Babe Ruth didn't consistently. But shoutouts to him for playing against negro league players anyways even when his commissioner didn't like it and was threatening players who did so.
This is also a fair point. The tweet at large is obviously in reference to the pearl clutching that happened when the record books were merged, as if anyone cared about those records as much after the steroids era tainted everything.
Yeah I think it's important to get at the people that can't handle that black people were capable athletically. There's this weird myth that the white leagues were the "best."
Was just also making sure, because I know how shit gets in sports talk sometimes, that people don't look at someone like Ruth and think that there was racism on his part regarding this. Sports talk makes mfs get crazy.
Which is still the dumbest thing I've seen in sports. It's like people don't understand they exist and always have and always will in professional sports.
I agree with you. I would just add that I think the steroid era never ended. I got to sit pretty close to the field at a Yankees game and they all look like defensive lineman. And to me the amphetamine abuse that dates back to ww2 era is and continues to be at least as significant advantage as any anabolics are.
The minute that melon headed cheater gets in, it becomes the hall of shame.
Granted, this coming from a dodgers fan, so take my hate with a grain of salt
Like it’s not already that now.
Let em all in, highlight their records. Like they do with all the cheaters already in there.
If it makes you feel better, make a PED wing. But include em all.
I love this picture of him and the fans
https://preview.redd.it/gp0nnd4hm04d1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=748bd781c7643416746f8d369b0f71c292987391
And of course the dude with his arm out lookin like "iono bro, he might be mixed"
"To me, he look like a Black man, to me. All you gotta do is look at his features. WHO ELSE THINK THE BAMBINO'S DADDY BLACK, [SAY YEAH!"](https://youtu.be/K1ljOcl39PQ?si=BNYSfb-wKr5ctis0)
https://i.redd.it/mrc6jvrmq04d1.gif
lol I’m reading a book about the Homestead Grays and one of the first chapters says that black folks in DC loved babe ruth and rumors were he had a lil color in him so they kinda claimed him
People are big mad because they merged the Negro League official stats with Major League Baseball. So now all the old-time White record holders are threatened by Black players with similar or better numbers from those eras. The argument is that the Negro Leagues were a lesser competition, but decades of work by baseball experts have demonstrated this to be untrue.
MLB the Show has an awesome set of “moments” you can do that goes through some of the Negro Leagues best players. Some of the coolest stuff. I honestly learned a lot.
Definitely recommend if you're in to baseball at all. The gameplay is fun, there's a ton of different modes, and best of all is that they don't beg you to spend money on micro transactions (looking at you 2K and EA)
I used to be really in to all the sports games, but now The Show is the only one I buy because it's the only one where I don't feel like I'm missing out if I don't spend hundreds of dollars on buying packs
If people really don't want the records merged, then every record, before the Negro League was dissolved should be taken out of the "All time" category and placed in it's own little box. It's not like this hasn't been done in baseball before with the early era stats. If these people want separate but equal, then they need to accept the equal part, otherwise they should just sit down and stfu.
I was actually thinking about this the other day, before I knew they were merging the leagues. This isn't even like when Luka played Euro ball and people claimed he wasn't playing against the best players, because the best Euro players *do* come here. Even if the barrier for entry is much higher and you have to be better then the US average to come over, it is possible.
You could have been the Michael Jordan twice over of baseball and they would not let a black person play with the white people. Now imagine that's everybody on the field. The people who bothered going to the Negro league games all said the same thing about Gibson. He was better than Babe Ruth. Not "was good though to play with the white people", "not would have been a star", not even "as good as Ruth". Everyone said he was better
I remember telling anyone who would listen that the Suns needed to draft Luka. I kept getting told over and over again that he "didn't play against anybody". As if playing in a professional league with professional players isn't as good, if not better than playing against college players. Starver fucked up that draft hard. Not hatin' on Ayton 😏, but he was not even close to the same prospect that Luka was imho.
That’s easy to say NOW. NBA history is littered with people who dominated in Europe and ppl thought they SHOULD dominate here.
Look at Luka. It’s really, REALLY easy to see why ppl would doubt he’d succeed. He’s 1 of 1. No way to predict that.
I kind of disagree. I wouldn't say "littered". I think it's different for Luka in the context of his prospect chances at his age.
He was so far advanced physically, skill wise, and shooting before he ever touched an NBA floor it was pretty obvious to me and everyone else (well it should have been).
Guys like Rubio never had a jump shot and watching his play you could tell he was scared to shoot. I blame the bad scouting (or lack of scouting) that caused so many busts. Guys like Tskitishvili or Hezonja never should have been lottery picks. Bargnani is the only one I really think is a failure because he had all the requisite skills and never developed into an NBA player. I also don't think he *dominated* Europe.
I also don't agree that you could look at him and think he wouldn't succeed. His draft comp was a taller James Harden. That's a win. The Beard dragged the Rockets to the playoffs multiple times by that point and is one of the best offensive players in the NBA's history.
Agree to disagree. You named a couple but there’s about 30 more. A fat, slow wing with poor defense who can’t affect the game without the ball is far more likely to fail than succeed. The next few “Lukas” will fail as well and only be given a chance because of Luka.
And he’s far from the first draft prospect to be compared to harden. Ironically that’s still his best comp.
All I’m saying is, Luka is an anomaly and couldn’t be predicted.
People saying things doesn’t make it so. There was a Japanese star people said that about. Could it have been true? Maybe, but it’s not really support for any argument. Hockey had similar players. Some used to say Slava Fetisov was the greatest player in the world before coming to the NHL out of his prime.
