MLB to Integrate Negro Leagues Stats Today

Today, Major League Baseball will integrate the stats of Negro League players from the past. A good thing or not?

In the nineteenth century, baseball was mainly a white sport. There were a few black players that played in organized baseball but in the second half of the nineteenth century, black players were banned from participating in organized ball, purely because of racist motives. But what to expect in a country with a segregated society?

So in order to play baseball, black players started their own (professional) leagues. Through the years, the Negro Leagues had several players that excelled in the game of baseball, but for a long time their stats were not recognized by Major League Baseball. But now, seventy-seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, MLB will integrate the stats of Negro League players.

Today, I have read a lot of pros and cons regarding this move by MLB. The pros, mostly by Negro League fans and the cons by baseball purists. The Negro League fans stated that black players of those days were vastly better than the average MLB player. The purists stated for example that the Negro Leagues were nothing more than a minor league… I cannot tell if any of these arguments are right.

What one can consider as a good argument against the integration of Negro League stats is the fact that those stats are incomplete. There were plenty of games of which no stats were kept.

Even though I think it is time that Negro League players get the recognition they deserve, I still think it is a bad idea that these stats are integrated: In my opinion, MLB is trying to whitewash its dark past of segregation by adding the Negro League stats to its own statistics. And perhaps most important: By integrating Negro League stats, future generations of average baseball fans will think that black players participated in MLB or at least that both leagues coexisted peacefully; in other words, they may think there was no segregation.

Negro Leagues existed for a purpose, we all know the reason why. But it looks like MLB is trying to rewrite history. The fact that Josh Gibson will now be an MLB record holder in various categories, even though he was not allowed to play in the bigs, is nonsense to put it mildly.