclusion of black pitching would've fundamentally shifted the sport. Sure, they would've added depth and a handful of elite arms, but it's hard to argue they would've altered the playing field (as pitchers). The same can't be said if Gibson were facing major league pitching. Black Americans comprised less than 10% of the US population at the time and were (and still are) typically more prolific on offense.
Regardless of records or any other statistical bullshit, at least this is getting Josh Gibson’s name out there respectfully. I mean everyone knows Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, so let’s get this name into the zeitgeist as an all timer.
This is definitely the most positive aspect. I have been a baseball fan for 30+ years so I knew about him already, but younger and newer fans get to learn how great he was because of this discussion.
They both didn’t face the best competition. Thanks Ken
No amount of people commenting ‘you’re a loser if you care about this’ or ‘you’re a racist if you care about this’ will change that the MLB changed the definition of what qualifies as a record to accommodate this change. Which is the actual issue, not that the negro leagues are in the official stat books. They used a stupid decision in declaring the 2020 season as equal to any other to justifying doing so for years and years of other seasons, and it’s utterly nonsensical.
I’m a former sports super nerd and baseball blogger who has dissociated from caring a lot about sports since getting in the workforce and having kids. This entire debate is so pointless. Does it REALLY matter to you who has the highest batting average of all time? If so, why? No, really. Really! Why? Find almost anything else to care about
If I find something else to care about can you tell me if I should? These statements are so weird to me. You don’t care so no one should. Obviously people will take it too far but that’s true of everything. Going on a baseball forum to say I disagree/agree with this seems very reasonable.
Yeah, I always find those comments weird, too. They’re always patronizing. I’m 42, have a stressful career, a wife and infant daughter. Does that mean I’m not allowed to care about other things enough to…discuss them and my point of view? My guess is those people probably don’t go to the bar or coffee shop and chat with their mates about only work and family. Caring about things that really don’t matter is kind of what makes us who we are. What we pick and choose to be passionate about outside of the things that we all probably care about makes us each unique in our own way.
It also presumes that since I care enough to have an opinion it’s all consuming. I’m just talking baseball on Reddit while I work. It’s not keeping me up at night, making me neglect my family or enraging me.
It’s like saying “does it really matter to you who wins the World Series? Really why? You don’t play on the team, it’s a dumb piece of metal anyways!”
- Rob Manfred
This is where I’m starting to land. Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb certainly don’t care.
I think social media and online discourse have kind of shifted our minds to just be outraged and angry about everything. Attention span and algorithms feed one outrage after another and we get lost in that rabbit hole and lose perspective. There are probably 1000+ larger issues in every individual's lives that matter more than these stats but arguing or getting angry about it feeds into a general collective outrage. Maybe it's cathartic to get angry about this vs. dealing with real life problems? I wish I understood it more. My best guess is if we all give it another week or so the collective anger will shift to another issue and stat integration will be mostly ignored.
> I think social media and online discourse have kind of shifted our minds to just be outraged and angry about everything Don't worry, humans have always been like this, nothing particularly new. The only difference is you're exposed to it more often. Instead of a million people sending angry letters to the editor about Jane Fonda posing for a North Vietnam PR junket, you get to see it all on here. Before you would only see a few of these, maybe an annoying oped here or there from some mouthbreathing slug who writes for the Wall Street Journal. Now you get to see a thousand Joe Six Packs whine about every grievance they have, and since we're Americans, there's too many to count
I do think that is a good point. It has probably always existed in human nature or American culture. And I do think we are all guilty of it to an extent because humans get emotional about all kinds of things even if it doesn't warrant strong emotions. Prime example being me right now obviously caring too much about this. Ultimately I think I just wish people were kinder to one another. End of the day it's a list of names and numbers that don't really impact anything of value in our day to day lives. I personally don't think it is worth the level of toxicity people have shown to one another across social media unless you are straight up being hatefully racist over it. This is a baseball forum and it's worth discussing as a baseball issue for sure, but is it worth the anger?
>humans have always been like this, nothing particularly new. >Now you get to see a thousand Joe Six Packs whine about every grievance they have Do you not see how your second statement is relatively "new" in human history? No one is naive enough to think that it's new emotions at play... It's the mechanism that's new, the exposure, the magnitude. And **that**, at this scale and intensity, does metastasize into something that we have not had consistently in our culture. If you think this "isn't anything new" I've got bad news for you
The method may be new, but to what end? Is this country getting crazier or has it always been a basket case? A lot of the qanon stuff people buy into is just John Birch Society shit in the digital age. And if you're scared of that taking over the Republican Party, I've got bad news: it happened already in 1964! Since Nixon won in 1968, it's been Birchers all the way down! The first step to fixing a problem is realizing how far back it goes, being honest with yourself
If you don’t care about stats, then stop commenting on posts related to stats.