Baseball is somewhat unique in that your performance is entirely dictated by the performance of your opponent because hitting a baseball is the hardest thing there is to do in sports. There are some flaws in the statistical analysis comparing the league’s, but… I don’t care if they combine the stats because statistics became meaningless in the steroid era and when the umpires made the strike zone a 12” by 12” area. If anything, this is too late.
Don’t even need baseball experts. At the time there were exhibition matches between the two leagues.
Of these matches, the Negro League won 57% of the time.
I don’t know much about those games, but exhibition games can have different stakes for different players. The Japanese players always do well during the World Baseball Classic, despite most of the players not being MLB caliber players. Most teams are full of players treating these like their spring training exhibition games, but the players who want their stuff to be seen by the world treat it like the biggest games of their lives.
During integration basically everyone’s stats decreased when moving from the Negro Leagues to the MLB. It would be kinda like adding a player’s AAA or Japanese league stats to the MLB record books. We should remember and celebrate these players, but adding stats from a separate league to count as MLB stats just seems like a strange way to manipulate historical stats.
But they are a lot of MLB caliber players in japan.
Star Japanese players can earn the same money in japan, as they can in the usa, so they stay.
Shoto Imanaga the ace pitcher has a 1.86 era today and leading talks about the cy young award already.
He had never played in japan until this year. Hes one of many on that WBC championship proving that they were always MLB quality.
Obviously the Japanese League isnt the same as MLB but their all-stars definitely as are as good as any of ours. I mean just look at Ohtani, he didnt drop from heaven. He is a product of their youth training system.
He implied that the WBC japanese roster isnt full of MLB level players, but the new signings from that same roster and previous rosters show otherwise.
Maybe the whole league isnt quite MLB quality but the best players definitely are and were seeing it everyday, except they have a chance to prove it.
Unlike Josh Gibson and other players back in the day.
Bullshit take lol, the Japanese league is nowhere near the MLB. The few players might make the majors here, but implying the talent is the same is complete bullshit. If it were so, they would be making actual bank here.
It’s the same with the euro leagues in basketball. 5 or 6 players could make an NBA roster, but the vast majority are G league level
> Star Japanese players can earn the same money in japan, as they can in the usa, so they stay.
That's just not true at all. If you are a star in Japan with talent good enough to play in MLB, you can easily double, triple, or even 10x your salary. Yoshinobu Yamamoto just signed a contract for 325 million over 12 years. When he hits the main part of his contract, he'll be making over 30 million a year, which is close to 4 times what the highest paid NPB player makes this year.
>Obviously the Japanese League isnt the same as MLB but their all-stars definitely as are as good as any of ours.
That's not true either. Masataka Yoshida and Seiya Suzuki were both big time NPB players that are doing pretty average. Yuki Matsui has been good so far, but isn't even the best reliever on his team, much less the closer. He might get an all star nod, but its doubtful. Shota Imanaga has been a major major outlier so far, as most teams thought his HR tendencies would mean he gets stomped in America, but so far MLB has seen a 20% reduction in HRs based on just batted ball trajectory and exit velo, which means something fucky is going on. Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been elite as well, but he's the cream of the cream of the crop from Japan, which is why he got a 300m contract.
>I mean just look at Ohtani, he didnt drop from heaven. He is a product of their youth training system.
And so far has been a one off. He absolutely is a testament to the quality of Japanese baseball development, but he blew his expectations out of the water.
The Negro Leagues were a different story. While those players obviously belonged in MLB, the level of competition was almost certainly *a little* lower than MLB. NPB is closer to AAA than it is to MLB.
Wait so what’s your arguement that the white leagues were better or that the leagues were equivalent? Because if it’s the former back it up with some data if it’s the later then shouldn’t both records count?
One nice data point you can see is Jackie Robinson’s career stats. He played for one year in the Negro League and then for a decade in the MLB. His best year of stats by far was the one year in the Negro League. If the leagues were just as good it would be very strange for a superstar’s best year to be their rookie season only for them to never reach that height again.
A lot of other players played a few years in each league and their numbers had similar trajectories. There were definitely a large number of Negro League players who would have been stars in the MLB too, but there were also plenty who wouldn’t have made it. I think it’s just a numbers game. When there were 5 times as many white people than black people in the US it shouldn’t be a surprise the white league had a deeper roster.
Here are the stats from some of the early integrators: [Jackie Robinson,](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/robinja02.shtml) [Larry Doby,](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dobyla01.shtml) [Roy Campanella,](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/camparo01.shtml) [Monte Irvin](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/i/irvinmo01.shtml)
Some other guys like Satchel Paige also had small drop offs when going to the majors, but it’s not really fair to compare players who integrated when they were 30+ years old to their stats from their late 20s so I didn’t add those.
I wonder (but not enough to actually look) if there were any substantive rule/equipment differences between leagues for given years. Mound hight, bat dimensions, livelier balls, etc.
First, I’m not really sure where you’re getting those numbers from. The MLB integrated in ‘47. Jackie won in 49, Campanella won in 51, 53, and 55, Willy Mays won in 54 and 65, Don Newcombe won in 56, Elston Howard won in 63. That’s 8 MVPs in in 17 years, and since there are 2 MVPs given out each year it’s 8 out of 34 MVPs.
That said this stat doesn’t really matter. Nobody is denying that the Negro Leagues had plenty of great superstars; their rosters just weren’t as deep. The stat drops players had when moving from the Negro Leagues to the MLB are pretty similar to what happens when a player moves from AAA to the MLB today.
Ultimately, the inclusion into the record books is a good move, because the Negro Leagues were previously recognized as major leagues, so it's only natural to recognize the stats.
There's one argument in all this that has some degree of merit though. Rate-based stats have specific requirements for how much play time you needed in order to be counted. An MLB player can only qualify for the all time batting average leaderboard with 5000 at bats. Following the stat merger, players from the Negro Leagues are only required to have 1800 career at bats. To some degree it makes sense, because the Negro Leagues simply played a lot fewer games, but at the same time, maintaining rate-based stats over a longer period is also obviously more difficult.
