NEW YORK — Whew! For a sport that has essentially been in a renewed pandemic lockdown since the World Series, baseball just had quite a week in which MLB decreed the Negro Leagues will henceforth officially be classified as major leagues.
MLB’s decision to recognize the Negro Leagues as major leagues was commendable. Commissioner Rob Manfred will deal with fierce backlash from media critics who maintain such “legitimacy” has been far too late in coming, after decades of allowing the perception to exist that the Negro Leagues represented an inferior level of play. In addition, there is now the yeoman task of trying to incorporate the Negro League statistics, all of which were compiled in limited, sporadic seasons of fewer than 100 games, into the standard records.
Prime case in point: Josh Gibson’s .441 batting average with the Homestead Grays in 1943, which media types have been quick to proclaim the new one-season record, surpasses Hugh Duffy’s .440 with the National League Boston Beaneaters in 1894 — or Napoleon Lajoie’s .426 with the American League Philadelphia Athletics in 1901. Problem is, the Grays played only 101 games in 1943 and Gibson is credited with only 342 plate appearances, according to Seamheads, the “official” Negro Leagues statisticians. By contrast, Duffy had 616 plate appearances when he hit .440 in 1894 and Lajoie had 582 plate appearances for his .426 in 1901.
Any sensible fan will be able to interpret both numbers and their context and come to a reasonable understanding of history. But for any hopeless list-makers out there, hell-bent on fitting all of history into one tidy category, remember: That version of history has always unfairly marginalized Black players. And any attempt to consolidate numbers into one list will have some statistical incongruities. Better, I think, to deal with the set of problems presented by that arises from an attempt at equality than the one that had come from exclusion.
Personally, I’m very happy Satchel Paige, universally acknowledged as one of the greatest pitchers ever, will now at least have a winning record — 146-64 — on the all-time ledger, with his 118-33 stat from the Negro Leagues added to 28-31 that has been his official record from his time in the “majors” with the Indians and St. Louis Browns from 1948-53 when he was by then in his 40s. I’m also grateful Monte Irvin, one of the sweetest (and most unappreciated) guys who ever played the game, will now be credited with a lifetime .300 average. Irvin was 30 years old when his contract was acquired by the Giants from the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League in 1948, where he’d played nine seasons. When he was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1973, some critics, citing his .293 average, 99 homers and only one 100-RBI season in eight years in the majors, questioned whether it was merely the result of him serving as a top aide to Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. In fact, Irvin was one of the elite players in the Negro Leagues, as his new combined stats — .311 BA, 160 HR — now attest.
And don’t think that statistical peculiarities are all we’ll see; there’s also the rhetorical absurdity of the Rookie of the Year designation. Six of the first seven National League Rookies of the Year — Don Newcombe, Sam Jethroe, Willie Mays, Joe Black, Jim Gilliam plus the man for whom the award is named, Jackie Robinson — all previously had played in the Negro Leagues. Which means, under this new Negro Leagues designation, they were not rookies at all. What are we supposed to do about that? If we’re going to be completely accurate about all this, it may be necessary to form a special commission of historians to study and evaluate all the other “true” rookies in those seasons and have a new election for each.
Then again, a focus on ironing out all the little creases misses the point of the declaration. There is no need to pretend that all leagues existed in harmony with each other. Instead, we can simply acknowledge that the Negro Leagues existed as the major leagues they were, and any complications that arise from doing so are the unavoidable echoes of racism in America.
