Ashburn’s most famous defensive play was an assist at home that won the 1950 pennant. It was 1-1 in t he bottom of the ninth inning of the last game of the season, which would either win the pennant for the slumping Phillies or force a tiebreaker. Cal Abrams of the Dodgers was on second when Duke Snider singled to center, and it looked like he’d score the winning run but Ashburn made a tremendous throw to get him. In the top of the tenth, Dick Sisler hit a three run bomb to win it.
The weird thing about that season was that Ashburn, having a fairly typical year by his standards, got zero MVP votes. No, it wasn’t an MVP season by any stretch, but usually a guy having a solid season at a defense-first position on a pennant winner would get a smattering of lower-level votes. Not even after this play. Which makes me think that most everybody had already sent in their ballots, without having a chance to say to themselves, “Oh yeah, that Ashburn kid is pretty good too! 9th…”
He was 5th on the team in WAR, but despite that 9 of his teammates got votes, including the Immortal Eddie Waitkus, a 1B who slugged .359 and whom Ashburn outpaced with the bat pretty comfortably.
Ignorance fought. But that was the general feeling in Philly that he had a very weak throwing arm. Maybe the result was that players ran on him when they wouldn’t have with another outfielder so he got his share of outfield assists. He was also a weak hitter but made up for it with his singles and steals. He always led off, had a lifetime average of .308 but only 29 HRs in 15 seasons, many of them inside the park and many at the polo grounds with its short foul lines. In fact, he hit 7 playing for the Mets in the polo grounds in 1962. Short foul lines for out of the park jobs and that absurdly long center field for inside the parkers. He twice led the league in triples.
You want to see a park with odd dimensions, look at Griffith Park in D.C., where the Senators played:
http://www.andrewclem.com/Baseball/GriffithStadium.html#Diag
Fairly deep to center, but really deep down the left field line.
Goose Goslin had the skills one would associate with a right fielder (good speed, good arm) and played that position for other teams later in his career, but played left field for the Senators.
I was pleased to see today’s announcement that the Negro Leagues - excluded from baseball’s record books in a 1969 decision - will now be considered proper major leagues. This recognition is only fair, and long overdue.
100% agreed. Should have been done ages ago.
What exactly does it mean? Does it mean that Josh Gibson’s lifetime HR record is now the official all-time MLB record etc.? If not, then what does it mean to be an official major league?
According to his Wiki article, Josh Gibson only hit around 200 home runs in official Negro League games (although in the table at the end they say 147). Homers hit in exhibition games don’t count in career records even by MLB teams, and Negro League teams played a lot of exhibition games. Some of his homers were in the Mexican, Dominican, and Cuban Leagues which were also not major leagues.
Since there were usually only around 60 “official” league games per season in the Negro Leagues, totals from these games aren’t going to affect standings in counting stats much.
The lifetime HR record was cited as an example.
That same Wiki article says (citing the NYT) that Gibson now holds the single season MLB BA record for hitting .441 (though the stats table in that same article doesn’t show any seasons where he hit that particular number).
Recognizing Negro League records as MLB records would seriously skew things, because you had a lot of top caliber guys like Gibson but the overall level of the opposition they were playing against was not Major League level (even leaving out the Mexican and other leagues). So while guys like Gibson would undoubtedly have been a stars in MLB, they would not have put up the stats that they did in the NL.
I’m also confused about what this actually means. If it makes it easier for Negro Leaguers to get into the Hall of Fame, I’m all for it, and it’s loooong overdue. But the structure of the Negro Leagues was so different from MLB, I don’t understand how you can incorporate the statistics into MLB records.
The NY Times article cited for that says that analysis will show he hit .441 in 1943, but he apparently played in only 55 league games that year. He’ll pass Hugh Duffy, who hit .440 in 125 games in 1894. So the issue for season rate stats is that they were obtained over many fewer games. A similar issue would have arisen if a record had been set in this year’s shortened season.
Maybe my information is old, but IIRC, to qualify for a batting title a player needs 3.1 plate appearances for each game his team played. So for records purposes a shortened season shouldn’t matter.
