A Major Correction

December 16, 2020 12:39 PM

Major League Baseball is reclassifying the Negro Leagues to include them part of the major leagues.
posted by dances_with_sneetches (56 comments total)

It is MLB's view that the Committee's 1969 omission of the Negro Leagues from consideration was clearly an error that demands today's designation

Aw, we hecked up and did a racism, oopsie woopsie. I mean, better late than never to correct this, but it shouldn't have taken until 2020.
posted by axiom at 12:52 PM on December 16, 2020 [9 favorites]

When I lived in Washington DC in the 80s, the Smithsonian put on a reunion of Negro League players. I got a ball signed which my brother promptly lost.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:59 PM on December 16, 2020 [8 favorites]

An error? Really? No, there was no error. They did it on purpose.
posted by Splunge at 1:01 PM on December 16, 2020 [15 favorites]

Are there any clear takes on the implications for stats? I'm thinking including Paige's full career will shake things up a bit.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:03 PM on December 16, 2020 [9 favorites]

Hey, you know what really makes people want to concede that they were wrong? Taking a giant dump on people who admit they were wrong. It really expresses empathy and engenders good will.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:06 PM on December 16, 2020 [108 favorites]

They talk a bit about stats in the article. It sounds like nothing is finalized, in part because the stats were not well-maintained for some years. The seasons were shorter. For example, Josh Gibson batted .441 over 80 games.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:06 PM on December 16, 2020

I'm also curious about how the stats will be affected. Baseball cares so much about counting stats and leaderboards and it will be interesting to see how those top 10 lists will be reordered.

That said, I think the impact will be less than it could be thanks to the lack of stats from Negro League games. There are projects to rebuild the record books as much as possible from newspaper stories, score cards, etc but I don't even think we'll know exactly how many home runs Josh Gibson hit or strikeouts Satchel Paige threw.
posted by thecjm at 1:08 PM on December 16, 2020 [5 favorites]

And by the way, MLB has recognized some sketchy leagues before this, sketchy in the sense they were in early days when the statistics don't match up to today's standards, or sketchy in the sense they were much shorter-lived.
It feels great to say that Josh Gibson is officially a major league player and not an asterisk. (And he may have hit 800 home runs).
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:11 PM on December 16, 2020 [11 favorites]

thecjm: "I'm also curious about how the stats will be affected. "

I'm going long on asterisks.

Also, it's hardly the first time a deliberate move has been scored an error in the great game of baseball.

Better late than never.
posted by chavenet at 1:23 PM on December 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

Back in the 70's I worked for a restaurant in Tulsa with a veteran of the Negro Leagues. I knew him by no other name than Smokey. We would be doing prep work together in the kitchen and he would regale me with tales of black baseball. Stories about facing legends like Satchel Paige and watching the "major leaguers" knowing they could beat the pants off of them. He was quite an education...
posted by jim in austin at 1:30 PM on December 16, 2020 [51 favorites]

The Ringer article on this goes into more detail about the stats and things that could be affected.
posted by ChuraChura at 1:41 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Stories about facing legends like Satchel Paige and watching the "major leaguers" knowing they could beat the pants off of them.

I was thinking - it would be pretty easy to get away with saying you faced Satchel Paige... but then the reason for that is a lot of guys faced Satchel Paige, because the dude played baseball for decades, all over the place.
posted by atoxyl at 1:42 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

"Can we avoid this retro-curvature of a history that backtracks on its footsteps and effaces its own traces; can we sidestep this fatal asymptote which in some way rolls back modernity in the way one rewinds a tapedeck? We are so accustomed to viewing all films over and over again, the fictitious ones as well as those pertaining to our lives; we have been so thoroughly contaminated by a retrospective technique that we are quite capable, under the blow of contemporary vertigo, to rethread history as one threads a film wrong side up." - Baudrillard.
posted by hank_14 at 1:50 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

we have been so thoroughly contaminated by a retrospective technique that we are quite capable, under the blow of contemporary vertigo, to rethread history as one threads a film wrong side up.

