Henry Kimbro now recognized as the 1947 MLB batting champion

So... when are they going to count the minor leagues too? The A league, AA league and AAA league in these stats?

 

It is sad, in fact horrid, that many a great baseball player in the USA was denied the opportunity to play MLB. But now some 75 years later to reinvent history....which is simply deception.

Josh Gibson was a great hitter in the Negro League for 12 years. Played in 50 games a year, a total of 602 games. If a white guy say in the 1950s played 4 years in the Majors and a total of 602 game with amazing stats would he be eligible for the HOF? No.

So why kid ourselves. All this does is divide people into thinking why are we rigging the stats to favor one skin tone over another....oh wait DEI. I say we then include the Women's League for the WW II era.

 

So maybe we throw out all of the white only year stats in MLB as well?

There is a problem and I don't know if MLB came up with the right solution. But the great Negro League players would have been stars in MLB. To what level we will never know. But Willie Mays started in the Negro Leagues and he was a decent ball player. LOL. Satchel Paige was 42 years old (and probably older) when he had his MLB debut and could still get guys out.

White team owners used to say if any of them (and you know who they were talking about) were good enough they would play. What a crock.

 

Sadaharu Oh, and his 868 NPB HR's, says konnichiwa. And just for context, Phil Niekro was getting MLB hitters out when he was 48 years old. "To what level we will never know". Yet, some assume to know.

Revisionist history. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

 

Ted Williams missed 4 seasons due to war. He should get credit for at least 800 hits and 160 homers. Lets just add them to his stats. Kofax had his career cut short, lets give him at leadt 1000 ks and 2 more no hitters.

 

Exactly. It's always to DIVIDE. Always.

 

This derives from a problem created 400 years ago with no obvious solution. That was a purposeful decision to divide and the division still exists. Proposals to make right today what was done wrongly so long ago surely will have flaws that counteract some or all of the benefits. Recognizing the accomplishments of black players hardly qualifies as a NEW purposeful effort to divide and it doesn't reflect well on one to shout too loudly and be excessively offended that some other person intends to improve and old problem. Recognition of Negro League players and their performance takes nothing away from white players of the same era- and nothing from white fans today, but the actions of white society certainly significantly harmed the ability of Negro League players to earn a living that fit their job performance.

Political ideology is fine, as is opposing inclusion and equity for a despised group, but don't be shocked that others have a different ideology and different feelings about exclusion and inequity. It's no more offensive to argue a Negro League player was better than white players in segregated MLB, than to argue the steroid assisted-sluggers had an unfair advantage over clean sluggers. Or to argue about the merits of 1890 players vs. 1990 players, Ruth vs. Aaron, Cobb vs. Rose. All of those arguments are subjective and the limited objective data is of questionable reliability to use for comparison.

I'll briefly address the Straw Man logical fallacy- a mistaken belief, based on an unsound premise. No one has actually made proposals to give Negro League players credit for hits they didn't hit or pitching wins they didn't pitch, so that assertion not only is meaningless in a discussion, it tends to harm the credibility of the person using it. The Straw Man often appeared in the past to justify racial segregation, as well as many other bad things. It's no more credible today.

 

Mr. Paige was not a knuckleballer.

Hoyt Wilhem was even older and also a knuckleballer and would have been an even better pitcher to prop up for your lame argument.

 

A quote from Chief Bill Gillespie (In The Heat Of The Night) Carroll O’Connor—

“Sometimes I just get so tired”……

 

Nice rebuttal to my main point concerning Sadaharu Oh's NPB home run record. Lame indeed. But, keep fixating on the past, instead of trying to create a better future. Look how well that's been working for us.

 

People divide by race today for politics, power, influence and money. Back then the division was due to prejudice. Bathrooms, water fountains, hotels, restaurants, schools, buses, sports, … all had white only signage. Going back further they were excluded from voting, land ownership, marrying outside your race. Even the military divided soldiers by skin color. Sad times in history. Today’s division is equally wrong and does not allow healing or unification

 

I don't see the distinction between "...politics, power, influence and money..." and "...Bathrooms, water fountains, hotels, restaurants, schools, buses, sports, … excluded from voting, land ownership, marrying outside your race..." The first four factors are abstract words that represent the reality of the later factors. Different words to describe the same thing. There has been a long series of movements both forward and back along a single continuum. Racial injustice didn't disappear and later return.

