I’m aware that there was never really an asterisk next to Maris’ home-run record, but, at the time, baseball commissioner Ford Frick’s decree stated that a “distinctive mark” should denote the discrepancy in season length (154 vs. 162 games). Should the same be done for records made before the color barrier was broken?
Sure, why not? It’s the simple truth tha the players of the 1930s were not facing many of the game’s greatest players.
We should add an additional asterisk to all pitching records set before 1920 to denote they were assisted by dead balls. Also all pitching records set in the 60s.
Also, records set in ballparks that heavily favour hitters, like Coors Field, should have asterisks.
(This post is obviously sarcastic in trying to make a point.)
How do you know that an asterisk wasn’t added to the mention of the record early on? When do you think it first appeared?
Well, I’m glad there was a point behind your bitter ramblings. While you may think it’s silly to note the outside influences that may have influenced the validity of certain records, I think it is something worth discussing. I think it’s especially apropos considering the steroid debate, and the ongoing Barry Bonds saga.
Of course not.
I don’t think an asterisk would be meaningful. But I do think it’s very important for people to educate others about the changes in the sport, and the different ways the statistics reflect that. I think it’s perfectly reasonable for someone to say, “Babe Ruth was an amazing hitter, but…”
You have a different definition of “bitter” than most English speakers, I guess.
It’s not “silly to note outside influences,” it’s impossible. You cannot possibly account for every conceivable contextual difference between baseball records; it cannot be done, unless you deconstruct the entire Baseball Encyclopedia down to every individual number. At which point you’re back to where you started, just comparing raw numbers.
The changing nature of baseball has left us with the simple fact that statistical standard have changed over time, and those differences can’t be resolved by picking and chooisng which records are which. Out of context, the numbers put up by pre-1920s pitchers are almost absurdly dominant compared to anything that happened afterwards, so should those records be asterisked?
Part of the very appeal of the history of baseball is the fact that the statistics can be endlessly argued over because of the varying contexts. In a post some time ago I argued that Mike Schmidt’s 48-homer season in 1980 was as impressive as Barry Bonds’s 73-homer season in 2001. But the fact is that the record for home runs in a season is 73. That’s simply a statement of fact; Bonds hit 73 home runs in a major league season, and nobody else has ever hit as many. Similarly, Jack Chesbro won 41 games in 1904, and nobody else has ever won as many, even if we concede that Steve Carlton’s 27-win season was as amazing a feat. Napoleon Lajoie batted .426 one year and nobody else ever has, though in all fairness Geroge Brett’s .390 was a LOT more difficult. Records are just records - a statement of what actually happened.
Yeah, you’re right of course, RickJay, but then you’d require most baseball fans to think just a tiny bit before spouting off their opinions, and that will happen when asterisks fly out Mike Schmidt’s butt.
Far better to have race-agenda fans proclaim pre-1947 records tainted, Babe Ruth claiming the 154-game season is sacred, stat geeks insisting that park influences be factored in, steroid-haters declaring post-1980s hitting records invalid, etc., all preferably at the top of their lungs, listening to no one else’s claims.
The Four Musketeers (1974):
*Porthos: You know, it strikes me that we would be better employed ringing Milady’s pretty neck than shooting these poor devils of Protestants. I mean, what are we killing them for? Because they sing psalms in French and we sing them in Latin?
Aramis: Porthos, have you no education? What do you think religious wars are all about? *
“Race-agenda fans”? :rolleyes:
Every so often, I hear someone propose what the OP does: that Babe Ruth’s records are somehow tainted because he didn’t compete against the top black athletes of his day. People who make such suggestions take it for granted that the Babe’s stats would have plummeted if he’d had to bat against Satchel Paige, or if there’d been great black outfielders and shortstops to field his line drives.
To that, I say:
- In 1943, not only were the major leagues all-white, the U.S. was at war and many of the top white athletes were in the armed forces. That year, the top hitter in the National League was Stan Musial, who batted .357. Well, fast forward 14 years. In 1957, the war was over, and all the top athletes were back from the services. Moreover, baseball was now integrated, so there were lots of black pitchers to strike Musial out, and lots of speedy black outfielders to run down his fly balls. So, naturally, Stan Musial’s batting average plummeted… all the way down to a measly .351!
In 1942, major league baseball was all white, and Ted Williams batted .356, to lead the American League. Fast forward 15 years. It’s 1957, and there are lots of black players to challenge Ted Williams. So, of course, his average fell… all the way down to .388!