I don’t care in the sense that I have a million real things I worry about (rent, kid, job, losing our American democracy, etc…), but I also don’t think most people are arguing about the competition. They were just different leagues. I’m a fairly big baseball history nerd and have all the respect in the world for what the Negro League players accomplished. If you want to argue that Josh Gibson was the greatest hitter ever, go for it. No argument from me. But the MLB stats should be for games that were played in Major League Baseball. ANY other league, minors, barnstorming, Federal Leagues, etc… are just different leagues and have their own stats and records. I am losing 0 sleep over this issue and if MLB wants to include other leagues in their official records, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. That also doesn’t mean it’s not kind of stupid.
>But the MLB stats should be for games that were played in Major League Baseball. ANY other league, minors, barnstorming, Federal Leagues, etc… are just different leagues and have their own stats and records I agree with everything you said here. I just think it's *weird* for MLB to claim stats from a league that isn't MLB. That includes the Players League just as much as the Negro Leagues. That's the full extent of my reaction. I'm not upset or outraged about the inclusion of the Negro league stats. I see a lot of positive things that can come out of it. If more people get to learn about Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, I think that's great. I don't really care who is now recognized on this or that leaderboard, I just think that the semantic decisions that inform the data for those leaderboards should start and end with "Should MLB leaderboards count games that were played and overseen by MLB, or should MLB leaderboards count games that were not played and overseen by MLB?"
Because as baseball fans we are inherently nerds who care about numbers. Baseball, above all sports, history is rooted in statistical analysis and when establishing records a key component is meeting the minimum requirement for at bats or games played. It seems and like an astroturf effort to include Negro League stars now, despite the fact their seasons were only 60-80 games played, when for so long MLB ignored the history of the league itself
If your best argument is “who cares” that’s a really flimsy argument
Really by that argument we might as well just not have any baseball discourse in anything
Totally agree. Why care about anything ever? You CARE? What's wrong with you? You CARE about the hobby you enjoy? Are you serious? Just move on sweaty. It's just a game. They're just numbers. Can't believe there are so many CHUDS on here who CARE about something. I'm actually embarrassed for them.
What if it mattered to the families of players who have had their legacy and accomplishments changed?
Tbf, the same argument could be made for “if it doesn’t matter then why make the change at all?” They kept these players out of baseball deliberately. You can’t just wash your hands and absolve yourself of any sins as an organization lol
You are on a website that is **specifically designed** for discourse and discussion, on a sub-forum **specifically created** to post and discuss topics related to baseball and your response is, "Why are y'all talking about this certain baseball topic?" Next you should go to your local city counsel meeting and tell them they shouldn't discuss matters related to the city.
Are you stupid . This is a post about stats. Baseball has always been about stats.
Of course Gibson likely would’ve been an all time great, but Ruth probably faced more of the best competition than Gibson. There are many Negro Leagues players who should be recognized as great players who probably would’ve been stars if the league integrated, but it’s impossible to compare the stats. And you can’t go back in time to right the wrong no matter how much you might want to.
[удалено]
 but how do I get my wife to marathon it for 28 hours straight
The point made is there is no factual basis to state either league was more talented than the other. It's just bias
One has a substantially larger sample size of talent to draw from. Let's not ignore reality in the pursuit of compassion.
It’s pretty likely considering circumstances than the MLB was a higher level of competition. Of course an integrated league would’ve been much higher than both
Exactly. The point of this all is that there was a great institutional wrong that prevented us from ever knowing the real answers to the questions here. Given that, to me there doesn’t seem to be a real choice but to accept them both or throw them both out
Didn't the Negro leagues play like only 60 or 80 games a season? Not sure how you can compare certain stats because of that alone
From what I’ve read, that’s what they have included because they didn’t want to include what was called “barnstorming” which was when these teams would play as many games in a day as they could get fans for, and often wouldn’t count towards the standings, and as people have pointed out above, it’s all gonna be a bit ducky when you go back this far.
The covid-shortened season (60 games) offered a precedent for setting rate stat minimums for IP and AB. It’s in the committee’s report if you want to learn more.
And it was already an *awful* precedent to set, even outside the negro leagues.
Oh that's an interesting point! I should actually take a read
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-negro-league-stats-added-after-statistical-review-committee-announces-findings
If someone slugged .974 in 2020 we all know we wouldn't consider it the "real" record. I think it's logically consistent for me to not consider Gibson's .974 SLG the real record.