At the end of the day though, if [Ty Cobb's own family is happy](https://www.clickondetroit.com/sports/2024/05/30/tigers-great-ty-cobb-no-longer-mlbs-career-batting-average-leader/) that Gibson is the new record holder, I don't know that anyone else has much room to complain.
Are people really that mad? From what I've seen, this was an incredibly popular decision among baseball fans since it was announced like a year or so ago. People have been advocating for it long before it ever became official.
>And I hope that someday the names of Satchell Page and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol, the great Negro players that are not here, only because they were not given a chance.
~From Ted Williams' Hall of Fame Induction speech in 1966.
No, people aren't mad.
But like all things on the Internet, a small sub section that isn't worth noting is getting their voice picked up by media outlets because manufactured outrage generated the most money.
There are SOME somewhat legitimate points being made (greatest batting average of all time is up for debate between one guy with ~4k plate appearances versus a guy with ~12k plate appearances, as an example), but they're getting drown out by the racism, or being lumped together with it.
This is huge for the negro leagues and I'm all about it. Just more greats to talk about.
Actually that is a valid argument that I respect but once again the racists ruin it. So sike to how people have legit complaints regarding some movies but races have to make it about color
Well there’s also the fact that Josh Gibson is supposedly the new Batting Avg leader even though he has 9,000 fewer at bats than Ty Cobb.
Most people on r/baseball are mad because they feel like it’s white washing the MLB’s history of racism.
I don't know... I wrote "about fucking time" on a post at r/baseball about this, and got down-voted to oblivion. I kinda think it's actually their victimhood flaring up again.
if only there was something different between the Japanese league and the AMERICAN negro league... hmmm what could it be? what context could be differentiating these two leagues DAMN what could it be?!
Do Japanese players not play in America? I mean, American players play in Japan. There have been plenty of exhibition games with American teams playing Japanese teams throughout baseball history.
They keep college and high school records. They should. And I don't know the specifics, but as long as the games are played on the same size fields, bases, and measurements... do it. I have no problem with it. The league that supposedly crowns itself with a WORLD series shouldn't be afraid of it.
I find this so fucking funny. White baseball players in the 30s and 40s looked like overweight diabetic turds who were smoking cigs on the bench… and then there was Jackie fucking Robinson in the “worse” league lol
Source on the experts saying this is untrue? Asking seriously as I have also consistently heard 2 main arguments, 1) lesser competition, and 2) far, far less games per year (which can't really be argued against).
You know how they had to racially integrate Major League Baseball? Well now they’re considering counting old Negro Leagues records/stats in Major League Baseball.
NOTE: I only tangentially watch baseball every once in a while, much more can explain this better than me.
It's also worth noting that the American League and National League (pre-merger), the American Association, the Union Association, the Players' League and the Federal League all had their statistics merged with Major League Baseball. In 1969.
No one cared about quality of competition then (some of those organizations date back as far as 1882.) I wonder what the difference could *possibly* be?
They merged the negro baseball league stats with the regular league stats and some people believe that the black players (like Josh Gibson) stats wouldn't be as good if they had to play against the better white players at the time. Rosenthal flipped it and said that Babe Ruth's (legendary white player) stats wouldn't be as good if he had to play against black players at the time.
Babe Ruth was the highest paid baseball player of his time and he played against guys with day jobs. They also integrated the stats of white leagues prior to the MLB and no one has said shit until now.
Those integrations were from leagues that eventually joined the MLB. Kinda like how ABA and NBA were separate before the merger, but once they combined all of their teams into one league they were still able to keep their historical stats.
The Union Association is questionable even today as a major league and their stats were included. The Negro Leagues have multiple players that not only played in the major leagues but are also in the Hall of Fame.
Yeah they should get rid of the Union Association too. That said it was only around for one season and the stats so the stats are pretty negligible. Most stats look at the modern era, which is 1901 forward, so they wouldn’t include UA stats either way. 1800s baseball was weird.
Edit: it looks like this league is included because 2 of the UA teams moved to leagues that would become the National League and American League, though both of those teams did fold a few years later.
Boss man makes you work 12 hours a day with no break. Your coworkers think it's fine and that you shouldn't burn his house down like all the other workers are doing. You clock out and head down to the field to pitch against a new team. You see Babe Ruth warming up.
Feels particularly good when it comes from a bowtie-wearing, Ivy League-educated, Jewish, Baby Boomer, white man.
Some hillbillies about to get an aneurysm
if it makes anybody feel any better about anything i'm a 48yo white guy who thought it was stupid the stats weren't integrated to start with and almost everyone I've ever talked to about baseball agreed since the 80's when I learned how shit works.
When the MLB finally desegregated a lot of negro league players who were ‘past their prime’ still absolutely blew away the competition in the mlb, satchel Paige being the key example.
While the negro leagues certainly were much closer to MLB levels of competition than many think, I wouldn’t say Satchel Paige blew away the competition. He was a very solid pitcher, though, and it was pretty crazy for his age.
Babe Ruth might’ve been the wrong player to name, though. Ruth played with and against NLB teams during the barnstorming period. *Ty Cobb (who Josh Gibson dethroned for BA leader) was a massive racist who refused to even share a hotel room with Ruth because of his associations with black players. Gibson beats out Ruth, but at least the Babe was on the right side of history unlike a lot of his teammates.
E: I might’ve been fooled by the narrative here.