All the best Negro League players are in the Hall of Fame and the real inner circle guys all got in in the 1970s. There are no Negro Leaguers left of certain Hall of Fame quality who aren’t inducted.
That’s correct, yeah.
I don’t know what difference it really makes. So some guy hit .450 in a shorter season. Everyone will know what it means, and it’s not like anyone bats .400 anymore anyway.
Except that it’s easier to hit .440 over 60 games than over 125 games or 152 games. Rogers Hornsby hit .486 over 60 games in 1924, ending the season with .424..
The problem is that every site I checked gives different numbers for Gibson in 1943. The Homestead Grays played 102 total games, and 68 league games.. Gibson, who is listed as batting .466, had 302 plate appearances, or 2.96 per game, so he wouldn’t qualify for a batting title under the modern definition. But there’s no breakout for league games, so he might have just in those.
Basically the stats are impossible to compare. But I don’t think that they necessarily shouldn’t be incorporated. The records include those before 1900, which aren’t really comparable either. You just have to be aware of the conditions under which they were compiled.
There’s no need to have just one single “record” - fans already understand that there are different records for different circumstances. Most pitching records have all-time and either post-1900 or post-liveball versions that one can pick and choose from. I mentioned earlier in this thread that the contrived record for “most professional hits combined in the U.S. and Japan” was invented to make sure baseball can honor a respectable person like Ichiro instead of Pete Rose in the future. There will be a record for “batting average in a full season under liveball conditions and modern scoring rules” and there will be a record for “free for all batting average including the best we can figure from the Negro League stats” and both will be recognized in their own context and the world will keep spinning.
The main issue I have is the inferior competition. I mean, sure, it was absolutely wrong what MLB did to blacks prior to 1947, no question, but let’s say that of the talent pool, 85% were white and 15% minority. In the MLB, a player was facing 85% of the best players in the country. In the Negro Leagues, a player was facing 15% of the best, and 85% inferior competition.
So that guy hits 800 HRs or bats .493. That record simply means nothing when compared with MLB players. Short of a time machine you cannot give them any justice, but pretending that these old stats are the same as MLB stats is just plain wrong, and is political correctness on steroids (no pun intended).
Yeah, the pre-1900 stats are out of whack (41 game winners, Cy Young’s 511 wins, etc.) but they were representative of the game at the time.
Sorry for my way late contribution, but I just saw this:
And yeah, I have to agree: he knew.
It’s pretty “Pete Rose” to knowingly flout these kinds of rules. That’s just who he is: he was a hustler both on and off the diamond.
And if he’d ever once show serious contrition and demonstrate the ability to reflect on his behavior, I have no doubt that there would be serious consideration of his reinstatement.
A bit of trivia in case anyone’s interested. We know that Bart Giamatti was the commissioner that delivered Rose justice, and IIRC, it was also Giamatti who tangled with both Steinbrenner and Marge Schott. But did you know that Bart Giamatti’s son is…famed actor Paul Giamatti, of John Adams fame?
Where would we draw the line? Should we count Nippon Professional Baseball stats? Korean leagues?
I think it’s a great gesture to right a historical wrong, but it does raise legitimate questions about what gets included in statistical history and what doesn’t?
And the Negro League numbers are representative of that game at that time.
Would Josh Gibson have hit .451 in the American League? No. But players whose numbers were inflated by Coors Field wouldn’t have done what they did, guys wouldn’t have had 37-21 records in a single season in the 1980s like they did in 1884, batting records in 1930 were wildly inflated, and so on.
The point of records is that they’re RECORDS - an account of what took place, nothing more. Guys in the Negro Leagues put up those numbers, nothing more. That’s all it says. The ECL in 1926 was absolutely not up to the standards of today’s baseball, and might not have been as good as the National League (although I think you may be underestimating the talent it had) but it was absolutely, beyond any reasonable doubt, better than the 1884 National League, which has records that have counted since the get-go despite the fact the baseball was roughly equivalent to a good high school conference today. Why shouldn’t it count if the 1884 NL counts?
This is a symbolic move that should have been made long ago and if it means Josh Gibson now holds the single season batting record, well, that’s how it is. It’s not political correctness to acknowledge those numbers EXIST. They always existed.