It's not like anything MLB is doing now can erase the fact that they willfully decided not to include the Negro Leagues in their major league statistics, that racist stain gets to be there forever. But, this has more than just philosophical implications. From the Ringer article I linked above:

On August 29, 1973, 42-year-old Met Willie Mays smacked a fifth-inning single to left off Padres southpaw Rich Troedson, driving in Bud Harrelson from second to put the Mets ahead 2-0. That hit, the last Mays ever recorded during the regular season, raised his career total to 3,283. That mark has stood ever since, undisturbed except for the passage of the few players who’ve subsequently hurdled him on the all-time leaderboard, where he ranks 12th.

Soon, though, that career count will climb slightly higher. Before he debuted for the New York Giants in 1951, Mays played for the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. The fleet center fielder’s hits—17 of which have been documented, although seven of those came during the NAL Championship Series—helped propel that team to a pennant, but they aren’t represented in Mays’s major league résumé. More than 70 years later, The Ringer can report that Major League Baseball is belatedly designating the Negro Leagues as major leagues and adjusting its records accordingly.

Those hits have always existed, they just haven't been properly recognized.
posted by ChuraChura at 2:06 PM on December 16, 2020 [14 favorites]

At last.
posted by Gelatin at 2:17 PM on December 16, 2020

It would be really cool if there were official re-issues of gear representing Negro League teams, especially if the sales were earmarked for causes that fight for equity. I just learned about the New York Cubans, a mostly Latin American team that played in the Negro league as most Latin players were also ignored by the major leagues before Jackie Robinson. They won the Negro League world series in 1947. I would buy shirts and hats for my whole family.
posted by Alison at 2:18 PM on December 16, 2020 [11 favorites]

Alison: "It would be really cool if there were official re-issues of gear representing Negro League teams, especially if the sales were earmarked for causes that fight for equity. I just learned about the New York Cubans, a mostly Latin American team that played in the Negro league as most Latin players were also ignored by the major leagues before Jackie Robinson. They won the Negro League world series in 1947. I would buy shirts and hats for my whole family."

Here you go.
posted by chavenet at 2:22 PM on December 16, 2020 [11 favorites]

Ebbets Field Flannels has been selling exact replicas of Negro League, Latin, Cuban, Japanese leagues and more for decades. Excellent quality but spendy. Based in Seattle.
posted by Zedcaster at 2:27 PM on December 16, 2020 [7 favorites]

Those hits have always existed, they just haven't been properly recognized.

It's also worth noting that while the hits of course existed, the stats mostly did not, in any recognizable tabulation. Groups of hardcore baseball fans either on their own initiative or as part of groups like SABR and others dedicated to Negro League history that searched out those stats in old newspapers and other sources that reported on Negro League games and interviewed as many people as possible to get the best sense of what those teams and games were like. MLB had little to do with it other than respond to pressure and make use of the research of others. As with the long, long overdue name change for the Cleveland Baseball Club, it's outside pressure that is causing the recognition of the wrongs, not just internal decisions to "correct errors".
posted by gusottertrout at 2:34 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

"It would be really cool if there were official re-issues of gear representing Negro League teams,..."

I bought a Kansas City Monarchs shirt at the Negro League Museum in Kansas City when we were there several years ago.
posted by COD at 2:46 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

The Negro League Hall of Fame is in Kansas City, MO, (I grew up in the Kansas side suburbs of KCMO). It didn't exist when I was there. Always wanted to go there, but haven't spent more than one night there since I went there for my Mom's funeral...

Hope once this is over, I can do so. So many great players, and such a legacy. Good for MLB, but, 20 years too late...
posted by Windopaene at 2:56 PM on December 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

Major League Baseball is always prepared to do the right thing, decades later.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 3:19 PM on December 16, 2020 [6 favorites]

> Hey, you know what really makes people want to concede that they were wrong? Taking a giant dump on people who admit they were wrong. It really expresses empathy and engenders good will.

