Quote:
Originally Posted by packs
Not to play Devil's advocate but couldn't the same be true for players who were major leaguers only because they weren't beaten out for their job by a superior Negro League player?
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I don't think it's necessary to posit this as Devil's advocate. It's clearly true that some pre-1947 AL and NL players wouldn't have been in the majors if not for the color line (unless of course the owners had decided both to integrate and to expand either rosters or the size of the leagues).
But here's the thing: At any given time prior to 1947, for most of the regular season, there were 400 players in the AL and NL, not counting players on the DL. The White/Black racial breakdown in the U.S. during those years was always very close to 90%/10%. So if there were no racial discrimination, and if the makeup of the majors reflected the nation, the majors would have generally consisted of about 360 White players and about 40 Black players. But if you compare the number of AL/NL players to the number of Negro Leaguers in any given year, the ratio is vastly different. It was probably never 1:1, but it was generally far less than 9:1.
Of course, we can't assume that the racial breakdown of the majors in a non-discrimanatory world would have exactly mirrored that of the country. Still, given the numbers, it is very hard to see how the depth of the Negro Leagues could have matched that of the AL and NL.
I think almost everyone agrees that the best Negro Leaguers would also have been among the best players in the AL/NL had they been allowed in. But a true apples-to-apples comparison of the numbers is impossible, for the above reason, and any number of others.