Justice League

June 1, 2024 11:59 AM

Major League Baseball has incorporated the statistics of former Negro Leagues players into its historical records on its website, meaning legendary leaders in some categories like Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb have now been replaced in the record books by players who were not allowed to play on the same fields as them during segregation. Josh Gibson, one of the greatest sluggers in the history of the Negro Leagues, is now listed as MLB’s new all-time career leader in batting average at .372, moving ahead of Ty Cobb at .367. The MLB website shows Gibson also overtaking Babe Ruth in career slugging percentage.

Top leaderboard changes as Negro Leagues join Major League record [MLB]
MLB integrates Negro League statistics into all-time record book with Josh Gibson now career batting average leader [CNN]
Josh Gibson becomes MLB career and season batting leader as Negro Leagues statistics incorporated [AP]
The MLB’s long-overdue decision to add Negro Leagues’ stats, briefly explained [Vox]
MLB incorporates Negro Leagues statistics, shakes up record books [ESPN]
MLB’s integration of Negro League stats invites us to explore baseball as never before [The Athletic]
MLB Player Comps for Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and More Negro League Legends [Bleacher Report]
Seamheads Negro League stats
Retro Sheets Negro Leagues site


So many previouslies...

posted by chavenet (28 comments total)

Very cool.

I'm sure baseball fans will be very normal about it.
posted by Reyturner at 12:04 PM on June 1 [42 favorites]

As a baseball fan, it's about damned time.
posted by cooker girl at 12:38 PM on June 1 [25 favorites]

This is exactly what I've been telling baseball fans for decades:
"Yeah, I hear that 'Ruth' fella was pretty good. It's too bad that we'll never know just HOW good he was - because Ruth was only ever allowed to play in the old White Baseball League."
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 12:40 PM on June 1 [33 favorites]

I've seen some folks around the internet asking why Josh Gibson's 800-900 HRs didn't carry over with this other stats? MLB is carrying over only the official Negro League numbers of which he hit about 230 HRs there. All of the other bombs were hit during barnstorming games and therefore, do not count in his official stats. Negro League seasons were very short, so that explains why he has so few official HRs. Hope that helps.
posted by NoMich at 12:46 PM on June 1 [13 favorites]

"You set records before black men could compete, are you kidding me?
That's like having a pasta contest without Italy!"
posted by Wolfdog at 1:06 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]

It's been funny watching the many many reactions amongst my friends - unsurprisingly almost everyone younger or of color has been copacetic with the new stats. Shocking to discover who hasn't been receiving the changes with as much universal chill.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:14 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]

How long until somebody is performatively shooting up official MLB baseballs like they did with Bud Light?
posted by clawsoon at 2:34 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]

RE: Ty Cobb

“None of us could stand the son of a bitch while we were alive, so we told him to stick it!”
posted by thecaddy at 2:35 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]

Yeah, that's where I go to when I see Ty Cobb...
posted by Windopaene at 2:38 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]

The two biggest baseball fans I know haven't publicly reacted (one is a white man in his 70s and the other is a white man in his 50s) but knowing them, they're on board with this.

I watched a lot of baseball movies last year (as well as Ken Burns' Baseball) and I probably annoyed a bunch of people with my constant baseball talk. (I've been less interested this year, mostly because the Washington Nationals are still bad and I can only take so much.) I love baseball and I love this move. It's overdue.
posted by edencosmic at 2:56 PM on June 1 [8 favorites]

Baseball is such an interesting sport in how well it jives with statistics, so many games, and so much data to collect, with very little to interpretation (of course there is, balls, strikes, errors, but all very well contained. Think about football, the most popular sport in America, barely catching up to the statistics baseball has done for over a century.)

So very happy this has happened, and would like folks to think of the past and how it was recorded. What was considered important enough to be recorded, and what has to be pieced together in the future.
posted by Brainstorming Time! at 2:56 PM on June 1 [4 favorites]

All of the other bombs were hit during barnstorming games and therefore, do not count in his official stats.

Some of those barnstorming games must have been so amazing to watch. It's way overdue for those players to now get at least some of their stats in the books.

There was a good mainstream documentary last year called The League about the players and the businessmen (and one amazingly sharp businesswoman, Effa Manley) who created and sustained the Negro Leagues. Directed by Sam Pollard, who also directed MLK/FBI and docs about Bill Russell and Arthur Ashe (as well as this fantastic 70s non-sports Black culture gem). It's on Hulu and Hoopla, and for rent on a bunch of other streamers.
posted by mediareport at 3:09 PM on June 1 [9 favorites]

My dad was one of those little black kids who would go to games and keep score. He loves baseball and he’s the one who first told me about Josh Gibson. He’s been posting about this all week.

My understanding is MLB has in the past incorporated other leagues’ stats so there’s precedent.
posted by girlmightlive at 3:35 PM on June 1 [20 favorites]

The only disappointing thing about this is that Ty Cobb wasn’t alive to see it happen.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:35 PM on June 1 [12 favorites]

NPR's "Here and Now" had an interview w the granddaughter of Norman "Turkey" Stearns, who has suddenly been catapulted into the top ten all time in three different batting categories. Worth a listen if only to emphasize how much this matters to people who have been waiting a long damn time.
posted by Naberius at 5:18 PM on June 1 [11 favorites]

My understanding is MLB has in the past incorporated other leagues’ stats so there’s precedent.