They called it "an error" and "an oversight" today, not in 1920. As if it's something that just accidentally happened.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:39 PM on December 16, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'll take on Baudrillard here (and the notion of 'retrospective' history being an ill). I'm neither American nor a baseball fan but I can see what the MLB is doing; they're taking on the Negro Leagues as part of baseball's own heritage, even though for so many years each party would have denied the relationship. And why not correct and reclassify, since baseball (like its better and more civilised counterpart, cricket) is so consumed with statistics, lists, almanacs, records. It's not rethreading history, it's engagement with the past on our own terms. Cultural heritage is suprisingly mutable and that's ok; it doesn't threaten the reality of the past. Or as David Lowenthal put it in The Heritage Crusade:

Awareness that heritage is not fixed but changes in response to our own needs is no less integral to our creative involvement with our own history. In realizing how we variously affect these linked realms, we learn to relish, rather than resent, our own interventions and even to tolerate those of others. And we come to feel that history and heritage are not simply imposed on us by the dead hand of remote ancestors or the diktat of bygone autocrats but are our very own...

posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:41 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

(like its better and more civilised counterpart, cricket)

Whoa whoa whoa! Let's not go down a rabbit hole here.
posted by Fukiyama at 3:49 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Fiasco, let's not be too charitable here. The article is very clear that they are changing the official historical designation of the negro league, as if it had always been major league (we were always playing baseball with Eurasia, I guess), thus making sure that today's major league no longer bears its awkward racist history as an historical scar. That's not a question of cultural heritage - as the article points out, most baseball fans are aware of the impressive skills of those players, and the impact it had on shaping the major league. It's the historical record that is being fixed here, not the lack of appreciation for the heritage. Now the difference is that the MLB can - as other comments above hope - re-issue jerseys from the league teams and own the profits, or control how the history of the league is shaped.

This announcement, for example, does a lot to hype (albeit vaguely) the heroism of those who worked for or on behalf of the negro league, and that's definitely a friendlier, happier, and more sanitized version than vilifying the people in the MLB who made the objectively historical decision to tell that league to fuck the fuck off at the time.
posted by hank_14 at 3:58 PM on December 16, 2020 [6 favorites]

Ok, it was either a major league or it wasn't. MLB is saying that it should have been classified as a major league but it was not due to an "oversight" or "error." I can say racism. So is the argument here that it was never a major league? Or that once something is ignored due to racism we never get a chance to correct it?

I wish they would come out and say "racism" but also I think they should include the Negro League as one of the 7 major leagues.

Here are the other 6 major leagues, taken from this blog post about the MLB Special Records Committee.

National League, 1876 to the present
American League, 1901 to the present
American Association, 1882–91
Union Association, 1884
Players’ League, 1890
Federal League, 1914–15
The National Association, 1871–1875, shall not be considered as a “major league” due to its erratic schedule and procedures, but it will continue to be recognized as the first professional baseball league.

Note that 4 of 6 of these leagues were not in existence when the MLB decided they were major leagues.
posted by muddgirl at 4:55 PM on December 16, 2020 [6 favorites]

Is this the right place to bring up the whole 'World Series' thing?
No? OK, carry on.
posted by signal at 5:10 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

muddgirl, I'd say the answer is that it wasn't, and it wasn't because one of the ways the major leagues defined themselves was by being NOT that other league, by which I mean, the majors defined themselves as exclusively white. I would feel less strongly about today's big announcement if the announcement was clear about all the ways the MLB fucked up back then, and how they regret that now, and want to bring recognition to it. But this announcement isn't about correcting the historical record - that happens by acknowledging much more forthrightly the history and the forensic reality of who did what and what went wrong. Instead, when I read the announcement, it sounds like an attempt to reconcile the historical record to the way the majors wish they would be seen, or maybe think they see themselves, today.

