[joefromchicago]

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

i respectfully disagree. Recently there has been chatter about making the Negro Leagues officially a Major League - the same ranking as Players League, American Association and the Federal League. So if the "people in the know" (whomever they be) are starting to think the caliber of play was major league quality, maybe opinions are changing.

I haven't heard anything about that, but it's quite possible that some recent events - quite distinct from baseball - may also be playing a role here.

The simple fact is that there are multiple problems with making the Negro Leagues a major league. The primary one is that the stats are a mess. Even the Union Association kept better stats than the Negro Leagues. I don't have any beef with making the Negro Leagues "honorary" majors, but if they're going to make Josh Gibson the major-league home-run leader with 900 or so HRs, even though most of those were hit against semi-pros in rinky-dink stadiums, then I have a problem with that. We'll never know how many HRs Gibson could have hit against major-league pitching, but then we'll also never know how many HRs Babe Ruth could have hit against the Acme Tool & Die All-Stars.

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

And as far as only a handful of players making it from the Negro Leagues to the majors -

http://www.cnlbr.org/Portals/0/RL/Ne...%20Leagues.pdf

47 players from the Negro Leagues from 1947-1954 made it to the majors. The link above (i hope it works) has a full list of all the players that played both in the Negro Leagues and the Majors.

Not surprised. How many AAA players made it to the majors during that same period?

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

i do agree the stats are sparse, at best, at times. But it's all we have and i think the history of barnstorming (even if Landis banned it officially) proves they were at least equals. Player interviews and talks (esp. Dizzy Dean i recall on the Saturday Game Of the Week, Johnny Mize's comments about Martin Dihigo and Ted Williams speech) leads me to think they should be entered into the game as Major Leaguers, not minors. But that's just my opinion, and obviously Markus and the makers of the game feel differently. So, i edit every Negro League player in the games i play - and it works for my game. i just wish (selfishly possibly) they were recognized for as good as they were. Maybe this talk of recognizing the Negro Leagues will help.

There's no question that the best Negro Leaguers could have played at a major-league level. As you note, the contemporary evidence is pretty conclusive that guys like Gibson, Paige, Oscar Charleston, and Cool Papa Bell, among many others, were considered to be the equals of the best white players. But they didn't play most of their games against major-league competition. That's why their stats would be practically useless even if we had reliable stats, which we don't.

I'm all in favor of making NeL players as good as their stats in OOTP. Why not? I think that's what gamers want and expect. Make Paige unhittable. Make Gibson a HR machine. They were great players, so they should be great players in OOTP. If that's "unrealistic," well, putting them in the majors before 1947 is unrealistic too. Nobody wants to go to the trouble of integrating the majors before 1947 only to see Josh Gibson bat .220 with 12 HRs.

Originally Posted by mitchkenn

thanks for tolerating my rant! and Joe, can't disagree with your assessment of the numbers. Just i read them differently. Have a good one and thanks for the great work you do on the schedules pages.

Thanks. In the end, we're all on the same team - we all want OOTP to be the best game it can possibly be.