NEWS ITEM: Major League Baseball announced on May 29 that it incorporated the statistics of more than 2,300 Negro Leagues players from 1920 to 1948 into its records, which are now available in a newly integrated online database.
“Today’s announcement is the first major step that makes the achievements of the players of the Negro Leagues available to fans via the official historical record,” the MLB said in a statement.
Sometimes, it’s still hard to imagine, even in 2024, that African-American baseball players were banned from Major League Baseball prior to 1947. It was what it was. How and why segregation was what it was can better be examined/explained by historians and sociologists. But baseball was certainly enriched when things finally opened up after Jackie Robinson’s 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. His #42 was later retired by every MLB team.
To be sure, blacks played baseball before 1947. And while the old Negro Leagues didn’t have the financial resources that MLB did, the teams were rich in talent. Sadly, the times being what they were, there is a dearth of film records to document the wonderful action involving the Kansas City Monarchs, the Birmingham Black Barons, the Indianapolis Clowns, or the Baltimore Elite Giants, et al.
But while there’s not much in the way of You-Tube videos of Negro League action, there do exist numbers and statistics. And more than any other sport, baseball is about stats. And these numbers are cause for eternal, unresolvable debate. Could Ty Cobb have compiled a lifetime .367 batting average if he played in the 21st Century? Could Barry Bonds have enjoyed a 73-home run season in the dead ball era?
MLB’s inclusion of Negro League stats into its all-time records and statistical database naturally invites discussion.
Serious baseball fans have long considered Ty Cobb’s .367 lifetime batting average as one of MLB’s all-time unassailable records. But now, suddenly, the new record is Josh Gibson’s lifetime .373 average.
Who knew? Probably not many.
Back in the 1930’s Gibson was a star Negro League catcher for the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. By some accounts he hit around 800 home runs, but Negro League records credit him with 168. MLB recognizes 174 Gibson dingers. He hit .466 in 1943, easily surpassing the previous single-season modern big-league record of .424, set by Rogers Hornsby in 1924.
Hornsby’s .424 was another one of those supposedly “unassailable” big league records. But Gibson’s .466 in 1943 didn’t even win him a Negro League batting crown. That title went to Tetelo Vargas, who hit .471 that year during WWII. So, .471 is the new .424.
Traditionalists point out that Cobb played 3034 MLB games. Gibson is credited with only 602, which is less than four full MLB seasons’ worth. Cobb stole 897 bases in his 3034 games. Gibson stole 40 bases in his 602 games.
Unfortunately, there are stat gaps in the Negro Leagues’ record books. A full accounting of baseball achievements in those leagues can never be achieved.
And sadly, Gibson passed away at the age of 35 in 1947, four months before Robinson broke the color barrier.
Baseball fans—for whom the record book is a bible with all-time stats being chapter and verse— must suddenly embrace a new holy book with official text replacing old names and numbers with “new” ones. It’s not easy for some. Just as racial integration was sometimes a difficult process in the 20th Century, so too is statistical integration in the 21st Century.
Josh Gibson, Tetelo Vargas, and company are long gone. But the recent incorporation of Negro League numbers into MLB record books helps immortalize many underappreciated and underacknowledged players. Mentioning Gibson and Vargas here keeps their memories alive.