Adding some hits to Willie Mays record, for example, simply incorporates the negro league into the major league experience, as if it wasn't specifically and offensively excluded. This is obviously problematic, as the experience for the two sets of players were radically different - players in the negro league, for example, didn't have the benefit of gaining experience and learning about effective team play via farm teams prior to the majors - but it's so much cleaner just to add some numbers to Willie Mays' tally than it is to put an asterisk next to it, and let that asterisk sit there, reminding everyone via its presence or some footnote that this number does not include his play in the negro league, because the majors refused to include non-white baseball activity until 1947.
posted by hank_14 at 5:41 PM on December 16, 2020 [7 favorites]

To add to what hank_14 just wrote, it's important to remember that MLB more or less sticks to the narrative that racism in baseball was magically solved by Jackie Robinson. People who are into baseball will tell you that the first black player in the major leagues was Moses Fleetwood Walker (though that's also kind of complicated), but that's something you learn when you're a kid really into baseball, not because MLB wants to acknowledge that the "color barrier" wasn't something that had always existed.

I've mentioned this before, but I spent my whole life wanting to go to Cooperstown, until sometime in high school when there was a travelling Hall of Fame exhibit that came to the Field Museum in Chicago and somehow Japanese internment was a-okay because people could play baseball in the camps. The Hall of Fame isn't an actual organ of MLB, but that still tells you something about baseball culture.
posted by hoyland at 5:53 PM on December 16, 2020

Does anyone have a link to the actual announcement? I found this quote in a CNN article which is closer to correct: "The perceived deficiencies of the Negro Leagues' structure and scheduling were born of MLB's exclusionary practices, and denying them Major League status has been a double penalty, much like that exacted of Hall of Fame candidates prior to Satchel Paige's induction in 1971."

And mlb.com has only this article as far as I can find.
posted by muddgirl at 6:01 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thank you, mr_roboto.
posted by terrapin at 6:15 PM on December 16, 2020

MLB press release.
posted by zamboni at 6:21 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's about damn time.
posted by calamari kid at 6:28 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Many of the best Negro Leagues players actually did get to play against the Major Leaguers. And, interestingly, that was because of Babe Ruth.

TL;DR: Ruth, maybe because he might not have been as racist as his peers, maybe because he saw a business opportunity, maybe because he just wanted to play good ball, regularly organized barnstorming games against Negro League players.

From the link: "The way he lived his life, it's fair to say that he was the first effective proponent for the integration of baseball. He was enormously influential, and he went out of his way to demonstrate to the white power structure of Major League Baseball that this is what should be done."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:34 PM on December 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

Along with chavenet's Negro League Baseball Shop link from above, I also found the Negro League Baseball Museum store, and a website called It's A Black Thang which has a Negro League subsection.
posted by hippybear at 6:44 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

Thanks zamboni.
posted by muddgirl at 6:49 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Is this the right place to bring up the whole 'World Series' thing?

Yes, this is the world.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:55 PM on December 16, 2020

I wonder if Babe Ruth's actions come from him being part of the Boston Red Sox in 1914, which was before the Negro Leagues were established in 1920. He might has been on a team with Black players for a few years.
posted by hippybear at 6:56 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't think it's linked upthread: MLB Elevating the Status of the Negro Leagues is the Problem, not the Solution

Black folks taught Japanese people how to like baseball. Black folks started playing night games because it was the only time white folks would let us use their stadiums. Black folks let women actually play on the field, not just stuck them in skirts and made a movie years later about it to much fanfare. Those contributions to baseball have nothing to do with numbers in a book and never will. But they won’t be understood or recognized as vital because so-called seamheads are too busy worrying about how Black ballplayers match up against their childhood heroes.

Truth. MLB is all about staging a Field of Dreams game. Lemme know when the Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings game is being held.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 7:06 PM on December 16, 2020 [8 favorites]

A pity that Charley Pride did not live to see this.
posted by thelonius at 8:01 PM on December 16, 2020 [11 favorites]

I had the privilege of visiting the homes of both Satchel Paige and Buck O'Neil this summer (both in the Santa Fe Neighborhood of Kansas City), as well as the graves of both (both are in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Kansas City) and on top of that, Satchel Paige Stadium.