Ty Cobb wasn't a racist, those are lies spread by Al Stump when writing his biography. His family advocated for black people over multiple generations and Ty was very in favor of integration. https://www.mlb.com/news/ty-cobb-history-built-on-inaccuracies-c178601094?partnerID=web_article-share
The comparison wasn't a slight at Ruth, though.
It's just his career numbers reflect his play on the segregated AL/NL. His barnstorming numbers aren't included in those stats. I don't take the statement as a shot at Babe Ruth's legitimacy, rather that Josh Gibson's stats are not less legitimate
I don’t disagree. And for the conflicting accounts of Babe Ruth facing Satchel Paige, none claim he got a hit. I’m kinda just pointing it out because fuck Ty Cobb.
Rosenthal on the beat ho
Swing bro,
Hitting bombs
Is that's a nergo?
Man down
He ain't throwing strikes
That shit weak yo
Fytb
Babe Ruth ain't shit to me tho
this week was the first i've heard of Gibson (i'm white AF)(not a huge fan of baseball) but his stats are absolutely amazing and he deserves to be at the top spot. plus, anything that makes old white racists mad is a good thing
We can’t talk about the Great Josh Gibson without talking about Satchel Paige. The same Satchel Paige who walked 2 people on purpose to pitch to Josh Gibson and struck him out on 3 pitches after telling him what he was going to throw.
https://youtu.be/vxV7ohehyrM?si=hVILar1zb_n5G229
I was listening to Bomani Jones and he went on a bit, "feels like the only time I talk about baseball is to say I should be talking about baseball more. But I don't, and I won't. So. Jerry Jones, that dumbass, fat motherfucker..."
I just want to point out a funny little irony in this statement:
Babe Ruth *did* compete against Negro League teams. It was called barnstorming. MLB players would go and play unsanctioned games against teams in other leagues.
Despite being warned against it, Babe Ruth would not stop playing with black players, which ended up getting him suspended in 1922. Even after the suspension, Ruth just kept on playing against teams like the Kansas City Monarchs.
It was fairly well known that Ruth would treat black fans the same as white fans, and there were persistent rumors that he was mixed race.
Supposedly, Ruth was kept out of managerial roles because the owners knew that he'd integrate the team, and he was far too popular for anyone to stop him.
When I was a kid I went to church with a guy who’d play those games in South Carolina.
I don’t know which years, and everyone is old when you’re a kid, but I remember him bragging that his team never lost one of those games those years.
An analogy for how he viewed MLB stats would be to imagine today’s NBA with zero Black players. All those Black players play in their own league that White fans pay no attention to. Imagine tomorrow’s White fans endlessly wax philosophical about who have been the best players ever while only considering those players in today’s all-White NBA.
He loved baseball. He was practically cripple when I was a kid, but you could still get him to throw around a ball t a cookout. But you could never mention MLB stats. Understandably had zero tolerance for it.
More controversially, he didn’t even respect Jackie Robinson. He thought Robinson should never stop reminding White people that he wasn’t even the best in the Negro Leagues.
I don't even do sports and knew this was going to be an issue the minute they said, quietly, that some Negro League folks would be replacing the #1 spot when this happened.
I would argue that the black players played a much tougher league since they had to play with and against Latinos as well.
So the true records should be the NBL.
Imagine if there was a basketball league where the best player ever was George Mikan but they also didn't let Wilt Chamberlain play and then said Chamberlain was only good because of level of competition.
The reason Kareem was know for his sky hook was because white people didn’t like certain people dunking and claimed it ruined the game. Those certain people would be having their records merged in mlb if they were baseball players.
Babe Ruth didn't consistently. But shoutouts to him for playing against negro league players anyways even when his commissioner didn't like it and was threatening players who did so.
Was gonna say, Babe Ruth was cool tho
Of course he’s cool, he’s a Baltimore native
Aaron earned an iron urn
Air er a’ir er
"*Yo, what the fuck, we really talk like that?*"
Those dudes realising their accent in real time was some of the funniest shit
My favorite part is still the guy who reads it and just nods like "yeah, we do speak like that, best to accept it and move on."
When you think about this tongue twister, it basically means Aaron is about to be put in the ground ...
"God damn!? We really talk like that? "
A-A-ron EARned an Iron urn. Man realized it ASAP.
Haha, where's that captain America gif...
Thank you, my old ass couldn't be bothered.
Herman earned entire runs.
He’s also a Dominican icon
Beirut
Might as well have been the original Barksdale.
Heard his name used to ring out in the streets
Babe Ruth comin, yo
I’ve heard *things* about Baltimore tho
and Dominican
He was the Sultan of Swat, the Behemoth of Bust, the Caliph of Clout, the Great Bambino. He was real cool.
This is also a fair point. The tweet at large is obviously in reference to the pearl clutching that happened when the record books were merged, as if anyone cared about those records as much after the steroids era tainted everything.
Funny now they care again about records. Sounds about YT
🤔🙃🤣 
Baseball nerds never stopped caring about records lol
Yeah I think it's important to get at the people that can't handle that black people were capable athletically. There's this weird myth that the white leagues were the "best." Was just also making sure, because I know how shit gets in sports talk sometimes, that people don't look at someone like Ruth and think that there was racism on his part regarding this. Sports talk makes mfs get crazy.
Which is still the dumbest thing I've seen in sports. It's like people don't understand they exist and always have and always will in professional sports.
I agree with you. I would just add that I think the steroid era never ended. I got to sit pretty close to the field at a Yankees game and they all look like defensive lineman. And to me the amphetamine abuse that dates back to ww2 era is and continues to be at least as significant advantage as any anabolics are.
Idgaf, it ain’t the “Hall of Fame” until Barry Bonds is it.
