You can help to rename the MLB MVP award the Josh Gibson Memorial MVP Award

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by Antonin

It would be like me complaining bitterly day after day after day about what the English Premiere League calls its MVP award.

It is literally called the Premier League Player of the Season

I think almost any name would be better. Or perhaps it is better to leave it generic as naming things after people only to have that person in the future be discovered to be a terrible person lets you avoid such matters.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

But for better or worse (much worse than better) they were a separate league.
I love that the stats are now on BR.com
I do not love how they are mixed in with other stats. They should be accessible and prominent, but separate from ML stats.[...]

At the very least it would be nice if Baseball reference included filters so that I could pursue research into the leagues independently if I wished.

Careful, rudel, you white segregationist!

I'd be in favor of this until (if at all) the Negro League stats can be completed to a reasonable degree like I said earlier.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by Westheim

Careful, rudel, you white segregationist!

I'd be in favor of this until (if at all) the Negro League stats can be completed.

Sadly I don't think this will ever happen. Because blacks were so marginalized, many newspapers did not cover the games. So it was up to black-owned papers to keep the stats. And much of that data has been lost to time and will never be recovered.

Also, you had many of the league's best players go and play in places like Mexico, Cuba, and the Dominican for a season or multiple seasons.
The Negro Leagues were always on unsteady financial feet and because blacks were so poorly treated in America they could go to those other places and make more money and be treated better.

[rudel.dietrich]

And for example, this is what basketball reference does with NBA/ABA stats

https://www.basketball-reference.com...ts_career.html

You can see either league or combined. I think this would be the better option for baseball as well. But I can understand if others may disagree.
As I said, this is a much trickier and thornier issue than just having a separate rival league.

[Reed]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

Can I be for naming the MVP award after Gibson or another candidate but not so sure I like what baseballreference.com did?

The Negro Leagues were for sure a major league. But for better or worse (much worse than better) they were a separate league.
I love that the stats are now on BR.com
I do not love how they are mixed in with other stats. They should be accessible and prominent, but separate from ML stats.

I would not like if they included stats from the Federal League or other leagues as well.

I think basketball reference does it the correct way. They have ABA stats and NBA stats. You can pursue the leaderboards separately or look at them combined.


I very much realize that the Negro leagues is a very tricky and touchy subject.
It was not formed as a rival league. It was formed because blacks were literally deemed as lesser human beings not worthy of playing with whites.


At the very least it would be nice if Baseball reference included filters so that I could pursue research into the leagues independently if I wished.

I agree with this post 100%. (And I am ok with naming the MVP after Josh Gibson.)
Is the Korean or Japanese League or Cuban League considered major league?

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

Can I be for naming the MVP award after Gibson or another candidate but not so sure I like what baseballreference.com did?

Yes.

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

I would not like if they included stats from the Federal League or other leagues as well.

Federal League stats are included, by the way. At least on the individual level.

Art Wilson played for the Chicago Chi-Feds in 1914 and 1915 and those years' stats are included in his overall major league stats.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Reed

Is the Korean or Japanese League or Cuban League considered major league?

They are considered as "foreign," so it doesn't matter to Major League Baseball whether they are major or "Open" of "AAA+" or whatever.

When Ichiro was setting all of his hits records recently there was a debate as to whether his Nippon League stats should count so that he could officially pass Pete Rose. But his Nippon stats don't count so he sits at 3089 rather than 4367.

It would be interesting to have the conversation about whether stats from leagues foreign to the US should be considered if those leagues consider themselves as major leagues. Baseball is so global now, why should "major league" be so americentric?

[Cool Papa Bell]

You would be the first to think that, none of what he said makes any sense and was the same pandering that's been heard for years.

Originally Posted by UltimateAverageGuy

As a black man, let me say this is PERFECT.