Well worth the visits if you're in the area (perhaps to visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum).

I put together a little photo gallery with all those sites and a little more, if anyone is interested in looking.

FYI Satchel Paige's home is in very bad condition right now, but is in the process of being renovated to serve as a museum. A little more info on that project here.
posted by flug at 12:03 AM on December 17, 2020 [8 favorites]

While it's more inspired by than faithful recreation, another Negro Leagues' merchandise option (which I heard about via The Athletic's roundtable discussion): the Roots of Fight Negro Leagues Collection, which is partnered with CC Sabathia, the MLB Players Association, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and Jackie Robinson's family, and has the following about who benefits from sales:

Proceeds from all sales will benefit the NLBM’s efforts to preserve and celebrate the rich history of African American baseball and its significance in the social advancement of America at large. When iconic players, like Jackie Robinson are featured, proceeds from their products will also go directly to them or their estates/families.

posted by zamboni at 7:00 AM on December 17, 2020

It would be really cool if there were official re-issues of gear representing Negro League teams,...

What counts as "official" when we're talking about a long-defunct league and teams? It's not like the Birmingham Black Barons are getting a cut from every hat sold.

Ebbets gives a portion of the sales back to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. But even that is voluntary - I don't want MLB to get a cut because they're now the owners of the Negro Leagues trademarks
posted by thecjm at 7:03 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

TL;DR: Ruth, maybe because he might not have been as racist as his peers, maybe because he saw a business opportunity, maybe because he just wanted to play good ball, regularly organized barnstorming games against Negro League players.

Because of his wide nose and non-pale-white skin, Babe Ruth's nickname growing up was "N----- Lips" at the home for boys where he lived. There is speculation that he may have had a Black ancestor, but no proof anywhere. Both he and his sister refused to talk much about their family of origin.
posted by Melismata at 7:41 AM on December 17, 2020

The PBS NewsHour had a rare bit of sports reporting yesterday, with their six-minute segment on this story (Video).

They interviewed Howard Bryant, an author who has written several books on sports and race in America. Bryant was very troubled by MLB's decision, and the discussion was illuminating for me as a non-follower of baseball.

If you are interested in this era of baseball, I recommend James Sturm's graphic novel The Golem's Mighty Swing, about a 1920's barnstorming American baseball team of Jewish players. Sample PDF.
posted by JDC8 at 9:03 AM on December 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

would be great to go back in time and tell some of these dudes their legacy of greatness doing the thing they loved would be secured forever in the future.
posted by Bwentman at 10:17 AM on December 17, 2020

I would feel less strongly about today's big announcement if the announcement was clear about all the ways the MLB fucked up back then, and how they regret that now, and want to bring recognition to it.

Exactly this. If the only "error" they can recognize was not previously considering the Negro Leagues "Major League" - rather than the fact that the Negro Leagues had to exist at all - it's not really addressing anything.
posted by nickmark at 11:01 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

What counts as "official" when we're talking about a long-defunct league and teams?

I've been trying to figure this out, and it seems complicated. The Negro League Baseball Players Association (made up of actual players) has a licensing program, but so does the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. I'm not sure if these trademark rights are formally disputed, and it seems quite thorny. Couldn't find much insight on the web.

I don't think anyone is contending that MLB now owns those trademarks, or has the right to use them.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:13 AM on December 17, 2020

If the only "error" they can recognize was not previously considering the Negro Leagues "Major League" - rather than the fact that the Negro Leagues had to exist at all - it's not really addressing anything.

Isn't this the "double penalty" that Thorn referred to in the press release? The initial exclusion compounded by the continued segregation.
posted by mr_roboto at 11:18 AM on December 17, 2020

Isn't this the "double penalty" that Thorn referred to in the press release? The initial exclusion compounded by the continued segregation.