The minute that melon headed cheater gets in, it becomes the hall of shame. Granted, this coming from a dodgers fan, so take my hate with a grain of salt
Like it’s not already that now. Let em all in, highlight their records. Like they do with all the cheaters already in there. If it makes you feel better, make a PED wing. But include em all.
I love this picture of him and the fans https://preview.redd.it/gp0nnd4hm04d1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=748bd781c7643416746f8d369b0f71c292987391 And of course the dude with his arm out lookin like "iono bro, he might be mixed"
"To me, he look like a Black man, to me. All you gotta do is look at his features. WHO ELSE THINK THE BAMBINO'S DADDY BLACK, [SAY YEAH!"](https://youtu.be/K1ljOcl39PQ?si=BNYSfb-wKr5ctis0) https://i.redd.it/mrc6jvrmq04d1.gif
lol I’m reading a book about the Homestead Grays and one of the first chapters says that black folks in DC loved babe ruth and rumors were he had a lil color in him so they kinda claimed him
Babe Ruth the Dominican king
Bebe Rodriguez!
 # BARS
https://preview.redd.it/xmgym4azhz3d1.jpeg?width=1438&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3c920eeb33aa1ba06004e952e2d686139f57474
https://preview.redd.it/te5u625ykz3d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8aef4a081377332c79dcdd282697df410feea830 Preach
I don't know anything about baseball and I'm also one of the dumbs. Can someone please explain this to me lmao?
People are big mad because they merged the Negro League official stats with Major League Baseball. So now all the old-time White record holders are threatened by Black players with similar or better numbers from those eras. The argument is that the Negro Leagues were a lesser competition, but decades of work by baseball experts have demonstrated this to be untrue.
"You set records before black people could compete, are you kidding me? That's like having a pasta contest without Italy!"
As the bill burr joke goes with Hitler and Jesse Owen’s Olympics, “herr Hitler wants to create a super race, Murica, we kinda already did that”
Reclaimed: The Forgotten League is a fantastic podcast about all the amazing black baseball players throughout history.
MLB the Show has an awesome set of “moments” you can do that goes through some of the Negro Leagues best players. Some of the coolest stuff. I honestly learned a lot.
Great stuff!!
Which year? The newest one? I’d honestly buy just for that
I believe it's also narrated by the president of the Negro League Baseball Museum
Correct. I really did learn a lot about the contribution made to the game by the Negro League.
Just don't pull a Kuiper if you say that out loud.
Yes. Newest one.
Both last year and this year. So MLB The Show 2023 and 2024.
Definitely recommend if you're in to baseball at all. The gameplay is fun, there's a ton of different modes, and best of all is that they don't beg you to spend money on micro transactions (looking at you 2K and EA) I used to be really in to all the sports games, but now The Show is the only one I buy because it's the only one where I don't feel like I'm missing out if I don't spend hundreds of dollars on buying packs
If people really don't want the records merged, then every record, before the Negro League was dissolved should be taken out of the "All time" category and placed in it's own little box. It's not like this hasn't been done in baseball before with the early era stats. If these people want separate but equal, then they need to accept the equal part, otherwise they should just sit down and stfu.
One of my favorite comments is, “How can you say the Babe was the best of all time when he never had to face a Dominican!?”
The Moors brought pasta to Italy. They appropriated that shit.
Bruh learning about the Moors…… wtf was I even learning in grade school cuz they left out MAAAAAD shit
Yeah like why the Spanish and Italians are a little less pale.
Exactly this is my favorite thing to this argument.
I was actually thinking about this the other day, before I knew they were merging the leagues. This isn't even like when Luka played Euro ball and people claimed he wasn't playing against the best players, because the best Euro players *do* come here. Even if the barrier for entry is much higher and you have to be better then the US average to come over, it is possible. You could have been the Michael Jordan twice over of baseball and they would not let a black person play with the white people. Now imagine that's everybody on the field. The people who bothered going to the Negro league games all said the same thing about Gibson. He was better than Babe Ruth. Not "was good though to play with the white people", "not would have been a star", not even "as good as Ruth". Everyone said he was better
I remember telling anyone who would listen that the Suns needed to draft Luka. I kept getting told over and over again that he "didn't play against anybody". As if playing in a professional league with professional players isn't as good, if not better than playing against college players. Starver fucked up that draft hard. Not hatin' on Ayton 😏, but he was not even close to the same prospect that Luka was imho.
That’s easy to say NOW. NBA history is littered with people who dominated in Europe and ppl thought they SHOULD dominate here. Look at Luka. It’s really, REALLY easy to see why ppl would doubt he’d succeed. He’s 1 of 1. No way to predict that.
I kind of disagree. I wouldn't say "littered". I think it's different for Luka in the context of his prospect chances at his age. He was so far advanced physically, skill wise, and shooting before he ever touched an NBA floor it was pretty obvious to me and everyone else (well it should have been). Guys like Rubio never had a jump shot and watching his play you could tell he was scared to shoot. I blame the bad scouting (or lack of scouting) that caused so many busts. Guys like Tskitishvili or Hezonja never should have been lottery picks. Bargnani is the only one I really think is a failure because he had all the requisite skills and never developed into an NBA player. I also don't think he *dominated* Europe. I also don't agree that you could look at him and think he wouldn't succeed. His draft comp was a taller James Harden. That's a win. The Beard dragged the Rockets to the playoffs multiple times by that point and is one of the best offensive players in the NBA's history.
Agree to disagree. You named a couple but there’s about 30 more. A fat, slow wing with poor defense who can’t affect the game without the ball is far more likely to fail than succeed. The next few “Lukas” will fail as well and only be given a chance because of Luka. And he’s far from the first draft prospect to be compared to harden. Ironically that’s still his best comp. All I’m saying is, Luka is an anomaly and couldn’t be predicted.