Quote:
Originally Posted by joefromchicago View Post
Well, when the name calling starts, that's the time for me to leave. To sum up, then: you think you're "doing something" by advocating for MLB to change the name of the MVP award. I, on the other hand, think that "doing something" means doing something that tangibly benefits the black community, and that "raising awareness" of Josh Gibson by naming an award after him is the equivalent of "sending thoughts and prayers" to the families of a mass shooting's victims. It's an empty gesture that primarily makes you feel good about yourself while doing very little for the people that you are ostensibly trying to help. And why is it necessary to raise awareness of Josh Gibson anyway? He's in the freakin' Hall of Fame! Didn't that raise enough awareness of him? And if not, then why do you think naming an award for him will make a difference?

Forget it, don't bother answering those questions. Like I said, I'm done here.

[Cool Papa Bell]

Yes, thank you guys! This is what it was supposed to be all about. An intelligent discussion about this issue. Raising awareness of an issue that has been pretty much buried for decades and decades, not what it initially turned into, which was the same racist commentary on why the Negro Leagues were not major leagues. I'm glad many of you are more aware of history, most of you seem to understand the difficulties in developing the statistics into something more comprehensive and defining. Most of you realize that the statistics are not the issue here and that is good to know. This has nothing to do with foreign statistics being included in Major League Baseball. Nothing to do with a league like the Federal League even, which was started over ;money. It has to do with players not being allowed to play because of the color of their skin, virtually every facet of society bent against stopping them from succeeding, many segments of the media and civil society others bent towards suppressing anything positive and highlighting anything negative. If you do not think that all of that was disgusting, I feel for you. If you do not think that is not only un-American, it's inhuman, I feel for you. If you continue to think that no efforts matter, they are only thoughts and prayers, I feel for you. If you think that numbers are more important than fellow men and woman and an entire race of human beings,, I feel for you. If you think that sports in general is more important than highlighting the story of what these men went through and trying in every way you can to pay their efforts forward, then I feel for you. Because either you have lived a charmed life, or you have learned nothing from history and again, if those are the cases, I feel for you.

[Cool Papa Bell]

A Love Story
by Adam Jones, 14-year MLB veteran

You know, it’s true what they say. You never forget the first time you fell in love.

For me, it was on a warm summer evening at old Jack Murphy Stadium in 1995.

I was just nine years old, but I fell hard and I fell fast.

Sure, everybody played tee-ball growing up and that was fun for me, but that night, watching the Braves-Padres game with Lemuel Campbell, a close family friend, I truly fell in love with the game of baseball.

Lemuel introduced me to the game and while he was talking with me, he taught me a lot about not just what was going on in front of me, but also what happened behind me. He taught me why certain guys that were playing that night, guys like Fred McGriff, David Justice, Tony Gwynn… why those guys had the opportunities that they had… because of other guys.

We heard about Jackie Robinson in school, but Lemuel dug deeper into why Jackie got the opportunity, how he got that opportunity and where it came from. He taught me about the guys that made it possible for Jackie to break the color barrier in MLB. The guys that made it all possible for a lot of different guys.

I became interested in the Negro Leagues at a very young age because Lemuel was so instrumental in helping me learn about them and to understand that I was getting the opportunity to play this game because of the guys who paved the way for me. And, as I got older, I continued to learn more. It was just part of my education in the game. It would’ve been ignorant if I didn’t study the reason why I was getting this opportunity. I recognized it was not just because of my talent, but also because of the sacrifices made by many others before me.

In 2007, I was a young, bright-eyed, fresh 22-year-old. I was with the Seattle Mariners and I remember going to play the Royals. Some of the older guys said they were going to take a trip to see the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. This was my first time in Kansas City and I was excited because I had no idea the museum was there. I made sure that I got up early the next morning, caught that bus and went to the museum.