Maybe, but that's also nearly the only reference to it (along side a mention of the "backdrop of injustice" - which, it feels really weird to describe the central reason for the creation of the leagues as a "backdrop"). Quoting hank_14 again:

Instead, when I read the announcement, it sounds like an attempt to reconcile the historical record to the way the majors wish they would be seen, or maybe think they see themselves, today.

And even Thorn is only blaming "MLB's exclusionary practices" for the "perceived deficiencies of structuring and scheduling" (I infer that these "deficiencies" were the pretext for their prior exclusion from Major designation in 1969). MLB wants to own the stats and the achievements, and they want credit for not being racist now, but they don't admit that they were racist in the past.

Look at the structure of the press release itself: The first paragraph says they've decided to recognize the Negro Leagues as Major; the second says it's because of "additional facts, statistics, and context" that show the Negro Leagues should have always been included. Then there's a bunch of quotes, and they announce a process to understand the statistical ramifications.

There's really no acknowledgement of the reason for the Negro Leagues at all; it's focused entirely on absorbing them into MLB's "official" historical record. As if there is no record outside the "official" one and no history outside the statistics.

I think a naïve audience could be forgiven for reading that press release and thinking that the Negro Leagues just kind of happened on their own because "everything used to be racist back then" - it was a backdrop of injustice, maybe there were laws against black and white people playing together and it was just how things had to be - with no understanding that it was because MLB actively and aggressively refused to accept non-white participation. It reads like a whole lot of "thanks to historians, we now recognize that those guys who ran their own league were in fact good enough to play with the rest of us" and not nearly enough "we recognize that it was wrong to exclude those guys and force them to go to such lengths to play a game they loved. We're sorry that the people who were then in the positions of power in which we now sit behaved that way. We can't undo what they did, but we can acknowledge it, and acknowledge how much more impressive it makes the achievements of these players"

In general, I feel like saying "everything used to be racist back then" is one of the things that makes it hard to heal the racial division in the US - it makes it too easy to absolve both our current selves and specific past individuals in one swoop and allow ourselves to forget the very conscious, deliberate, and specific injustices created and perpetuated by individual people and by institutions. I think that until we are a lot more specific about owning the causes, we'll have a hard time dealing with the effects.
posted by nickmark at 12:24 PM on December 17, 2020 [7 favorites]

Additional MLB coverage:

"MLB adds Negro Leagues to official records":

In 1968, MLB’s Special Committee on Baseball Records was convened by then-Commissioner William Eckart to determine which past professional leagues should be classified alongside the American League and National League as Major Leagues in the first publication of “The Baseball Encyclopedia.” The committee ultimately concluded that the American Association (1882-91), Union Association (1884), Players’ League (1890) and Federal League (1914-15) qualified.

At that time, the Negro Leagues were not even considered for inclusion, according to John Thorn, MLB’s official historian.

“There was no public outcry,” Thorn said. “I am reminded of Ralph Ellison’s title for the wonderful book ‘Invisible Man.’ The problem was not even perceived to exist. It’s not as if there was someone in the room raising the question and having it turned down for reasons historical or technical. It simply did not come up.”

"How Negro Leaguers may alter leaderboards":

But now -- soon, anyway -- when you look atop some of the most important leaderboards in baseball history, these players will deservedly be there. They were really always there.

"Gibson's kin hopes for MVP Award renaming"

"...Now that Major League Baseball is officially going to recognize the league, believe me, it’s a great honor. But these guys already felt they were Major League baseball players because they played the game just like they did. Just unfortunately, they could not play against the white baseball players because of Kenesaw Mountain Landis...."

I was happy to see this news! Thanks JDC8 for the link; going to watch that PBS NewsHour interview now.
posted by brainwane at 8:14 AM on December 18, 2020

I second JDC8's recommendation of the interview with Howard Bryant (transcript and video available). Some excerpts:

You're not looking at, well, OK, from 1920 to 1948, there was the American League and the National League on the white side and then there was the Negro Leagues on the other side.