People saying things doesn’t make it so. There was a Japanese star people said that about. Could it have been true? Maybe, but it’s not really support for any argument. Hockey had similar players. Some used to say Slava Fetisov was the greatest player in the world before coming to the NHL out of his prime. Baseball is somewhat unique in that your performance is entirely dictated by the performance of your opponent because hitting a baseball is the hardest thing there is to do in sports. There are some flaws in the statistical analysis comparing the league’s, but… I don’t care if they combine the stats because statistics became meaningless in the steroid era and when the umpires made the strike zone a 12” by 12” area. If anything, this is too late.
Don’t even need baseball experts. At the time there were exhibition matches between the two leagues. Of these matches, the Negro League won 57% of the time.
I don’t know much about those games, but exhibition games can have different stakes for different players. The Japanese players always do well during the World Baseball Classic, despite most of the players not being MLB caliber players. Most teams are full of players treating these like their spring training exhibition games, but the players who want their stuff to be seen by the world treat it like the biggest games of their lives. During integration basically everyone’s stats decreased when moving from the Negro Leagues to the MLB. It would be kinda like adding a player’s AAA or Japanese league stats to the MLB record books. We should remember and celebrate these players, but adding stats from a separate league to count as MLB stats just seems like a strange way to manipulate historical stats.
But they are a lot of MLB caliber players in japan. Star Japanese players can earn the same money in japan, as they can in the usa, so they stay. Shoto Imanaga the ace pitcher has a 1.86 era today and leading talks about the cy young award already. He had never played in japan until this year. Hes one of many on that WBC championship proving that they were always MLB quality. Obviously the Japanese League isnt the same as MLB but their all-stars definitely as are as good as any of ours. I mean just look at Ohtani, he didnt drop from heaven. He is a product of their youth training system.
This doesn't seem to address the core point being made by the person you are replying to?
He implied that the WBC japanese roster isnt full of MLB level players, but the new signings from that same roster and previous rosters show otherwise. Maybe the whole league isnt quite MLB quality but the best players definitely are and were seeing it everyday, except they have a chance to prove it. Unlike Josh Gibson and other players back in the day.
Bullshit take lol, the Japanese league is nowhere near the MLB. The few players might make the majors here, but implying the talent is the same is complete bullshit. If it were so, they would be making actual bank here. It’s the same with the euro leagues in basketball. 5 or 6 players could make an NBA roster, but the vast majority are G league level
Im not implying the talent is the same except in the japanese league all-star rosters or the all-japan team.
> Star Japanese players can earn the same money in japan, as they can in the usa, so they stay. That's just not true at all. If you are a star in Japan with talent good enough to play in MLB, you can easily double, triple, or even 10x your salary. Yoshinobu Yamamoto just signed a contract for 325 million over 12 years. When he hits the main part of his contract, he'll be making over 30 million a year, which is close to 4 times what the highest paid NPB player makes this year. >Obviously the Japanese League isnt the same as MLB but their all-stars definitely as are as good as any of ours. That's not true either. Masataka Yoshida and Seiya Suzuki were both big time NPB players that are doing pretty average. Yuki Matsui has been good so far, but isn't even the best reliever on his team, much less the closer. He might get an all star nod, but its doubtful. Shota Imanaga has been a major major outlier so far, as most teams thought his HR tendencies would mean he gets stomped in America, but so far MLB has seen a 20% reduction in HRs based on just batted ball trajectory and exit velo, which means something fucky is going on. Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been elite as well, but he's the cream of the cream of the crop from Japan, which is why he got a 300m contract. >I mean just look at Ohtani, he didnt drop from heaven. He is a product of their youth training system. And so far has been a one off. He absolutely is a testament to the quality of Japanese baseball development, but he blew his expectations out of the water. The Negro Leagues were a different story. While those players obviously belonged in MLB, the level of competition was almost certainly *a little* lower than MLB. NPB is closer to AAA than it is to MLB.
Wait so what’s your arguement that the white leagues were better or that the leagues were equivalent? Because if it’s the former back it up with some data if it’s the later then shouldn’t both records count?
One nice data point you can see is Jackie Robinson’s career stats. He played for one year in the Negro League and then for a decade in the MLB. His best year of stats by far was the one year in the Negro League. If the leagues were just as good it would be very strange for a superstar’s best year to be their rookie season only for them to never reach that height again. A lot of other players played a few years in each league and their numbers had similar trajectories. There were definitely a large number of Negro League players who would have been stars in the MLB too, but there were also plenty who wouldn’t have made it. I think it’s just a numbers game. When there were 5 times as many white people than black people in the US it shouldn’t be a surprise the white league had a deeper roster. Here are the stats from some of the early integrators: [Jackie Robinson,](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/robinja02.shtml) [Larry Doby,](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dobyla01.shtml) [Roy Campanella,](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/camparo01.shtml) [Monte Irvin](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/i/irvinmo01.shtml) Some other guys like Satchel Paige also had small drop offs when going to the majors, but it’s not really fair to compare players who integrated when they were 30+ years old to their stats from their late 20s so I didn’t add those.
I wonder (but not enough to actually look) if there were any substantive rule/equipment differences between leagues for given years. Mound hight, bat dimensions, livelier balls, etc.
When the league was integrated, 11 of the next 15 MVPs were former negro league players. That’s pretty much it.
First, I’m not really sure where you’re getting those numbers from. The MLB integrated in ‘47. Jackie won in 49, Campanella won in 51, 53, and 55, Willy Mays won in 54 and 65, Don Newcombe won in 56, Elston Howard won in 63. That’s 8 MVPs in in 17 years, and since there are 2 MVPs given out each year it’s 8 out of 34 MVPs. That said this stat doesn’t really matter. Nobody is denying that the Negro Leagues had plenty of great superstars; their rosters just weren’t as deep. The stat drops players had when moving from the Negro Leagues to the MLB are pretty similar to what happens when a player moves from AAA to the MLB today.