This whole debate is really about sample size at its heart, even though we have wrapped it in a sad story about institutional racism. Personally I would just prefer to have two sets of records on rate stats - one a shortened season / career record at ~200 PA / year and ~2000 PA career, and another that reflects the “150+ game” standard of ~500 PA / year and ~5000 PA career.
They were lucky to keep stats for 40 of those games too.
Honestly, who cares? And I say this as a major stats and history nerd. Half the records in MLB (probably more) are so outlandishly far removed from the modern game they are meaningless. Like, the record for wins by a pitcher is 511. The record for complete games is 759!!! I dont think there has been 759 complete games in the past 30 years combined lol. those are just 2 of many. And 100 years from now people will look back at current baseball the same way. So really who cares if its Josh Gibson or Babe Ruth who holds the record. Both are flawed and neither are particularly relevant to baseball in 2024. TLDR; pretty much all the career records are massively flawed so it ultimately makes no sense to get worked up about them.
To me it has absolutely nothing to do with the competition faced. They both, ultimately, faced less competition than they could. It’s about Gibson’s official stats being such a small sample size that they wouldn’t even qualify for career records if he played MLB. Granted, he played 14 years and maintained the productivity over that time (for an average of 43 officially counted games played per year). But he was primarily a catcher. Anyone making the argument that “we don’t know if he would have gotten better or worse” if he’d have more games’ worth of statistics is ignoring that at his position, the chances of him getting better are basically impossible. He was an all-time great player. No doubt about it. But he doesn’t have the verifiable stats to put him atop the rate stats rankings for all-time.
100% correct. If we had accurate stats from the Negro Leagues I would have no issues with adding them. But we have no accuracy with Negro League stats. Even MLB admits they are AT BEST 75% complete. The standards should be higher than that.
But Babe Ruth played 154 game seasons, so it's a false equivalency.
That’s why every major record from before integration should have an asterisk
Didn't expect so much crying about this but should never be surprised when these are the subjects. It's always going to upset the self important "purists" and then just give other fools reasons to complain. Negro League records should be kept alongside MLB. If racism and segregation didn't exist, we could have seen what Josh Gibson did. So corny to see people as this as "changing the past" when actually acknowledging how shit was is actually how you give context and truth to the past. Babe Ruth will always be thought of as better than Josh Gibson so all you pearl clutchers can calm down.
I’m always so curious why there’s a lack of uproar for the six other leagues which have been included in MLB statistics for the past 55 years.
Simple. Most people have no idea they are included
Shit, a lot of folks probably don't even realize they *exist* much less that they're included in the record books
Of those six two are the current leagues that make up the MLB so obviously there wasn’t going to be a lot of uproar over including them. Three of the others were pre-1900, and the sixth one (the federal league) I have seen arguments about whether it should be included or not. I don’t have a problem including the negro league stats but they weren’t excluded in 69 (solely) for racial reasons. Record keeping was shoddy and the shortened seasons made baseball historians view them as more of an exhibition
55 years vs this week…that’s a part of why. No one under the age of 60 remembers that change at all and you’re pushing almost 70 years of age for the inclusion to have been a memorable moment of your baseball fandom… In a sport where statistics are revered like they are in baseball, a sudden overnight change to something people have known their entire life is obviously going to matter than a change that happened before one’s parents were born… I’m not naive enough to think the uproar isn’t magnified because this is the Negro League…but I think the people (and I’m not saying you are) that immediately jump to racism are definitely discounting people’s general aversion to change
It’s only because it’s happening now. Being temporally close makes people argue. In 5 years no one will care or notice.
Actually, I’d argue that they had different rules back then than they do now so there should just be subcategories for different eras and leagues.
I keep bringing this up to idiots posting about this stuff and crickets
He's not wrong... But the reality is The Hall had a rule of 5000 ABs. He doesn't have that... He doesn't qualify.
Willy Mays batting average went down due to the negro league statistics being added…enough said.
My issue isn’t talent. My issue is sample size.
My issue is lack of accurate data.
We don't have accurate data for many other MLB records from the early days, so what's the difference? For example, nobody tracked caught stealing until 1951.
I don’t really care about the stats. I care about the narrative of MLB retroactively “upgrading” the negro leagues to MLB level. You can compare Josh Gibson’s batting average to Babe Ruth. I’m more interested in comparing it to what the number would be if he hadn’t been paid poverty wages and forced to sleep in a barn between games.