The game of baseball, more than any other, is a game of numbers, and for almost 100 years, Ty Cobb’s career batting average of .366 was accepted as the best ever. Likewise, for the past 83 years, Ted Williams was considered the last big league player to hit over .400 for a season (.406).
Those milestone records, along with many other statistical lists, changed Wednesday, at least as far as Major League Baseball’s official records are concerned.
As baseball fans know, Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947.
So what happened Wednesday should be considered either baseball’s second integration or the logical progression of what Robinson did on April 15, 1947.
On Wednesday, Major League Baseball officially integrated the statistics of Black players who played in the Negro Leagues from 1920-1948. It’s a natural step in recognizing the legitimacy of the Negro Leagues and the thousands of Black players who never got the change to play in the Major Leagues because of their race.
That means that Josh Gibson, not Cobb, is now recognized as the player with the highest career batting average (.372) and the last big league player to hit .400 in a season isn’t Williams, but Artie Wilson of the Birmingham Black Barons, who finished with a .402 batting in 1948.
By including the stats of Negro League players, the all-time rankings in virtually every category has shifted. It’s also worth noting that while Gibson and Cobb are now first and second in career batting average, Negro Leagues players now make up half of the top 10. Oscar Charleston (third, .363); Jud Wilson (fifth, .350); Turkey Stearnes (sixth, .348); and Buck Leonard (eighth, .345) now stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Rogers Hornsby, Tris Speaker and Williams.
Satchel Paige, who played out his latter years in the Majors, entered the list of pitchers with the lowest earned-run average at No. 3 (2.73) once his Negro League stats were incorporated into the rankings.
The inclusion of players from the seven leagues that constituted what was collectively known as the Negro Leagues, began in 2000. That it took four years to begin integrating these stats should be no surprise because verifying the numbers associated with Negro League players is a difficult assignment.
Box scores printed in newspapers are the written record of baseball, but major newspapers around the country refused to acknowledge the Negro Leagues and many of the Black-owned newspapers which did print Negro League box scores did not retain archives that included those box scores. Additionally, Negro League baseball was, by necessity, a barn-storming affair, with players playing unscheduled games, often in route from one city to another. Sometimes, single games turned out to be doubleheaders. Far more than all-white Major League Baseball, Negro Leagues depended on gate receipts, so anywhere a paying crowd could be gathered, there was a baseball game. Some of those games were recorded with box scores. Others weren’t. What was an exhibition game? What was an official game? It was sometimes difficult to distinguish.
Negro League Baseball was also a part of the cultural folklore, a blend of real, verifiable achievements and myths meant to spike interest in the league and its star players. For example, It’s been widely stated that Gibson hit more than 800 home runs in his career, but only 174 have been verified — to this point.
Likewise, Starkville native Cool Papa Bell, playing in multiple leagues over the course of a year, was said to have stolen 175 bases in a single season.
The lists are likely to continue to change. As of Wednesday, MLB researchers estimated that they’ve included 75 percent of all the data they believe will eventually be available.
It should be noted that the inclusion of these numbers is not the be-all, end-all for comparing players. One big reason is that Negro League seasons typically included 60 to 80 games, compared to MLB seasons that were 154 games and now are 162 games.
In that sense, single-season stats based on percentages are skewed in favor of the Negro League players while the cumulative numbers favor those who played MLB exclusively.
To get a look at how things stack up now, fans can go to mlb.com/stats/all-time-totals.
It will always be a shame baseball fans were never given the opportunity to see the great Black and white baseball players compete against each other prior to 1947.
What MLB did Wednesday is the next best thing.
Integrating the stats gives us a glimpse into how players stacked up against each other and what might have been.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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