Regular Reader wrote:
As much as I love baseball, I've never put much stock in the pre 1947 numbers for what was a flawed game all around. I love the stories but don't respect any of the numbers. They mean nothing. Starting with Cy Young's win total. It's b.s. and so outsized that it's never talked about.
I would agree with the soft version of this argument. I think there were some Black players (they called them "Chief" and "Babe"). The pre-1900 numbers seem a little silly, but the problem is that you can say that about the dead ball era, and then again about the 20s and 30s (the rabbit ball), and then during WWII. It seems like that argument says that it wasn't "real" baseball.
Yet the game would have been significantly better with Negro League stars. I wonder which owners would have had the balls to sign a bunch of them? (Bill Veeck always wanted to, even when he was with the cubs, who suck balls.)
Cy Young and a few others are aberrations. But at least he knew how to stay healthy. Not sure how hard he threw, but there was a reason they called young Denton "Cyclone." But I do wish the award was the Walter Johnson award.
The game's best player played back then, too. And unlike Bonds, he wasn't the product of his era (steroids); he created his own era, like YHWH, out of nothing. The rest of the league (with the exception of the White Sox) caught on.
Generally, Negro league pitching could never catch up to the hitting. It was bad. I don't doubt Gibson had 800+.
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