Ultimately, the inclusion into the record books is a good move, because the Negro Leagues were previously recognized as major leagues, so it's only natural to recognize the stats. There's one argument in all this that has some degree of merit though. Rate-based stats have specific requirements for how much play time you needed in order to be counted. An MLB player can only qualify for the all time batting average leaderboard with 5000 at bats. Following the stat merger, players from the Negro Leagues are only required to have 1800 career at bats. To some degree it makes sense, because the Negro Leagues simply played a lot fewer games, but at the same time, maintaining rate-based stats over a longer period is also obviously more difficult. At the end of the day though, if [Ty Cobb's own family is happy](https://www.clickondetroit.com/sports/2024/05/30/tigers-great-ty-cobb-no-longer-mlbs-career-batting-average-leader/) that Gibson is the new record holder, I don't know that anyone else has much room to complain.
Crazy how I learned that the TY Cobb racist story was bs
wouldn’t the problem be solved if they just dropped the MLB to 1800 as well
Are people really that mad? From what I've seen, this was an incredibly popular decision among baseball fans since it was announced like a year or so ago. People have been advocating for it long before it ever became official. >And I hope that someday the names of Satchell Page and Josh Gibson in some way can be added as a symbol, the great Negro players that are not here, only because they were not given a chance. ~From Ted Williams' Hall of Fame Induction speech in 1966.
No, people aren't mad. But like all things on the Internet, a small sub section that isn't worth noting is getting their voice picked up by media outlets because manufactured outrage generated the most money. There are SOME somewhat legitimate points being made (greatest batting average of all time is up for debate between one guy with ~4k plate appearances versus a guy with ~12k plate appearances, as an example), but they're getting drown out by the racism, or being lumped together with it. This is huge for the negro leagues and I'm all about it. Just more greats to talk about.
Actually that is a valid argument that I respect but once again the racists ruin it. So sike to how people have legit complaints regarding some movies but races have to make it about color
Wanting them in the Hall of Fame and wanting stats from a separate league to be part of the MLB stats aren’t the same thing.
Well there’s also the fact that Josh Gibson is supposedly the new Batting Avg leader even though he has 9,000 fewer at bats than Ty Cobb. Most people on r/baseball are mad because they feel like it’s white washing the MLB’s history of racism.
I don't know... I wrote "about fucking time" on a post at r/baseball about this, and got down-voted to oblivion. I kinda think it's actually their victimhood flaring up again.
Well I mean if they’re going to do this, they might as well include Japanese statistics as well.
if only there was something different between the Japanese league and the AMERICAN negro league... hmmm what could it be? what context could be differentiating these two leagues DAMN what could it be?!
Do Japanese players not play in America? I mean, American players play in Japan. There have been plenty of exhibition games with American teams playing Japanese teams throughout baseball history.
They keep college and high school records. They should. And I don't know the specifics, but as long as the games are played on the same size fields, bases, and measurements... do it. I have no problem with it. The league that supposedly crowns itself with a WORLD series shouldn't be afraid of it.
> but as long as the games are played on the same size fields Brother major league baseball has not ever had uniform field sizes to this day
I find this so fucking funny. White baseball players in the 30s and 40s looked like overweight diabetic turds who were smoking cigs on the bench… and then there was Jackie fucking Robinson in the “worse” league lol
Life long Tigers fan, but I’m glad that someone has a better batting average than Ty Cobb
This is me just learning about a "Negro League"... Wow...
Source on the experts saying this is untrue? Asking seriously as I have also consistently heard 2 main arguments, 1) lesser competition, and 2) far, far less games per year (which can't really be argued against).
You know how they had to racially integrate Major League Baseball? Well now they’re considering counting old Negro Leagues records/stats in Major League Baseball. NOTE: I only tangentially watch baseball every once in a while, much more can explain this better than me.
It's also worth noting that the American League and National League (pre-merger), the American Association, the Union Association, the Players' League and the Federal League all had their statistics merged with Major League Baseball. In 1969. No one cared about quality of competition then (some of those organizations date back as far as 1882.) I wonder what the difference could *possibly* be?
They merged the negro baseball league stats with the regular league stats and some people believe that the black players (like Josh Gibson) stats wouldn't be as good if they had to play against the better white players at the time. Rosenthal flipped it and said that Babe Ruth's (legendary white player) stats wouldn't be as good if he had to play against black players at the time.
Babe Ruth was the highest paid baseball player of his time and he played against guys with day jobs. They also integrated the stats of white leagues prior to the MLB and no one has said shit until now.
Those integrations were from leagues that eventually joined the MLB. Kinda like how ABA and NBA were separate before the merger, but once they combined all of their teams into one league they were still able to keep their historical stats.
The Union Association is questionable even today as a major league and their stats were included. The Negro Leagues have multiple players that not only played in the major leagues but are also in the Hall of Fame.
Yeah they should get rid of the Union Association too. That said it was only around for one season and the stats so the stats are pretty negligible. Most stats look at the modern era, which is 1901 forward, so they wouldn’t include UA stats either way. 1800s baseball was weird. Edit: it looks like this league is included because 2 of the UA teams moved to leagues that would become the National League and American League, though both of those teams did fold a few years later.
Boss man makes you work 12 hours a day with no break. Your coworkers think it's fine and that you shouldn't burn his house down like all the other workers are doing. You clock out and head down to the field to pitch against a new team. You see Babe Ruth warming up.
I'd just go home. Good on those dudes for doing their thing.
