1940 census: 89.8% white, 9.8% black
Common sense says they can't. Then why has Major League Baseball (MLB) recently declared that the Negro Leagues 1920-1948 were major leagues? Let's leave reasons aside and consider some basics and consider the middle decade of those 29 years. As far as we know, the Negro Leagues were composed only of players who were U.S. black men and some dark skinned men from Spanish speaking countries like Cuba who could not pass for white in MLB. In other words, there were no white players in the Negro Leagues.
Because of the great economic depression of the 1930s, which impacted all U.S. citizens, baseball players, white and black, would have had similar drive and motives for playing ball. Whites had not yet been drawn into World War II, so the decade of the 1930s is a good time to consider. The percent of foreign born MLB players was very low in the 1930s.
The black players were precluded from playing in "organized" leagues, including the two major, or best, leagues: the older National (senior circuit) and American (junior circuit). There was even a pecking order for them.
Some blacks had played in the 1800s but since the two major leagues achieved dominance in the early 1900s, it just wasn't done. Blacks were excluded until 1946 when the Dodgers assigned Jackie Robinson to play for its AAA team in Montreal. The handwriting was on the wall. In the first year after WWII, a black man was playing in one of the white "organized" leagues. Robinson performed well in 1946 and was promoted to the Brooklyn club of the NL in 1947. History.
That was 73 years ago.
We are now told something that very few baseball fans knew: a panel of experts in 1968 decided to declare that some old defunct leagues to be major leagues.
MLB to include Negro leagues. Did Babe Ruth face Satchel Paige? Friday, December 18, 2020
“long overdue recognition" ...
"SABR (Society of American Baseball Research) has put together a group of experts to determine which Negro Leagues should be recognized by the organization as major."
MLB has chosen to rush to judgement and rely on its Elias Sports Bureau ...
Was there criteria for classifying a league as major, including:
Federal League 1914-1915
American Association 1882-1891
Players League 1890
Union Association 1884
National Association 1871-1875?
Was it recently applied to the Negro Leagues?
_________________
Since the overwhelming majority of baseball fans knew very little, if anything, about those five declared major leagues above and could care less, one wonders why MLB used the phrase “long overdue recognition" to explain its adding seven Negro Leagues to this mysterious list, as if the omission was some gross oversight or worse. An oversight about something unknown? Here are those seven new major leagues:
Negro National League (I) (1920-31)
Eastern Colored League (1923-28)
American Negro League (1929)
East-West League (1932)
Negro Southern League (1932)
Negro National League (II) (1933-48)
Negro American League (1937-48)
The real problem isn't the simple designation, which seems odd, but the goal of combining statistics, because the stats for the Negro Leagues are incomplete and unlikely to be determined 72-100 years after the fact.
MLB adds Negro Leagues to official records
By Anthony Castrovince @castrovince
December 16, 2020
Wade through it.
Here is the website that contains the data for the Negro Leagues:
http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/
I've spent too much time this week trying to make sense of it. I determined that one of the more prominent teams, the Homestead Grays, played at least 100 league games between 1920-1948 only twice:
1947: 103
1943: 102
The white National and American Leagues usually played a regular season schedule of 154 games 1903-1960. In the 1930s the number of Grays games ranged from 80 in 1937 to 30 in 1934. Maybe they played more in 1934 but their record was 16-13-1. The games played in the 1920s were mostly single digit, based on the team record.
This data is some day going to be merged with MLB data?
Finally, back to the common sense issue of whether 10% can match 90%. Try to consider that with your head, not your heart.
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