And… wow. When I arrived and got to meet Bob Kendrick, the museum’s president, and heard him tell stories about the history of the game… I just sat there and my jaw just dropped. There were just so many things that I did not know, so many things I was intrigued by. And if you know Bob, you know how charismatic he is and how inspirational his stories are… I just sat there like I was that nine-year-old kid again, like, please tell me more. Just. Keep. Talking.

And as the years went by, every time I went to Kansas City, I made it a mission of mine to not just go back to the museum, but to also bring younger players with me. White, Black, Latino… It didn’t matter to me. It was just important for me to take other players there so they could see other people’s struggle and other people’s grind, but at the same time, other people’s passion and other people’s love for the game. Other people’s vigor and perseverance. Because those Negro League guys? They were tough.

People need to know about the perseverance of these men. They were willing to play in front of anyone who was willing to show up. But they couldn’t go eat at local restaurants. They couldn’t stay at local hotels.

Perseverance. If you did something like that now, in the current climate of the world, there’d be so much uproar. But back then, they just said, “Okay, we’ll do what we gotta do. We came here to play ball, that’s what we want to do and we will go and stay where we need to stay, be together, go eat a good meal and mind our own business.”

But for me, thinking about all the things that they went through, it’s a tough pill to swallow knowing that some people just see you as an entertainer and nothing more. It goes back to stories I’ve heard about Bob Gibson. We all know he’s one of the best African American pitchers of all time. He could go and throw a shutout in St. Louis, yet he couldn’t go out and enjoy a nice steak after the game. It’s like, “You’ll cheer me on when I’m entertaining you, but all I’m trying to do is have myself a nice dinner and I can’t have that.” That perseverance right there—and that understanding of “Okay, we know you don’t want to see us as equals, but at the same time, we’re not going to make an uproar about it”—is one of the toughest things I’ve learned about because I can only think of myself in those situations and I know that especially in today’s climate, that stuff is not going to fly. People would film it and it would be all over social media. But back then, you didn’t hear anything about it.

They just wanted to be a part of something bigger. And they were. Oh, how they were.

Over the years, I’ve made it my mission to educate not just myself but also other people. Because what’s education? It’s good for you to know something, but if you know something that’s good and it’s right and it’s pure, why keep it to yourself? Why not share it? My relationship with Bob and the museum was a match made in heaven. I love Black history. I’m an African American. I love my history. I love learning more and more and more. And thankfully, during my time in MLB, a lot of other players were extremely receptive to visiting the museum with me and open to learning more as well.

You get in the locker room and it’s literally a melting pot. You’ve got White, Black, Latin, Asian... and you should want to know about your teammates’ backgrounds.

Right now, I’m playing in Japan and I want to know the history there. I ask my interpreter about it all the time. I got to play with guys like Ichiro, Kenji Jojima, Koji Uehara. It’s very important that I learn about Japan’s culture and their baseball history because I’d be a fool not to. That’s the educational part that I think many are lacking… They don’t have that desire to know more. To delve deeper like Lemuel and Bob did. And I think to myself, I have that desire and I want to share it. Especially with baseball. It’s my passion, it’s my love and I simply want to know more.

I think it’s extremely important that everyone understands the history of the game and all the integral parts of it. It’s just like with regular history. Black history is a very important part of history that is often forgotten and not taught as much as it should be. In baseball, I think many just skim over the major players of the Negro Leagues and don’t take the time to delve into the actual heroes that formed the league and changed the lives for many, many people. Heroes like Buck O’Neil, who wanted all of us to share and understand that history. Buck was instrumental in preserving Negro Leagues history and establishing the museum’s home in Kansas City. His lifetime of service to the game should be immortalized in Cooperstown, where he surely belongs among the game’s legends.

There's so much history in the Negro Leagues and that's what has always interested me, way back to that day at the ballpark with Lemuel in San Diego. Society just dumbs it down to Jackie Robinson and leaves it at that. But there are the players who didn't have the chance to play in the American or National Leagues during their careers like Rube Foster, Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard, Leon Day and many, many more. And there are people who don't necessarily know about the Negro Leagues careers of players like Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, and Minnie Miñoso.

