The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues

January 1, 2020
How good were the Negro Leagues? Conventional thinking has dictated that, while stars from the Negro Leagues (Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and many others) were every bit the equal of, if not superior to, Major League standouts, the overall quality of Negro Leagues play was inferior to that of the majors. This collection of essays by baseball historians, many affiliated with the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), tells a different story. Statistics are sketchy from the Negro Leagues, but the authors have assembled all the available data and reassessed it in a wealth of revealing ways, including a comparison of all games played between 1920 and 1948 between Negro League teams and major leaguers (either all-star or individual teams). The results? Negro League teams won 235 times against 193 losses. Editor Todd Peterson dives much deeper into the stats in his contribution, "The Case for the Negro Leagues," which analyzes available pitching and hitting records to show that in every area the Negro Leagues either outperform or are equal to Major League numbers. Although necessarily dry reading, this volume makes an important contribution to baseball history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)