HOF Report: Negro League Statistics to Be Published

For years, we’ve been told that Josh Gibson was the Babe Ruth of the Negro Leagues.

We’ve been informed that adjectives such as "Ruthian" might have shifted to “Gibsonian” had the color lines been broken just a bit earlier in history—and those that espoused such theories were likely right. But for years, there was no tangible way to argue such things.

Until now.

The Baseball Hall of Fame, in conjunction with the miracle that is BaseballReference.com, will publish all currently held statistics from the Negro Leagues (a project which is still on-going), according to a report from the Hall’s website:

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There have been a number of books capturing oral histories, biographies written about players, and team histories, but few mediums tackle the statistical challenge of compiling data from the Negro Leagues," said [hall board member] Larry Lester. "The Negro Leagues Researchers/Authors Group was tasked with this challenge in 2001, and a decade later we present...a sampling of our findings. More data will be released, once a complete audit has been done, that will demonstrate the talent of men who played before Jackie Robinson entered the Major Leagues.

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Needless to say, this is a project that has been long overdue—one that is welcomed with open arms in the baseball community.

The intriguing part?

Gibson (who was inducted into the Hall posthumously in 1972), is listed as having just 107 home runs over 16 seasons and 1987 plate appearances for the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords—a far cry from Ruth's famed total of 714.

Yet matching up the totals side by side is a bit unfair considering Gibson never topped 190 at-bats in a season, and when we take note of the fact that he hit one out of the yard just about every 17 at-bats, it is clear where the catcher gained his notoriety.

In 2006, Baseball Prospectus published their landmark book Baseball Between the Numbers, a tome which attempted to bridge the historical gap between eras, comparing Barry Bonds' and Ruth's statistics through a series of adjustments (park effects, number of players in the league, the influence of improved training, the breaking of the color lines, etc.) in order to determine who was the greatest player in the history of the sport.

Hopefully, with the release of these findings, perhaps we now have the basis to make similar arguments about the men who never got the chance to don a major league uniform.