 

A minor footnote from history, also in 1947:



Jackie Robinson--the 3150th black major league baseball player, give or take, who mysteriously began receiving death threats in his second season in the majors.

 

I don't get the joke. If the threats began in the SECOND season, that really would be mysterious. Threats for Robinson began when he signed with the Dodgers (long before he took the field) and continued throughout '46 when he played in the IL with Montreal and continued until his death. There was nothing mysterious about it. Every black American was at risk of murder at any moment, even when they did their best to avoid attention. Someone who actually called attention to themselves by integrating baseball, trying to vote or not stepping off the sidewalk fast enough was subject to sudden death. That was a joke, wasn't it?

 

Since the '20-'48 stats were made MLB official stats, Robinson's rookie year is now his 1945 season with the Kansas City Monarchs. He spent the entire 1946 season in the Dodgers minor league organization, then moved up to the major league club in '47, making what we once mistakenly believed to be his rookie year as the first black player in the majors merely his second year in the majors behind over 3000 black players who reached the big leagues before he did. His rookie year passed without incident, like that of all the other black players who had entered the majors before him dating back to 1920, but then all hell mysteriously broke loose in his second year in the majors, when he suddenly began receiving death threats from without and ostracization from within, getting barred from rooming and dining with his own teammates on the road.

I'm just saying there are severe consequences to messing around with history that are being ignored here. You can't have it both ways. You can either honor Robinson and the walk he walked when it was his burden to bear in order to be the first, or you can take it away from him.

 

While I have read about Robinson since his playing days, including about his life before college, the army and pro baseball, I never have heard that anecdote. I've heard the opposite, but can only guess about the accuracy of either. On the other hand, as I said above, life was dangerous for nearly every black American in the period you mention. It's a bit hard to buy that, "His rookie year passed without incident." The abuse he suffered that year is thoroughly documented and messing with that history shouldn't be ignored. I think you're mistaken to believe recognition of Robinson's Negro League play takes anything away from him among baseball fans.

Messing around with history has become popular. History generally is written by those in control, certainly, that is true about US history. Those in control who wrote US history chose which facts to emphasize and which to ignore. That wasn't so different than history written at other times and places. For example, the French considered Joan of Arc a great leader and a saint. The English considered her a heretic and killed her with that justification. In general, the French version is more popular now, but part of Joan's heretical behavior was having short hair and dressing and behaving like a man, so some current revisionists might choose to mess with history to hide or emphasize the implications of that behavior. US history that addresses the lives of black Americans is at the center of disagreements just like this baseball issue, but we get to choose how we assess the accuracy and value of opinions about that history.

The best Negro League players probably were comparably as good as- maybe in some cases better than- their white contemporaries. Because white society excluded black players from white baseball, it is impossible to compare the actual skills and performance in an objective manner for players other than those who lived late enough to find their way into MLB. Players like Mays, Aaron, Doby, Campanella, Paige and others immediately moved to the very top of objective measurements, but most Negro League players were too old for anything other than subjective guesses. Of course, it also is impossible to compare in a meaningful manner early white players to whites who played later and the same for earlier and later black players.

Some white fans are offended by some efforts to make those impossible comparisons. I like recognizing that there were some superior players were in the Negro Leagues and excluded from MLB. However, the more one tries to make objective comparisons, the more futile the effort. In the case of this one obscure player, Kimbro, our message board has seen carefully worded posts that protest a nearly meaningless comparison, but we also see efforts to compare Gator players of different eras, also nearly meaninglessut not so offensive.

 

I especially appreciate you suggesting that adding the Negro League players doesn't diminish anyone. It was the black players who were historically diminished. Thank you.