That's what the more sensible baseball fanatics' take has been -- the stats are already a mass of a half dozen different leagues, with substantial different rules and quality. So the idea that the Negro Leagues are a step too far is ridiculous.
posted by tavella at 5:26 PM on June 1 [12 favorites]

I haven't had time to investigate, but that was my immediate thought--are they simply folding in the stats, or are they actually counting the Negro Leagues as major leagues (which is the typical determiner of whether stats count).
posted by hoyland at 5:31 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]

Man, Cobb was garbage, but he's catching too many strays. Field of Dreams might be more contextually racist than Cobb. Jesus, 1919, who gets to choose to play major league baseball. If you want to hate historically, here's a good list.
Elsewise now, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_principal_owners
posted by Brainstorming Time! at 5:44 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]

I'm sure baseball fans will be very normal about it.

The “sportsball” contingent making assumptions such as yourself has been the most embarrassing aspect of this process, honestly.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 5:49 PM on June 1 [8 favorites]

A lot of research has gone into this but a lot of archivists, but I have a feeling that few more box scores might appear and get added to the ledger. Willie Mays, for example, played in the Negro Leagues as a 17 year old but his home run total isn't being adjusted because there are no box scores for those games. And that's for stuff that happened right around the time of integration. Go back another few decades and box scores will be even harder to find.
posted by thecjm at 6:07 PM on June 1 [2 favorites]

…or are they actually counting the Negro Leagues as major leagues

MLB has been celebrating the negro leagues as majors for some time now. Hell, there have been times where teams wore throwback uniforms representing various negro league teams.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:30 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]

Back in the 70's I worked at a restaurant with a former Negro League player. I only knew him as Smokey. He would regale me with baseball tales as we were doing prep work. I remember he said that whenever they got the chance they would go watch the BIGS play and were absolutely certain they could kick their butts...
posted by jim in austin at 6:57 PM on June 1 [7 favorites]

I'm sure baseball fans will be very normal about it.

The “sportsball” contingent making assumptions such as yourself has been the most embarrassing aspect of this process, honestly.

Well, if comments on The Athletic are any indication, there are definitely some "baseball fans" being asinine about this. Thankfully they are very much in the minority and being given an extremely hard time by other commenters.
posted by oneirodynia at 7:12 PM on June 1 [1 favorite]

Old white guy and Yankees fan (which is worse?) and I love baseball statistics. Read the boxscores daily. Watch games with live mlb statcast stats. Spin rates, bat speed, etc

Not only is there nothing wrong with this, it is great and long over due. If you get a chance, the Negro League Hall of Fame is in Kansas City. Go. Well worth it!

Love that Josh Gibson passed that racist Ty Cobb
posted by JohnnyGunn at 7:24 PM on June 1 [11 favorites]

The only disappointing thing about this is that Ty Cobb wasn’t alive to see it happen.

Ty Cobb was a belligerent and hostile man, but many stories about his racial intolerance were greatly exaggerated, misrepresented, and in some cases completely made up by hostile biographers and press. From Wikipedia:

Stories of Cobb's racial intolerance during his playing days were embellished and falsified by his biographers Al Stump and Charles Alexander. Recent research on his life has clarified a number of stories about Cobb.

Five years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, Cobb publicly supported blacks and whites playing baseball together, adding: "Certainly it is okay for them to play. I see no reason in the world why we shouldn't compete with colored athletes as long as they conduct themselves with politeness and gentility. Let me say also that no white man has the right to be less of a gentleman than a colored man; in my book that goes not only for baseball but in all walks of life." Using even stronger language, Cobb told the Sporting News in 1952 that "the Negro should be accepted and not grudgingly but wholeheartedly."

In the obituaries that ran in the black press following Cobb's death, he was praised for "[speaking] in favor of racial freedom in baseball."

Cobb was not a nice man but there is ample evidence of him going on record as supporting racial integration in baseball, at least post-Jackie Robinson. I don't think using him as a villain figure on this topic is accurate.
posted by fortitude25 at 8:16 PM on June 1 [17 favorites]

Also I thought the current re-revisionist assessment of Cobb held that, despite being a violent, short-tempered man one probably wanted to maintain some distance from on a personal level, he was actually pretty gracious about the integration of the game.

edit: I see that someone got there first
posted by atoxyl at 8:17 PM on June 1 [4 favorites]

Mod note: Several deleted. Bombastic lowercase pronouncements, please discontinue commenting here. If a topic bores you, just avoid posts about that topic rather than derailing and hijacking the thread as a performance venue, with people who do want to discuss the post as your forced audience.
posted by taz (staff) at 11:16 PM on June 1 [14 favorites]

This past Friday, my wife and I caught a local theater production of Toni Stone, a bioplay about the first woman to play in the Negro League. It was a great glimpse into the lives of players at that time and I hope that with this merger there's also recognition for Toni as being the first woman to play in major league baseball.
posted by bl1nk at 6:44 AM on June 2 [6 favorites]