So, to all those who want an asterisk by records from the pre-integration era, I offer a simple challenge. If your theory holds water, you should easily be able to name me 5 star players from before 1947 whose stats went into the toilet as soon as baseball was integrated. So, get cracking- give me some names of white guys who were superstars before integration, but who just couldn’t keep up with the new, superior black players.
- The people who prpose adding the racial asterisk are overlooking something that ought to be obvious: the presence of great black players in the major leagues HELPED white players at least as much as it hurt them.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself this: would Jeff Kent’s offensive stats be better or worse if baseball were still segregated?
(Jeopardy theme music plays.)
The answer is, his stats would be MUCH worse! Jeff Kent benefitted tremendously from the presence of black superstar Barry Bonds in the Giants’ lineup!
White Don Mattingly got a lot MORE runs batted in with black Rickey Henderson as his leadoff man than he would have if the Yankees were forced to go with a slower white leadoff man!
White Warren Spahn won a lot MORE games due to the presence of black superstar Hank Aaron in the Milwaukee Braves’ lineup!
Get the idea? You’ve been assuming, wrongly, that all the great black players would be on the opposing teams! Did it never occur to you that the presence of quality black players on MY team could make MY stats a lot better?
Astorian, what you’re saying is interesting but inexact. You failed to adjust for the fact that as players age their stats drop off. The Musial and Williams stats’ you cited, properly interpreted, means that integration of baseball diluted the quality of play such that old guys like Williams and Musial could inflate their stats even though they were over the hill. 
Note: I do not really believe what I just wrote above, so don’t flame me.
The other problem with the OP’s idea was that baseball was not fully integrated in 1947; it wasn’t even fully integrated in 1957. The Red Sox were all-white until 1959, and racism continued to effect who got to play well into the 1960s. Look at a Major league roster from 1962 or so, and you’ll only see a handful of superstar blacks on each team.
Of course, in the 70s-90s, the quality of play was held down by loss of Cuban players; prior to that, there had been a couple of dozen Ccuban players in the league at any given time.
And now it now seems our fathers were just as wrong about the quality of Japanese baseball as our grandfathers were about the quality of Black players. In 2025, when 15% of the players in the league are of Asian descent, should we talk about putting an asterisk on all the records set pre-Ichiro?
They would be roughly the same. Study after study after study, veritable mountains of research, has determined that the “protection effect” is a myth. It does not happen.
I don’t have the link, but I read one in particular on Kent/Bonds, showing Kent’s stats did not drop when Bonds was injured.
I don’t know whether an asterisk should be here or there, but it seems there’s been all kinds of mitigating circumstances that could affect stats throughout baseball history. There’s a ridiculous overemphasis on stats in baseball. It’s just tail chasing to be so exacting on something that isn’t all that exact.
That doesn’t really make a lot of sense, though. You’re referring to a specific circumstance that allegedly helped Kent (whose alleged benefit from Bonds is highly questionable) but obviously hurt all the white pitchers in the National League who had to pitch against Bonds, as well as all the other black players.
It’s just nonsensical to pretend that cutting off part of the talent pool won’t reduce the amount of talent in the major leagues. Picking off particular years in Ted Williams and Stan Musial’s careers doesn’t really prove a lot. Williams had his best years before integration, by the way.
You’re looking at very specific stats, though, and not at the overall effect of cutting out a large portion of the talent pool. Yes, it’s true that Don Mattingly might not have driven in 145 runs in 1985 if he didn’t have Rickey Henderson in front of him, but you’re picking and choosing there. Mattingly would overall have had better individual stats in his career had he not had to face Dave Stewart or Tom Gordon or any number of fine black pitchers, and his offensive stats would have been better in comparison to his peers if his peers had not included Barry Bonds, George Bell, Rickey Henderson, or what have you.
To take an extreme example, imnagine if in his prime Mattingly had lost ALL his quality teammates by having him put back in Triple-A. No, he wouldn’t have had Rickey Henderson batting in front of him, but do you really think his numbers would get worse?
It proves a helluva lot more than merely saying “Williams had his best years before integration.” Gosh, you mean he was better ballplayer at 23 than in his late thirties? Alert the media!
Obviously, I’m picking random examples- so what? THe people who claim that pre-1947 records are invalid are either implying or stating outright that people like Ted Williams couldn’t possibly have hit .400 if he’d had to play in an integrated league. I’m asking “Why the hell not? He hit .388 as an old man in an integrated league!” Moreover, Ted Williams played for the most racist team in baseball, one that had no black players until Ted’s penultimate season. In other words, Ted Williams faced ALL of the difficulties integration posed for a white player, and received NONE of the benefits. He still came through with flying colors.
