Negro Leagues vs. Major Leagues

[Paul Wendt]

Here is the game log of all of the games that I have in my records. I put this together 3 years ago by compiling a list of all of the games in John Holway's book. I found a few games that he doesn't have from searching on ProQuest and added them as well. I used the results provided in John Sickels book for the Bob Feller games rather than Holway's game logs. There were discrepancies between the two and I found that Sickels had it right when I looked them up on ProQuest.

Thanks.
Am I right that the earliest games listed are two in 1902, next being 1906?

[Bench 5]

There is a game in 1905 as well. I will uplaod the file and sort by date in a separate email. I will try to do it either tonight or tomorrow.

I have the month and day for some of the games but the format was not converting to text in a fixed field format.

I also had many of the Smokey Joe Williams games in a sheet which I will post too.

[RapDixon]

I’ve been searching for this statistic for over 11 years. On 2/2/06, Bench5, a SABR member from Chicago (whom I’d love meet and/or at least identify) posted a spectacular post in a website called Baseball Fever about games between so-called Major League teams and so called Negro League teams. Most of the games were contained in John Holway’s great volume – flaws and all – The Encyclopedia of Negro League Baseball. In addition, Bench5 added several more games that he found on ProQuest and elsewhere. His bottom-line indicated the Negro League teams won at a .545 rate.

However, he did not stop there. If he did he would be no different than John Holway, Scott Simkus, Todd Peterson, William McNeil (for California Winter League games), and Ken Burns all of whom have compiled such sets with the Negro League team winning at a .526 (Simkus) to .707 (Burns) rate.

Becnh5 treated the Negro League side as a control group and distilled the MLB side into three categories, teams with between zero and three actual Major League players, with between 4-6 Major League players, and, finally, teams with 7 to 8 Major League position players plus a pitcher. It was no surprise when he found the Negro League teams did much better against the teams with fewer Major League players. The group that got my attention was his finding that in 142 games where a NeL team was pitted against a team with a Major League pitcher and no more than one non- Major League player it turned out that the Negro League won ONLY .451 of the time.

In my mind this was spectacular analysis and, for years, I have searched for Bench5 to congratulate him. I’d still like to do so but I know longer need to for my ulterior motive. I wanted him to look at his distillation and treat the Negro League teams in a similar fashion as he did the Major League teams. Today I went to the penultimate post in the Baseball Fever thread and found something Bench5 posted on 2/9/09 which was information on now 270 games between so called and so called with information on number of Major League players per team, name of Negro League team, and more.

I limited my view to 1920-1946 (Negro League Era during the Segregated Period of MLB) looked at only those games where the Major League team included a Major League pitcher and no more than one non- Major League position player. This was the set that held the NeL teams to a .451 winning percentage in Bench5’s original analysis. Common sense informed me that if I could do the same for the Negro League teams (i.e. look only at the most intact teams) the winning percentage would rise. The only question was how far.

Not having lineup information I simply included in my final search only those teams that were league teams. In other words, I eliminated teams like the Los Angeles White Sox (a California Winter League team), the Paige All Stars (a non-league team) and any team not in the NNLs, ECL, ANL, NSL, and NAL.

After so doing I was left with 76 games (of 270 total). Here is the dramatic results:

Major League teams (with an MLB pitcher and at least 7 MLB position players) won 37 games
Negro League teams (from any of the six recognized Negro Leagues) won 37 games
There were two ties.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Bump for our recent discussion about the NeL's.

[scottmitchell74]

I think like a lot of things right now, people will harbor a certain stance that will seem to them to be utterly self-evident and the most obvious thing in the world, and someone else will say, "no it's not" and that's that. If I say "the Earth is a sphere" and someone says "no it's not." What then?

I think we are at such an impasse on this subject.

[Honus Wagner Rules]

I think like a lot of things right now, people will harbor a certain stance that will seem to them to be utterly self-evident and the most obvious thing in the world, and someone else will say, "no it's not" and that's that. If I say "the Earth is a sphere" and someone says "no it's not." What then?

I think we are at such an impasse on this subject.

Well, technically the Earth is an oblong spheroid

But seriously the LQ of the NeL's vs MLB isn't as straightforward as the "Earth is a sphere". It's far more complex and nuanced than that. The Negro Leaguers playing again major leaguers in actual games should be a better more accurate barometer of the relative LQ's between the two than personal opinions of even astute baseball men. Opinions can often be wrong or not at least not accurate because everyone has bias in their thinking and observations. As I said in the other thread IMO data is more important than opinions. In a similar example we know that the MLB is stronger than the NPB because the have faced each other in actual games since the mid 1960's and the MLB teams have won the vast majority of the games (MLB won 48 games, NPB won 20 games). In the 1970's the NBA and ABA squared off in a series of exhibition games and the results were much closer (ABA was 79 games, NBA won 76 games).

[scottmitchell74]

Well, technically the Earth is an oblong spheroid

But seriously. The LQ of the NeL's vs MLB isn't as straightforward as the "Earth is a sphere".

I KNEW that was coming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not it's not!

[Bamay22]

Bump for our recent discussion about the NeL's.

Oh god here we go again lol.

[Bamay22]

Well, technically the Earth is an oblong spheroid

But seriously the LQ of the NeL's vs MLB isn't as straightforward as the "Earth is a sphere". It's far more complex and nuanced than that. The Negro Leaguers playing again major leaguers in actual games should be a better more accurate barometer of the relative LQ's between the two than personal opinions of even astute baseball men. Opinions can often be wrong or not at least not accurate because everyone has bias in their thinking and observations. As I said in the other thread IMO data is more important than opinions. In a similar example we know that the MLB is stronger than the NPB because the have faced each other in actual games since the mid 1960's and the MLB teams have won the vast majority of the games (MLB won 48 games, NPB won 20 games). In the 1970's the NBA and ABA squared off in a series of exhibition games and the results were much closer (ABA was 79 games, NBA won 76 games).

Are there box scores of any barnstorming games back from 80-100 or so years ago?

[Honus Wagner Rules]

Are there box scores of any barnstorming games back from 80-100 or so years ago?

Check out the previous pages of this thread. There are several newspaper accounts of games with boxscores. Really cool stuff.

[Bamay22]

Check out the previous pages of this thread. There are several newspaper accounts of games. Really cool stuff.

Thanks again Hans.