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

By “W”

A Colleague asks,

“Do you know if a negro league team every played an MLB team. Were the negroes any good?”

N.S.: I have heard of barnstorming White teams which played negro teams, but do not recall any match-ups between official White and negro teams.

What Rob Manfred has done was meant as a slap in the face to the White fans who pay his multimillion-dollar salary.

You see parallels all over the place. For instance, when the NCAA robbed Joe Paterno of enough wins to strip him of the college coaching record, it wasn’t because he had covered up sex crimes, but because he was a White man, in order to rob Paterno of his record, and give it to Eddie Robinson, a black man who owed his career to segregation.

By the way, it is incorrect usage to capitalize “negro,” which is simply “black.” black nationalist Tony Brown wrote in black Lies, White Lies: The Truth According to Tony Brown, that at the turn of the 20th century, W.E.B. DuBois wrote every newspaper editor in the country, in order to browbeat them into capitalizing “negro.”

MLB reclassifies negro leagues as major league 12:49 P.M. ET
• espn news services

NEW YORK -- Willie Mays will add some hits to his record, Monte Irvin’s big league batting average should climb over .300, and Satchel Paige might add nearly 150 victories to his total.

Josh Gibson, the greatest of all negro league sluggers, might just wind up with a major league record too.

The statistics and records of greats such as Gibson, Paige and roughly 3,400 other players are set to join Major League Baseball’s books after MLB announced Wednesday that it is reclassifying the Negro Leagues as a major league.

MLB said Wednesday that it was “correcting a longtime oversight in the game’s history” by elevating the negro leagues on the centennial of their founding. The negro Leagues consisted of seven leagues, and MLB will include records from those circuits between 1920 and 1948. The negro Leagues began to dissolve one year after Jackie Robinson became MLB’s first black player with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Those leagues were excluded in 1969 when the Special Committee on Baseball Records identified six official “major leagues” dating to 1876.

“It is MLB’s view that the Committee’s 1969 omission of the negro leagues from consideration was clearly an error that demands today’s designation,” the league said in a statement.

MLB will work with the Elias Sports Bureau to review negro Leagues statistics and records and figure out how to incorporate them into major league history. There was no standard method of record-keeping for the negro leagues, but there are enough box scores to stitch together some of its statistical past.

For instance, Mays could be credited with 16 hits from his 1948 season with the Alabama black Barons. Irvin, a teammate of Mays’ with the New York Giants, could see his career average climb from .293 to .304 if numbers listed at Baseball-Reference.com from his nine negro league seasons are accurate. And Paige, who currently is credited with 28 major league wins, should add at least 146 to his total.

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the negro leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the negro leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”

While some have estimated Gibson slugged more than 800 homers during 16 negro league seasons, it’s unlikely that enough records exist for him to officially pass Barry Bonds for the career record at 762.

[N.S.: Due to years of cheating, Barry Bonds holds no big league baseball records.]

Depending on what Elias and MLB rule, though, 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.: Giving a man a record for playing a fraction of a season, against inferior pitching and defense, makes a mockery of the record book.]

“We couldn’t be more thrilled by this recognition of the significance of the negro leagues in Major League Baseball history,” said Edward Schauder, legal representative for Gibson’s estate and co-founder of the negro leagues Players Association. “Josh Gibson was a legend who would have certainly been a top player in the major leagues if he had been allowed to play.”

MLB said it considered input from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the Negro Leagues Researchers and Authors Group, and studies by other baseball authors and researchers.

[But none from baseball fans.]

“The perceived [!] deficiencies of the Negro Leagues’ structure and scheduling were born of MLB’s exclusionary practices, and denying them major league status has been a double penalty, much like that exacted of Hall of Fame candidates prior to Satchel Paige’s induction in 1971,” baseball historian [sic] John Thorn said.

“Granting MLB status to the Negro Leagues a century after their founding is profoundly gratifying.”

[N.S.: Everything blacks did badly is the White man’s fault; but everything blacks did well is to blacks’ credit.]

Bob Kendrick, president of the negro leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, also praised Wednesday’s announcement.

“The negro leagues Baseball Museum is thrilled to see this well-deserved recognition of the negro leagues. In the minds of baseball fans worldwide, this serves as historical validation for those who had been shunned from the Major Leagues and had the foresight and courage to create their own league that helped change the game and our country too,” Kendrick said in a statement.

“This acknowledgement is a meritorious nod to the courageous owners and players who helped build this exceptional enterprise and shines a welcomed spotlight on the immense talent that called the negro leagues home.”

The associated press contributed to this report.