MLB’s new stats a disservice to Negro Leagues greats, including Josh Gibson | GUEST COMMENTARY

A truism in this life is that, if you do everything that you can in good faith, you won’t go wrong as much as you would otherwise.

In an act that is in anything but good faith, Major League Baseball announced that the statistics of Negro Leagues ballplayers — or rather the numbers that could be located — would now be given equal standing with previously official MLB stats. That means that if Negro Leagues Player X was seen to have had 200 at-bats in a season and hit .600, this counts as the new single-season record.

At first blush, this sounds like a good thing, like MLB is righting a wrong. We know that white people perpetuated something wicked against those Black athletes. Their segregation was entirely the fault of white Americans. And there were undeniably players in those Negro Leagues who should count as among the greatest ever to stand in a batter’s box or take to the mound. But many of them were not; that’s the simple truth.

And we don’t act in good faith by claiming otherwise in an effort to make others think favorably of us. Instead, we end up hurting those we wish to be seen as helping through such virtue signaling.

A Negro League star like Josh Gibson, in particular, or his legacy, anyway, is set up for ridicule now. Because of the ranking change, Gibson’s 800-something hits, which is all that MLB’s research can verify, now sits atop the leaderboard with the highest official career batting average in history, having supplanted Ty Cobb. He also has the highest single-season batting average, being credited — as a 33-year-old catcher, with all of that wear and tear — for hitting .466 in 157 at-bats in 1945. No one hits .466, except a kid in Little League. That’s not professional-level baseball player reality. Josh Gibson is being cartooned. And that’s wrong.

I love the Negro Leagues. I was reading about them when I was 6-years-old. I frequently write about them, give interviews about them and even featured Gibson himself in a short story. But this isn’t what Gibson or any of the Negro Leagues players deserve. Because now they’re being set up not to be taken seriously.

For whom is this being done? It’s so that MLB can set up a podium for itself, step atop it, and receive the laurels that come with righting a wrong.

But wrongs are not righted without good faith. Remember when your parents would have you apologize for something you shouldn’t have done? They knew when you didn’t mean it, and so it was back to your room that you went. That’s MLB in this matter.

Racist people have twisted brains, and they arm themselves with twisted logic. MLB is putting a player such as Josh Gibson in a position to be made light of and mocked by racists, because of this absurd premise.

Gibson died at the age of 35, from complications of a stroke; he had been earlier diagnosed with a brain tumor and reportedly struggled with alcohol. Babe Ruth was no fitness paragon, but Gibson was essentially killing himself by drinking — while putting up batting numbers Superman couldn’t touch. No one is going to buy that, and no one should.

This tragedy cannot be undone with numbers. Stats are silly compared to the injustice done to these men. They don’t need this cheap, grandstanding form of alms. They’re better than that.

Tell the story of these players. Talk about what was done to them. Speak of how numbers are not some end all, be all. That someone’s numbers are known and someone else’s numbers are not, requires exegesis, instead of a slapdash coat of paint to cover up a tragedy, which is how this feels.

I never had a hard time, as a boy or a man, understanding that Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Oscar Charleston were all-time greats. What I struggled with was the idea that they were denied a level playing field, or even a playing field at all.

If I had seen them atop leaderboards with numbers that didn’t make any sense, I would have been angry on their behalf. And if I hadn’t been thoughtful, I might have paid them less mind and not taken them as seriously. That’s how a tragedy gets compounded.

Act in better faith, MLB. You made this all about you back then, and you’re still doing a version of it now.

Colin Fleming (www.colinfleminglit.com) is the author of eight books. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone, among other publications.