MLB Just REWROTE History, Is It The Right Move?

Your entire life has been a lie. The best career batting average in baseball history doesn't belong to Ty Cobb. Babe Ruth doesn't have the highest career slugging percentage or OPS of all time. Barry Bonds no longer has the single best season OPS of all time from his 2004 season. No, no, no. None of that is true. As one man, one man many of you have never heard of, Josh Gibson, a man who never played in Major League Baseball, leads Major League Baseball history in all those feats. At least according to MLB's new official records. So if you're part of the 70% of viewers not subscribed yet, come aboard and join the wonderful subscribers of the channel, as a pretty significant change was just made to the MLB record books. A change in decision that I wouldn't even say is controversial. I know many people may use that term to explain this conversation, but I don't really see it as that. I more so see it as an interesting one. Nobody, especially today, disagrees or disregards the talent that the Negro Leagues had. The league that began in 1920 due to Major League Baseball having a color barrier, meaning only white dudes like me can play. Which is why I don't care as much about what happened in baseball prior to the color barrier being broken. I think the history is cool, but it's not as legit, of course, considering there was so much talent left out of the big leagues, talent that had to settle playing in the Negro Leagues. So the talent level in Major League Baseball when it was whites only was obviously not nearly as high compared to post-color barrier. Pretty obvious stuff, especially when you consider some of the game's greatest players ever, were either black or from another country. The top two home run leaders in baseball history are black. Bob Gibson pitched so well in 1968, putting up a 1.12 ERA in over 300 innings, yes you heard that right, playing a big part in why MLB felt the need to lower the mound by 5 inches while also shrinking the strike zone to make things more fair. Bro pitched too good the league had to change its rules. So this is the kind of stuff MLB didn't have prior to 1947. And because of this, because of the clear amazing players the Negro Leagues had, it's fair to credit a lot of those stats alongside those of Major League ones, something MLB just did but took it a step even further. A pretty big decision was made by the league, one that became official recently, now deeming 7 different Negro Leagues from 1920-1948 as part of the Major Leagues. The announcement that this would happen came a few years ago, but a lot of research and work to find these stats and accurate historic details had to be done, as researchers estimate that the 1920-1948 Negro Leagues records are only about 75% complete. So there's still a good chunk of things to be worked on, I've found. Just like you should be getting these… MOVA Globes. You've probably seen some in some latest videos, right back there, as I just took it from. And if you haven't, that's great, either way, this thing's pretty damn cool. MOVA Globes are innovative, self-spinning globes that rotate completely on their own, no batteries, no cords, just powered by light and magnetism. It's like having a little piece of magic right on your desk. MOVA Globes offers a wide variety of globes, including world maps, planets, and more. You can discover the world in motion with their stunning collections. And guess what? MOVA Globes has teamed up with Major League Baseball to create globes resembling baseballs with your favorite team's logo, as you saw with mine. Check out this Red Sox globe I'm holding, you can see it rotates smoothly even in my hand. It's a fantastic way to show off your team spirit and add a bit of flair to your space. 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The official start to the Negro Leagues, at least the start legit to count as real stats, is 1920, because the attempts to develop the Negro Leagues prior to that year ended up unsuccessful and didn't have a set league structure, and by 1948, that's when it's deemed the appropriate end point, since that was the last year MLB was really segregated, so after that, the talent the Negro Leagues had started to diminish, and that's when Major League Baseball fully started to become what it is today. So more than 2300 Negro League players have been added to MLB's stats, and I mentioned it at the very top of this video, but to go more in depth at the pretty significant changes made to the leaderboards in MLB history, for some context, there's not much Negro League representation at the top of counting stats, meaning simple stats that you count up, like home runs, RBIs, pitching wins, etc. And the reason for this is because the Negro Leagues only had about 60-80 games played per year. Why? Well, as you can imagine, segregation of course didn't make things easy to have a business like this, just flow peacefully. It wasn't as professionally run like MLB, so not nearly as many games were able to be played per season. With these players, other stats, like batting average on base percentage, slugging percentage, ERA, etc. are featured at the top a lot. I feel like the highest single season batting average in history isn't a very well-known thing, and there's a reason for that. Ever heard of Hugh Duffy? The legend himself? He was the man, back in 