Baseball, Inc.’s Move to Elevate the Segregated negro leagues Exposes a Disaster Area of Dubious Data

[Re: “Bush Leaguer Rob Manfred of Empty Baseball Suits, Inc., Goes black supremacist, Elevating Inferior negro leagues, and De-Valuing White Big Leaguers.”]

By Nicholas Stix

espn:“Depending on what Elias [Sports Bureau] and mlb rule, though, [Josh] Gibson could wind up with another notable record. His .441 [sic] batting average in 1943 would be the best season mark ever, edging Hugh Duffy’s .440 from 1894. Gibson’s line came in fewer than 80 games, however, far short of the modern standard of 162.”

[N.S.: Actually, the modern standard is 502 plate appearances.]

If you check out Gibson’s official stats, via www.baseball-reference.com, which the suits consider an unimpeachable source, you’ll find they’re a disaster area of dubious numbers.

First of all, there are no numbers at all for games played. That’s extremely odd, especially when you consider that ancient or odd stats (e.g., from marginal leagues like the negro leagues) are typically reconstructed from old newspaper box scores. (Then again, excepting for a brief run by The Chicago Offender, er, Defender, negro newspapers were exclusively weeklies.) How could almost all of the particular offensive stats be re-printed, without the total number of games for each season?

But it gets curiouser and curiouser.

Typically, the better an offensive season a hitter is having, the less pitchers deign to pitch to him, thus elevating his bases-on-balls. But with Josh Gibson, officially often the opposite is the case. Thus, in 1942, when Gibson officially had one of his worst seasons, hitting .297 (BA), he had 25 walks in 163 plate appearances (PAs) for a .405 on-base percentage (OBP), a 108-point differential over his BA.

And yet, the following year, 1943, when he had his greatest hitting season, hitting .486 (which the anonymous espn fake news reporter got wrong) for the Homestead Grays, in 183 PAs, he walked only once, for an OBP differential of only three points (.489 to .486).

And even if we take Gibson’s 1943 stats at face value, he probably played in only about 30 games, which cannot possibly qualify for any big-league hitting records.

espn’s fake news reporter seeks to deceive the reader, when he says “Gibson’s line came in fewer than 80 games” in 1943.

Meanwhile, the current single-season BA record holder, Hugh Duffy (.440), played in 125 games for the Boston Bean Eaters in 1894, and had 616 PA and 539 ABs.

Gibson was supposedly described as “practically indestructible” behind the plate, but that is belied by his stat sheet.

Of Gibson’s 17 years in professional baseball (1930-1946), in each of six different seasons, he had anywhere from only nine to 95 plate appearances. And he never had more than 209 PAs.

In many seasons, as recorded by BR, Gibson’s RBI and ratio of HRs to RBI are practical impossibilities.

Take 1934, when Gibson played for the mighty Pittsburgh Crawfords, owned by the Steel City’s numbers king. Officially, Gibson hit .321, with a slugging percentage of .600, with 61 hits. And yet, the man who allegedly bragged that “I’m in scoring position when I step into the batter’s box,” got between only zero and three RBI not via the home run: 11 homers, and a measly 14 RBI. That ratio, and lack of RBI, with 50 non-home run hits, are practical impossibilities.

black “history” asserts that Gibson hit 841 home runs, but his official stat sheet lists only 113.

The numbers—those at BR, and those of rumor—seem as random as if they were picked out of a hat.

It’s like sifting through black “oral history.”

I expect that people who bring up these gaps will either be ignored, or cancelled.

Alternatively, the folks at the Elias Sports Bureau, baseball-reference.com, or Baseball, Inc., are going to have to fabricate negro league baseball stats like Democrat officials fabricating votes in a presidential election.