Gary Ashwill has posted a nice little essay regarding the mission of today’s Negro League researcher. Here’s a small excerpt:
“This pretty much presents, in a nutshell, the conventional wisdom that all our research is dedicated to overthrowing—the notion that the Negro Leagues exist in some hazy netherworld of unverifiable myth, tall tales, gut feelings, subjective judgments. There [...]
Entries from February 2009
February 22, 2009
The Research Manifesto
February 22, 2009
What Did Greenlee Field Look Like?
Does anybody know what Greenlee Field looked like?
I’ve been trying to figure that out for awhile now.
Greenlee Field was the ballpark financed by Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee. It was used by both the Craws and Homestead Grays for many home games during the mid-1930s, but there are very few photographs of the venue in [...]
February 19, 2009
Bushwicks Bottle Barrage
In the comments section of a previous post, the issue of officiating in games where Negro League teams were pitted against semi-pros arose. I mentioned coming across a number of stories about Rube Foster threatening to pull his team off the field because of what he believed was biased umpiring. Here’s a clip from the New York Times, 1940, [...]
February 18, 2009
Oh, no: More Stats!
Digging a little bit deeper into the strength of the semi-pro numbers: One reader wanted to know if there was any correlation between the quality of the Negro League team and their particular success against the semi-pro teams. In other words, did a great team such as the Homestead Grays fare better than, say, a [...]
February 18, 2009
The Greatest Semi-Pros of All-Time?
There’s been a ton of interest in this archaeological dig, so I figured I’d stick with it. I’m talking about the baseball talent pyramid pre-1947, and how the Negro League players and teams stacked up against white Major League and minor league teams, as well as the semi-pros. Simply posting the charts has inspired some great [...]
February 17, 2009
The Semis: Part 3
Okay, one last dose of data for the day. How did the black minor league teams fare against different levels of competition? What? There were black minor league teams? Yeah, of course! There was no real affiliation with the black major league teams, but some had developmental relationships. Players like Willard Brown and Buck O’Neil [...]
February 17, 2009
The Semis, Part Two
**UPDATE (2-18-09) 9:55AM: I’ve added 145 important semi-pro games into the mix. I had a dusty old file of New York Metropolitan Association games (think Brooklyn Bushwicks), from 1938-46 which had not been dumped into the data base. These were EXTREMELY talented teams and these games have a slight impact on the semi-pro column for [...]
February 17, 2009
Josh Gibson, Shoeless Joe and the Semi-Pros
Quick quiz for the baseball history buffs out there. Did you ever wonder how well the Negro League teams did against semi-pro teams? If the answer is “yes” then we have good news and bad news. First, the bad news: You’re a dork. Okay, that’s fine. So, what’s the good news, you ask? You’re amongst [...]
