Quote:
Originally Posted by TomVeal
1. In the period that we're discussing, about 400 men played in MLB. It may well be true that 80 of them were inferior to Negro League players. Do you believe that it follows that the average level of Negro League play was on a par with MLB?
2. I don't disagree with the statement that Major League Baseball has recognized some Negro Leagues as "Major Leagues". I do disagree with the proposition that this recognition resulted from a thorough analysis of the quality of those leagues' competition or that it should alter OOTP's methodology for evaluating Negro League players. Rating them is admittedly difficult owing to the lack of evidence. The MLB designation, however, has no evidentiary value at all and therefore is of no help in producing accurate assessments.
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The mere fact of MLB recognizing portions of the Negro Leagues as major leagues is not in itself evidence of much of anything other than the act itself. I can't argue with that.
However, the fact that MLB did this largely because of decades of baseball research and investigation that led to changing perceptions and understandings of baseball history is relevant. The official raising of the status is just the culmination of years of research and analysis and that is where the evidentiary value exists- in the substantial baseball scholarship that led to this change.
I would argue that there is far less evidentiary value in the previous official status of the Negro Leagues as somehow lesser than the white major leagues as it was based almost entirely upon simple prejudice and years of tradition rather than anything resulting from a fact-based exploration of the evidence at hand or any real attempt at scholarly examination.