That's why I think the work that Bob and the museum have been doing all these years is amazing and that’s why I think it’s fantastic that Baseball Reference has now listed the Negro Leagues as major leagues. It’s so important to have all of that information accessible to everybody. The more information that can be made available and the more visible that we can make it the better. It's the history of the whole game, not just part of it.

People are finally going to get to see both sides of the story and get to understand that the Negro Leagues were very, very important, the players were very important and, most importantly, they brought the community together with a common love. And they’re important not just for Blacks, but for all people of color. There were a lot of early Latin American players and their stories also need to be told. All of these men—and some women, too, let's not forget about them—were very instrumental in the building of Major League Baseball and, like it or not, their stories need to be told.

I invite you to dive in and learn more with me, to share my passion and my love.

About the Author

Adam Jones is a 14-year MLB veteran. A native of San Diego, Jones was drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the 1st round (37th) of the 2003 MLB June Amateur Draft from Samuel F. B. Morse HS (San Diego, CA). He came up in the Mariners’ minor league system as a shortstop before transitioning to the outfield. He made his MLB debut with the Mariners on July 14, 2006 and played with them during the 2006 and 2007 seasons. Jones was traded to the Baltimore Orioles in 2008 and spent the bulk of his career there (2008-2018) before he signed with the Arizona Diamondbacks as a free agent for the 2019 season. Jones is a five-time MLB All-Star, a four-time Gold Glove winner, and a Silver Slugger winner. He currently plays for the Orix Buffaloes of [league redacted] in Japan. An avid history buff and a longtime supporter of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Jones is committed to educating others about the game and sharing his passion. Jones and his wife Audie have two sons, August and Axel.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Cool Papa Bell

Most of you realize that the statistics are not the issue

But they most definitely are part of the issue. Almost all of the pushback in this thread is statistics related. Because of the horrendous racial issues of the past the statistics for the negro leagues are spotty and therefore make it very challenging to just plug them in to the existing record books. The inclusion of negro league stats into major league stats is about their spotiness not about the color of the skin of those who produced them.

EDIT: Btw, you can just add that bbr logo to your signature rather than reposting it ever other post.

[Cool Papa Bell]

Originally Posted by cephasjames

But they most definitely are part of the issue. Almost all of the pushback in this thread is statistics related. Because of the horrendous racial issues of the past the statistics for the negro leagues are spotty and therefore make it very challenging to just plug them in to the existing record books. The inclusion of negro league stats into major league stats is about their spotiness not about the color of the skin of those who produced them.

No sir, I respectfully disagree. Yes, statistics are defining, but countless times on here it's been highlighted that they are a work in progress. Those comments on the whole I can understand. The pushback I take issue with are the flat out saying that the Negro Leagues were not major leagues, that is is just an effort by the woke left or whatever racist, stupid nonsense was said. On the surface, pushing back on statistics even makes no sense if anyone knows the context and why they are lacking and spotty. It's a total disregard for what is right in front of you, that they did not spring from the earth in 1947 and dominate basball, they came from a major league that was suppressed and every effort made to bury.

[Cool Papa Bell]

Oh stop it, why is it sometimes you guys start out sounding so reasonable, but then go down rabbit holes. I post the baseball reference logo about the Negro Leagues like bullfighter uses a red cape. It has the same effect. Guys want to say they are not, I remind that most don't agree with them.

[UltimateAverageGuy]

“Pandering” is putting in exponentially more effort in putting a dead guys name on a trophy than making real life progress in the black community. Pomp and circumstance rules America now so I’m not surprised one bit.

[Cool Papa Bell]

Originally Posted by UltimateAverageGuy

“Pandering” is putting in exponentially more effort in putting a dead guys name on a trophy than making real life progress in the black community. Pomp and circumstance rules America now so I’m not surprised one bit.