That's not what took place. What segregation did to Black players is, it destroyed them. It created a permanent inferiority that you cannot retrofit 100 years later. You had inferior conditions. You had tattered record books. You don't know how many games guys played.

When Jackie Robinson played in the Negro Leagues with the Kansas City Monarchs, he hated the Negro Leagues for two reasons. One of them was, it offended his sensibilities on fairness. But the other reason was because the games were so scattershot, you didn't know what game was a barnstorming game, you didn't know what was an exhibition, you didn't know what games were official. He couldn't calculate his batting average.

So, I think that, while well-intentioned, you cannot retrofit everything. I think that baseball has to carry this history. I think a smarter move would have been for them to acknowledge that the players were Major League level and to classify them as Major League level, but you have to leave the record books alone.

That got destroyed by segregation. That got destroyed by your racism during those years, and you can't fix that part.....

I think that, when you're doing this, you're trying to fix something that history is telling you, you cannot fix. And I think that there are plenty of ways for baseball to celebrate Negro Leaguers. I think there are plenty of ways for Major League Baseball to acknowledge Negro Leaguers.

And especially elevating their status, one of the things that baseball could do is certainly elevate their pensions, but all the players are dead.

I appreciate his point; unifying the statistics is a big problem not just because of some antiseptic pedantry but because the dataset collection methods were incredibly different in quality and reliability and the games were inherently not comparable, because of systemic racism and its structural effects, and the unified data cannot reliably tell answer questions we want to answer.

I think one point where I have a different perspective from his is when he says "But we already have a built-in asterisk, which is 1947." I think that many fans have gotten it thoroughly into their heads that all pre-1947 white MLB games and stats are asterisk-worthy because those players never faced off against Gibson, Paige, et alia. But in the wider imagination, in the stats that get propagated among non-fans and casual fans, folks do not treat those numbers as tainted. That's something that would and will take a major cultural consciousness campaign to fix.

Regardless, I agree with Bryant: let's all "acknowledge that the players were Major League level and ... classify them as Major League level".
posted by brainwane at 8:39 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Howard Bryant also had a great interview (link to podcast and transcript) with the folks on Burn It All Down (about sports and race and culture), that made me change my mind about this a bit.

Most importantly for me I think my issue was that these African American players have already carried the pain and they’ve already carried the consequences of segregation, they carried it for their whole lives. Doesn’t the institution have to carry something too? Or do you just get to decide with a pen stroke that now everything’s fair? That was my issue. The biggest problem I have with this is the idea that the institution gets to determine and choose how long it’s gonna carry its historical stain. You can’t do that.

posted by ChuraChura at 11:15 AM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

@hank_14 "players in the negro league, for example, didn't have the benefit of gaining experience and learning about effective team play via farm teams prior to the majors"

Well, yes and no. The "major league" Negro League teams didn't have formal relationships with other Negro League teams at lesser levels of play the way that MLB now has with AAA and other minor league teams. But there were definitely minor league Negro League teams, and players did move up from them to the major league Negro League teams. You mentioned Willie Mays -- one of the reasons that he only had 17 hits in 1948 was that he was only with the Black Barons for the second half of the season. For the first half, he was with the Chattanooga Choo Choos, a team in the minor league Negro Southern League.

@hippybear "I wonder if Babe Ruth's actions come from him being part of the Boston Red Sox in 1914, which was before the Negro Leagues were established in 1920. "
There were plenty of Negro leagues (small-l) and Negro baseball teams before 1920. They were poorly organized, played mostly barnstorming games, and often went bankrupt before the season ended. That they had such disorganized play is why they aren't counted as major leagues as part of the recent announcement by MLB. But they would play against white teams, and did so before 1920.
posted by billm at 7:26 AM on December 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Larry Tye, the author of a Satchel Paige biography, makes some points in the NY Times, and is critical of MLB's choices.
posted by brainwane at 7:24 PM on December 21, 2020 [1 favorite]