The Japanese leagues are not the equivalent of the majors. I don't even think anyone could argue that they are. When I've made my case for Contreras as a Hall of Famer, I've had guys bring up Sadahuru Oh. Big difference. The overall depth and quality of play in Cuba was much stronger than Japan. And more than that, Contreras was prevented from playing in the big leagues through no fault of his own. Paige was blocked by the color line. Contreras was blocked by Castro. Oh could have come at any time. If he had, I suspect his legend wouldn't be quite what it is.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

I don't believe they can leave Japan until well into their careers, and that is no fault of their own. I don't believe MLB can draft into Japan. And the problem with saying, but for the color line is we can't definitively say how Paige would have done anymore than what Saduhuru Oh. I thought a good compromise was to have Negro League stars in the Hall of Fame, but I guess not.

Since we are tearing down statues and tearing up history books, let's just declare than George Washington's slave William Lee was the first president, and Sally Hemmings wrote the Declaration of Independence.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

This is officially a terrible idea.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Whoa. Too soon.

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Mulli is Howard Stern in his prime compared to Haugh.

More numbers that baseball nerds can argue about, MLB knows it's audience.

Yeah....we definitely had a shared sense of history with those stats and players. It was kind of cool. 60 and 714 were etched into our minds, along with .406 and 56 and 2130.

Some Negro League stories are more akin to tall tales.

I don't really know what they mean by "Negro Leagues'. I mean, I know what the term refers to, but if you're going to officially declare a league a "major" league, we should know which exact league you're talking about. And was the quality of any particular negro league better than that of the Eastern League where Lefty Grove pitched for the Orioles?

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

The generally accepted stats are from the site I posted. That guy has put in the work to find them and has copies of the work published in various news papers from the times.

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Would Jim Rice count for Negro league stats or Japanese stats?

I had mentioned it earlier, but the Negro Leagues were teams playing exhibitions in a traveling circus type schedule. It wasn't really organized baseball. So the compiled stats don't mean a lot.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

I think they all barnstormed, but some of the leagues seem to have been fairly stable, especially by the late '30s.

Then integration came and unwittingly destroyed the leagues and teams.

tease this out to the absurd just for some mental gymnastics

If the Negro Leagues are a Major League then Jackie Robinson didn't break a color barrier

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I dont see the harm in it since people who are interested in this stuff will know the context.

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.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Baseball had lost the sanctity of its numbers since the the steroids era. Too bad only 56 players from the Negro League are still alive to see it.

Wonder how sincere it feels to them since it is basically white shaming that made MLB include the stats. I would tell MLB, "Nah, you can shove the disingenuous act up your ass. Where were you owners 10-20 years ago when people made change because it was the right thing to do and not because they want to be on the popular side of public opinion?"

I am sick and tired of the fake propaganda sports have evolved into. Would love to see some new leagues pop up in all the major sports that have no underlining agenda, except to provide an escape from real world bullshit.

Finally, something we agree on.

I don't really agree with that but what you say here really brought home how pointless this is. Everyone knows who the great players were regardless of whether they are white or black or what league they played in. If anything, it's woke shitheads like bernstein who attempt to diminsh a guy like Ruth as being a fat slob who couldn't compete against today's superior athletes and might not make a good college team in 2020. Nobody ever suggests Josh Gibson wouldn't be an All-Star if he played today.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Change your politics and we'll be simpatico.

And your Cubbies

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I don't doubt the value of any all star in any league, especially ones people paid to see. But there was a lot of bluster to sell the game back then, and probably more chaff than wheat.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Did Bernstein really say that? I guess it isn't surprising.

Where do you think the slow, tiny, and white meme came from ?

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Is Baseball Reference affiliated with MLB? Even if they aren’t, do you envision them merging the records/stats?

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I don't think they are, but that creates a dilemma for sure.

I'm not sure if he's actually said that, but I am sure he believes it and he has said even dumber stuff like questioning Mantle's speed (because he's white) and referring to Dick Butkus as "slow, tiny, and white" in spite of the fact that he was bigger and faster than Ray Lewis.

A lot of people have a mistaken impression of who/what Ruth really was by virtue of the fact that most photos and films people see of him are from the end of his career in the 30s when he was nearly 40 years old. Not to mention the baggy flannels don't really flatter him.

Ruth was an elite athlete in multiple disciplines, a fast outfielder, and far from the fat, out-of-shape drunk his detractors would have you believe. He was taller than Barry Bonds and never as fat as Bonds was at the end of his career.





It's strange the way people think human beings were a different species 100 years ago. Don't they have grandparents? My grandfather could have beaten the shit out of me when he was 82 and I was 20. Sure, he was a freakish little guy, but I can't really imagine how strong and athletic he may have been at age 25.

And yeah, I get that the games have "evolved". (Mostly the training and drugs have evolved.) It's just funny that Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, et al. actually believe they and the guys they played with are physically superior to those who played 30 years earlier than they did but they absolutely can't believe that LeBron and the current guys 30 years after are superior to them.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

There are really two reasons why todays athletes are so much better. Athletes from a long time ago had to have jobs and played sports as a hobby with a few exceptions. Wilt was dominating guys that had to go sell insurance the next day so they could eat. Wilt was one of the few who was a full time basketball player at the time.

The other reason is that we have gotten much better at preparing elite children for sports. Babe Ruth spent a lot of his childhood as a tailors apprentice instead of working on sports. When you have an entire generation of kids who have to work like that then you naturally aren't going to see that generation achieve the same types of skill in athletics as you do with the generations of kids that have been involved in organized sports since the age of 3(2020 not included).

It's like a time machine. Put me in a time machine and put me in a science debate with Issac Newton and I would be far more knowledgeable on science than him. That doesn't mean he wouldn't have been a great scientist if he were alive today but a large part of what you are able to achieve is the time frame in which you live and the circumstances of it.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

That's not true. And Wilt played against more Hall of Fame big men than anyone.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

100% corecct! Your scientific bonafides are unquestioned. Einstein and Feynman never even worked an Excel spreadsheet!

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

It is true that most NBA players had to have other jobs at that time. In 1957, the average salary was $12k. Even by 1970, when his career was winding down, the average salary was $35k.
That could be true but it still doesn't really change anything. I'm not saying he played against no one that was good. It's that the average player he was playing against was far worse than it is now.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

And I disagree with that. The average player now is on better drugs.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.