I respect your opinion, I respectfully disagree. Just putting his name on a trophy I agree is meaningless. Think about what you are saying. There is no money involved, no one gets anything from that, there isn't even any pomp and circumstance. 99.9% of people will not even know it happened. But to raise awareness among the BBWAA, within MLB, within other organizations that can make a difference, you think that has no value? What is anyone getting out of a name on a trophy? That is not the point. The point is making real life progress and to do that you need to start somewhere and gather support, I would think you would know that and agree with the sentiment, but fine you don't.

[Cool Papa Bell]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

It is literally called the Premier League Player of the Season

I think almost any name would be better. Or perhaps it is better to leave it generic as naming things after people only to have that person in the future be discovered to be a terrible person lets you avoid such matters.

Sure, an award named after credit cards or beer or whatever sponsor pays for it prior was absolutely better, I agree.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by Cool Papa Bell

Sure, an award named after credit cards or beer or whatever sponsor pays for it prior was absolutely better, I agree.

I was just making a joke
The mood in this thread got a little heavy

[Cool Papa Bell]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

I was just making a joke
The mood in this thread got a little heavy

Sorry man, that was not the intention! How it could have gotten heavy is just absolutely crazy to me. But from the very beginning it went places that quite frankly make no sense, not from any standpoint. It was here is what is going on, if you agree great, if you don't great but have some actual valid reason. Woke left this, thoughts and prayers and pomp and circumstance that are not valid reasons. This is a legitimate effort by members of a community that want to and are making a difference. MLB came to them, not the other way around. The historians and researchers and foundations that have done this work despite no help from anyone for decades deserve some respect. To call it pomp and circumstance is demeaning to them and offers nothing, does nothing. To call it a woke effort is demeaning and disgusting and disrespectful to people who have dedicated their lives, decades of hard work, it did not start yesterday or last week or last year, their entire lives. They need support and help and should be applauded for their efforts. I guarantee no one commenting negatively on here has done one single thing in their lives that can even be remotely compared.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Cool Papa Bell

Yes, statistics are defining, but countless times on here it's been highlighted that they are a work in progress. Those comments on the whole I can understand.

Much of this discussion in this thread has been about how to handle this work in progress. Which is a good conversation to have.

Originally Posted by Cool Papa Bell

The pushback I take issue with are the flat out saying that the Negro Leagues were not major leagues, that is is just an effort by the woke left or whatever racist, stupid nonsense was said.

That's fine that you take issue with that. That's your prerogative. But it's basically been one person who's made those sort of comments. The other posters in this thread have mostly focused on the stats and how do deal with them.

Originally Posted by Cool Papa Bell

On the surface, pushing back on statistics even makes no sense if anyone knows the context and why they are lacking and spotty.

But we do know the context. And we are having the conversation about what to do with the stats because of and despite the context. Most people in this thread acknowledge the horrendous reasons why the stats are the way they are, but they are also willing to acknowledge that that means it is difficult to just plug them into stats that are to a very large degree not spotty. To most people, it's not, "Those stats should never be incorporated." It's "As we work to improve these stats what do we do with them in the meantime? We want to incorporate them because that's where they belong, but they're so spotty that they skew things."

Anyway. Agree with me or disagree. Whatever. I've made my point and I'm moving on.

[cephasjames]

Originally Posted by Cool Papa Bell

Oh stop it, why is it sometimes you guys start out sounding so reasonable, but then go down rabbit holes. I post the baseball reference logo about the Negro Leagues like bullfighter uses a red cape. It has the same effect. Guys want to say they are not, I remind that most don't agree with them.

Yes, I get that you post the logo to be provocative (though I think being intentionally provocative is silly if you're actually trying to have a genuine conversation... but whatever floats your boat). I'm just offering up a suggestion to make it easier on you so you don't have to repost it all the time. In your signature, it's always there. But, whatever. Do what you want to do.