We say we can’t really judge how good Josh Gibson or Cool Papa Bell were because we didn’t see them against major league competition, but we accept the accomplishments of white players. I find that double standard to be strange.”

To put it mildly. And of course we did see how the Negro Leaguers fared against MLers on many an occasion, and invariably they did quite well. Though in fairness, I don't think anyone's really downgrading the accomplishments of either of Gibson or Bell.

I think we all agree that the superstars of both leagues would have risen to the top in a hypothetical integrated league. But trying to imagine how that translates into any exact comparisons, or any exact numbers, is a fool's game, unless you introduce all sorts of "anecdotal" and "non-statistical" evidence, and make a whole lot of extrapolations that a statistician would probably reject as inconclusive. And no matter how many formulae you invent, I don't see any way out of this.

And, of course, you could use the same argument against Paige and Gibson, that since they didn't play against all the white superstars of the day, they were overrated too.

I don't think we want to go there either.

Would DiMaggio have hit in 56 straight games if there were an Andruw Jones equivalent in center field – how many balls would have been caught? - or if he had faced the equivalent of Bob Gibson in that stretch?

Then shouldn't we question Bob Gibson's 1968 performance because he didn't have to face Sadaharu Oh or Isao Harimoto?

Surprise, surprise. Taylor is black.

I think we all agree that the superstars of both leagues would have risen to the top in a hypothetical integrated league

I would hope so. The greatest fallacy that people indulge in, along these lines, is to multiply segregation by the timeline and insist that white stars from the past would be journeymen today, good white players marginal. (This is done much more sparingly with Negro League greats, it seems, possibly because it seems so reactionary to argue that Josh Gibson would be far inferior to Joe Mauer or something along those lines.) I gotta think that Honus Wagner and Pop Lloyd both hold their own against any of the great recent slugging shortstops. I also gotta think neither of them would hit .380 or win eight batting championships, but that's because nobody in a league as big and as good as those in 2008 does that kind of thing anymore.

Just looking at a few HoFers I pulled out of my ass whose playing time straddled integration; Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Bob Feller were pretty much as good post-Jackie as they had been pre-Jackie. And Stan did it in the much more readily-integrated NL.

Small sample, yes. But I think it does provide some evidence that superstars are superstars. I do think the next tier of players would see their overall numbers decline in an integrated league; but Williams, Musial, Gibson, Charleston, Ruth, Wagner -- as well as Mays, Bonds, Mantle -- they would always have been great.

I find it odd that Rogers Hornsby and Honus Wagner are considered among the greatest players of all time – we have no idea how they would have done in an integrated league.

You can say the same thing about night baseball, airline travel, Tommy John surgery, and lots of other things. The most important factor, however, is BLOGS.

The writer's argument isn't actually controversial, is it?

We say we can’t really judge how good Josh Gibson or Cool Papa Bell were because we didn’t see them against major league competition,

If this were truly the argument, than I think Taylor would be right. But the argument I've heard more often is that it's more difficult to judge Negro League players because of the lack of formalized statistics and schedules. It's a classic case of a writer presenting the weakest argument for the other side.

I think one could counter the stronger argument (stats) by saying that we had no problem evaluating ML players with unreliable stats (BA, RBI, Wins) for a long time, but this doesn't get around the inconsistencies in scheduling that existed in the Negro Leagues.

Though in fairness, I don't think anyone's really downgrading the accomplishments of either of Gibson or Bell.

It's been a while since I checked the HoM, but I thought they came to the conclusion that Bell was pretty overrated - although he was elected.

"Surprise, surprise. Taylor is black."


Well, in all fairness, I think he knew that.

The biggest problem I have with the Negro Leagues is the fact they were barely leagues at all. Read Neil Lanctot's "Negro League Baseball" -- it's the first book I've ever seen about the business of blackball. In terms of organization, they were roughly equivalent to minor league ball in the early 1900s, or maybe the Union Association.