In other words, the best white hitter in the game rose to the challenge, adapted to the new realities, and didn’t miss a beat. There is no intelligent reason to think Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson, et al wouldn’t have done the same.
Okay, let’s pretend that Bob Gibson, Fergie Jenkins and Vida Blue step into a time machine in their prime, and come to pitch in the American League in 1985. How does that affect Mattingly’s season? Well, assuming each guy starts 33 games, Mattingly will probably face those guys a total of 12 games. That’s, what, 48 at-bats? Against the average white schmoes he would normally have faced, Mattingly probably gets 16 hits, along with the resulting runs and ribbies. With the new black superstars, maybe Mattingly now gets only 8 hits, with the resulting runs and ribbies.
That’s the difference the presence of three dominant black pitchers would make: 8 measly hits in a season. Shave a point or two off his season average, knock off 10 or 12 runs and ribbies, and you’re still looking at an MVP-type season. Sorry, I KNOW the presence of Rickey Henderson, Willie Randolph and Dave Winfield in the Yankees’ 1985 lineup helped Mattingly waaaay more than that would have hurt him.
But the reality is, most of the black pitchers Mattingly did face were NOT all-time greats, any more than most of the white guys were. Most players of ALL races are average schmoes.
Who knows? In Mattingly’s best season at AAA, he only hit .316. Good, sure, but hardly an indication of great things to come. Intuitively, we’d expect great pro athletes to be utterly dominant at lower levels of competition, but that frequently isn’t true. Lawrence Taylor was much more dominant in the NFL than he was in the pathetic Atlantic Coast Conference. Roger Clemens is, arguably, the greatest major league pitcher ever, but he was (at best) a pretty good third starter here at the University of Texas.
Tony Gwynn may have been the best pure hitter I ever saw. He nearly hit .400 in the major leagues. But did he bat .400 in AAA? Nope- in fact, he batted higher as a major league sophomore than he did in either of his seasons in AAA ball.
How is that possible? Well, maybe Gwynn (like the best of the best in any sport) rose to the level of his competition. And if he could do that, why should we assume the best of the best from the pre-integration era couldn’t have?
Again, I’m not suggesting we asterisk anything, but c’mon; You don’t think maybe Ruth hits 694 homers instead of 714 if there’s a glut of awesome black pitchers replacing white scrubs?
A small difference indeed.
But remember, people are all up in arms over records. In the grand scheme of things eight hits isn’t much, but if it’s eight fewer hits for Ichiro Suzuki on 2004, he doesn’t break George Sisler’s record. Most major league single season records are held by relatively small margins. Look at the Maris Asterisk fuss; I mean 8 games isn’t THAT many. Great sluggers average just 2-3 homers per 8 games. But it made all the difference.
We’re both on the same side of the asterisk issue, but there’s simply no doubt that cutting out black players reduced the major leagues’ talent level. Of course Babe Ruth would still have been a megastar, because the margin between Babe Ruth and schmoe is a wide gulf.
But adding black players did NOT replace average schmoes with more schmoes; it replaced scrubs with stars. Major league teams went for the best black players they could find and dumped the worst players they already had, which is why such an unusually high percentage of the early black imports were so good. Most major league players are below average. Counterintuitive though that sounds, it’s true; the great majority of the MLB talent pool is made of sub-.500 players. Adding skilled players pushes them out. And that affects the stats of everyone in the league. It doesn’t turn Ted Williams into Mario Mendoza, but it has an effect.
Roger Clemens was 27-5 and an All-American at UT, was the winning pitcher in the College World Series final, was one of the highest rated pitching prospects in the country and was drafted in the first round by the Red Sox, and that was the second time he’d been drafted. He was one of the greatest college pitchers of the 1980s, if not all time, and then blew through three minor league levels in 18 starts because he was so awesome they had no choice but to move him up. I’d be fascinated to hear who the #1 and #2 pitchers on that Longhorns team were.
As to the issue of amateur and minor league performance, s’what? If Mattingly could have hit .316 in the majors in 1982 he’d have been in the majors; the growth in Mattingly’s skills were a natural product of his age and experience, not that he simply played better against better pitchers. If the 1985 Mattingly had played in Columbus all year he would have torn IL pitching to shreds.
If you want to change record keeping do the pitchers a favour and call 9 innings a game. Add Pedro Martinez and Harvey Haddix to the list of perfect games and put Randy Johnson’s 20 Ks with Wood and Clemens. I have always hated the idea that these guys are stiffed by something they had no control over - their teammates ability to score a run.