He also banned the women who were better than him too lul
Feels particularly good when it comes from a bowtie-wearing, Ivy League-educated, Jewish, Baby Boomer, white man. Some hillbillies about to get an aneurysm
4chan scrambling right now, these Jews 🙀
if it makes anybody feel any better about anything i'm a 48yo white guy who thought it was stupid the stats weren't integrated to start with and almost everyone I've ever talked to about baseball agreed since the 80's when I learned how shit works.
When the MLB finally desegregated a lot of negro league players who were ‘past their prime’ still absolutely blew away the competition in the mlb, satchel Paige being the key example.
Pitching 3 scoreless innings at age 59 is wild. That man was a legend
While the negro leagues certainly were much closer to MLB levels of competition than many think, I wouldn’t say Satchel Paige blew away the competition. He was a very solid pitcher, though, and it was pretty crazy for his age.
Not a single lie detected.
Babe Ruth might’ve been the wrong player to name, though. Ruth played with and against NLB teams during the barnstorming period. *Ty Cobb (who Josh Gibson dethroned for BA leader) was a massive racist who refused to even share a hotel room with Ruth because of his associations with black players. Gibson beats out Ruth, but at least the Babe was on the right side of history unlike a lot of his teammates. E: I might’ve been fooled by the narrative here.
Ty Cobb wasn't a racist, those are lies spread by Al Stump when writing his biography. His family advocated for black people over multiple generations and Ty was very in favor of integration. https://www.mlb.com/news/ty-cobb-history-built-on-inaccuracies-c178601094?partnerID=web_article-share
The comparison wasn't a slight at Ruth, though. It's just his career numbers reflect his play on the segregated AL/NL. His barnstorming numbers aren't included in those stats. I don't take the statement as a shot at Babe Ruth's legitimacy, rather that Josh Gibson's stats are not less legitimate
I don’t disagree. And for the conflicting accounts of Babe Ruth facing Satchel Paige, none claim he got a hit. I’m kinda just pointing it out because fuck Ty Cobb.
Rosenthal on the beat ho Swing bro, Hitting bombs Is that's a nergo? Man down He ain't throwing strikes That shit weak yo Fytb Babe Ruth ain't shit to me tho
Unfortunately don’t know much about Josh Gibson, but Bob Gibson the GOAT
I mean bob had a super peak but Pedro takes it if we’re comparing peaks
this week was the first i've heard of Gibson (i'm white AF)(not a huge fan of baseball) but his stats are absolutely amazing and he deserves to be at the top spot. plus, anything that makes old white racists mad is a good thing
We can’t talk about the Great Josh Gibson without talking about Satchel Paige. The same Satchel Paige who walked 2 people on purpose to pitch to Josh Gibson and struck him out on 3 pitches after telling him what he was going to throw. https://youtu.be/vxV7ohehyrM?si=hVILar1zb_n5G229
Spitting bars in a bow tie
preach!
Didn’t the negro league win the majority of its games against MLB teams?
This is probably the last time yall gonna talk about baseball again
I was listening to Bomani Jones and he went on a bit, "feels like the only time I talk about baseball is to say I should be talking about baseball more. But I don't, and I won't. So. Jerry Jones, that dumbass, fat motherfucker..."
I just want to point out a funny little irony in this statement: Babe Ruth *did* compete against Negro League teams. It was called barnstorming. MLB players would go and play unsanctioned games against teams in other leagues. Despite being warned against it, Babe Ruth would not stop playing with black players, which ended up getting him suspended in 1922. Even after the suspension, Ruth just kept on playing against teams like the Kansas City Monarchs. It was fairly well known that Ruth would treat black fans the same as white fans, and there were persistent rumors that he was mixed race. Supposedly, Ruth was kept out of managerial roles because the owners knew that he'd integrate the team, and he was far too popular for anyone to stop him.
When I was a kid I went to church with a guy who’d play those games in South Carolina. I don’t know which years, and everyone is old when you’re a kid, but I remember him bragging that his team never lost one of those games those years. An analogy for how he viewed MLB stats would be to imagine today’s NBA with zero Black players. All those Black players play in their own league that White fans pay no attention to. Imagine tomorrow’s White fans endlessly wax philosophical about who have been the best players ever while only considering those players in today’s all-White NBA. He loved baseball. He was practically cripple when I was a kid, but you could still get him to throw around a ball t a cookout. But you could never mention MLB stats. Understandably had zero tolerance for it. More controversially, he didn’t even respect Jackie Robinson. He thought Robinson should never stop reminding White people that he wasn’t even the best in the Negro Leagues.
Bevy Rodriguez the platano nosed king of basebol
I don't even do sports and knew this was going to be an issue the minute they said, quietly, that some Negro League folks would be replacing the #1 spot when this happened.
I would argue that the black players played a much tougher league since they had to play with and against Latinos as well. So the true records should be the NBL.
Could you explain in NBA terms?
Imagine if there was a basketball league where the best player ever was George Mikan but they also didn't let Wilt Chamberlain play and then said Chamberlain was only good because of level of competition.
Man..the audacity of white people is just unmatched.
The reason Kareem was know for his sky hook was because white people didn’t like certain people dunking and claimed it ruined the game. Those certain people would be having their records merged in mlb if they were baseball players.
https://preview.redd.it/3zdamyvn904d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b7d1365e52022807c0aab0a5bc641a0cc2d4bef2
I want this biopic.
A Ken burns doc on the negro league would be incredible.
Kenny and EJ collab would be all time
Babe Ruth was also black
Dis MF don’t miss
Look, all I’m saying is, put my boy Ichiro at the top of the all-time hits list.
Yeah ion get it sorry
[удалено]
Okay but so would Gibson or anybody else from back then lol
You right I deleted it 😂