1894, exactly. Well, in 1894, he hit 440, which was the best until now, as Josh Gibson, who hit 466 in 1943, is number 1, followed by another Negro League player at number 2 with Charlie Smith, so Duffy gets bumped down to number 3. Gibson and Smith both joined the top 5 and highest single season on base percentage, with a 609 on base still at number 1 by far, which just forever will be ridiculous. It will never make sense how good Barry Bonds was. Bonds' single season slugging percentage in 2001 gets beat out now though, with 4 Negro League seasons, 2 being by Gibson, having higher slugging percentages than Bonds' 863 one in 2001, and Gibson also now technically has the greatest single season of all time, with 2 seasons that featured a higher OPS than Bonds had in 2004. For the pitching, Tim Keefe is still on top for single season ERA, nobody is beating him, he's still the best in that regard. His 1880 season will forever be special. Shoutout to all the Keefe supporters, we're eating good right now. Satchel Page's 1.01 ERA in 1944 with the Kansas City Monarchs is now 3rd though, on the all time list for ERA in a season, and as for career numbers, Josh Gibson continues to make himself known and heard, and technically you can make the argument that he is the best player of all time, we'll get to that in a second. Gibson now has the highest career batting average at 372, beating out Ty Cobb's 367 career batting average, with 4 other Negro League guys joining the top 10. And um, there's been leaked footage of Ty Cobb's reaction to this news. You should be ashamed. Ted Williams and Babe Ruth still own the 1 and 2 spot with career on base percentage, with Gibson at 3rd, and then this is where you could genuinely, at least just by these numbers, claim Josh Gibson as the greatest hitter ever, as he not only has the best batting average ever, but also a better slugging percentage than Babe Ruth, so number one, while also having the best OPS in baseball history at 1.177, which is also ahead of Babe who's been dropped to number 2 all time. The best ERA of all time doesn't change much. Dave Brown, a lefty who 711 innings from 1920-1925 is now 8th all time. Ed Walsh is still at the top. Addie Ross, Mordecai Brown, John Ward, who was a two-way player, is 4th all time in ERA. Think about that. Babe Ruth? Shohei Otani? John Ward was carving up hitters in the late 1870s and early 1880s before it was cool. The true GOAT. So this now begs the question, is this the right move by MLB? Is this what they should have done? Does it make sense? And honestly, the conclusion I've come up with this is, I don't have a concrete one. I can understand any of the opinions and takes on this decision. Obviously, Negro League players were just as good if not better than MLB players back in that time period. It was very equal in that sense, even though they were segregated. But do we need to pretend the Negro Leagues was a part of MLB? I think either way, it's just important to understand the historical context and how the history of baseball very much mirrors the history of America in general. It was segregated, and eventually not, and now the demographics of the game mirror America in a lot of ways, especially with the continuous growth of the Latin players. Is it right to suddenly remove Ty Cobb from being the best batting average hitter by someone who didn't play nearly as many professional games and someone who didn't even play in MLB at all, even though MLB was a lot different then? I'm not sure, honestly. It's right to acknowledge Gibson and how good he and a lot of his fellow Negro League players were when they weren't allowed to play in the majors, but it's also important to acknowledge who was good in MLB at the time, again, even though it was a very different league and less talented. Which, I think all of this is happening, and even though the records are changed now, I think it's pretty obvious to look at the context of said records and realize there's more to it, that the leagues were separate, Gibson actually never played big league baseball, didn't play as many professional games, and you can still deem Cobb as the best if you want, because he still technically is. It's also important to understand that the Negro Leagues and Major Leagues were separate and segregated as it's, of course, part of the history of the game, and of America, and part of the path that brought us to the changes we're at today. You can't change that. It's important to know that there was a Negro Leagues and a Major Leagues and they were completely separate. But one thing sticks out to me either way. Something I mentioned at the top, which is the fact that I just simply don't view pre-non-segregated baseball as legit as post-segregated. It's almost like it was a different game during that time. It was a completely different time, completely different era, for so many different reasons. Again, this is all just an interesting conversation to me. Nobody disagrees the Negro Leagues were good, but should they be officially deemed MLB stats? I don't know. It's interesting to talk about. But whether the Negro Leagues are counted as Major League stats or not, which they are now, one thing remains the same, which is that baseball as we know it truly started after everyone was allowed into the big leagues. Let me know what you think, thank you for watching, and I'll see you soon.