There's no doubt that the big Negro stars would've been stars in the majors, but the idea that the Negro Leagues were equal, top to bottom, to MLB is nuts. Properly run, the Negro Leagues probably would've been somewhere around AAA quality, maybe a bit better. As they were, the Negro Leagues were decent AA-to-AAA leagues, nothing more. (And that's completely leaving aside the disgusting fact that the Negro Leagues had to exist in the first place, thanks to good ol' fashioned American racism.)

In terms of organization, they were roughly equivalent to minor league ball in the early 1900s, or maybe the Union Association.

the idea that the Negro Leagues were equal, top to bottom, to MLB is nuts.

The second idea here doesn't follow from the first. I read Lanctot's book too, which was incredible, but I don't see how the shifting ownerships and leagues led to any conclusions about the talent in the league. I think a comparison is much more apt to pre-NL/AL baseball then to AA. We may have a more difficult time evaluating 1880s baseball player than those after the turn of the century, but I don't think many people would suggest the latter was a far more talented form of baseball.

The writer's argument isn't actually controversial, is it?

There's one person in this thread who argues that Ruth's leagues wouldn't have been any tougher if they were integrated. I'll let you guess who would make such an absurd claim...

Properly run, the Negro Leagues probably would've been somewhere around AAA quality, maybe a bit better. As they were, the Negro Leagues were decent AA-to-AAA leagues, nothing more.

On average, maybe, but I don't think you can really make a good comparison between Negro-league ball and traditional minor leagues. Hypothetically, the difference between the best and worst players in AAA shouldn't be that great. If you have a guy who's really really good, he gets called up, and if you have a guy who's really really bad, he gets cut or sent down. In the Negro-leagues, The great players had nowhere to go, and the crappy players were needed to fill out the league, which probably made the great players look better than they were and the crappy players look worse than they were. Saying they were like AA or AAA is to say that the leagues were made up of not quite MLB-caliber players, which isn't really accurate.

Then shouldn't we question Bob Gibson's 1968 performance because he didn't have to face Sadaharu Oh or Isao Harimoto?

I guess I don't like the "call into question" language (though it's tough to get around it). The tone makes it sound like it's the players' fault, even though I'm sure that's not what you're getting at. Personally, I think it's a fool's errand to compare historical records for this reason, but that's not a reflection on the players who set those records. It's simply an acknowledgment that even though the mound is still 60'6", and the bases are 90 feet apart, so many things have changed (and PED's are certainly a part, but by know means the whole of this) that comparing Bonds to Ruth may be fun for a bar argument, but kind of ridiculous as a real exercise. Sure, it's not Ruth's fault that he didn't play against Negro-leaguers, but we can't ignore that fact. There are plenty of arguments and counter-arguments in this vein.

And, of course, you could use the same argument against Paige and Gibson, that since they didn't play against all the white superstars of the day, they were overrated too.

I don't think we want to go there either.

True, but the larger point is that all we really have to go on in our comparisons is the existence of two entirely separate leagues, with a small to moderate sampling of games where various players from each of them competed against one another across racial lines. And in those encounters, the black stars acquitted themselves very nicely.

Beyond that, we have little more to go on than various "translations" or "equivalencies" that don't prove a damn thing one way or the other. And that's the reason why some of us object to what we see as a double standard, even while we acknowledge that this double standard is losing its grip with each passing year.

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I think we all agree that the superstars of both leagues would have risen to the top in a hypothetical integrated league

I would hope so. The greatest fallacy that people indulge in, along these lines, is to multiply segregation by the timeline and insist that white stars from the past would be journeymen today, good white players marginal.

That's a very tricky and subjective case. I wrote what I did based on an assumption that great talent always finds a way to rise to the top, and that this holds for talent of any era---it's called the ability to adjust. Or you can just call it "baseball genius."

But I'm not sure how much that holds for journeymen players. I have no problem with the thought of Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams---in spite of the fact that their numbers were for the most part established in either formal or de facto Jim Crow conditions---being able to perform today at virtually the same level as they did in their primes. But I have a much tougher time seeing the marginal players from that bygone era being able to find a roster spot today amidst the huge influx of worldwide talent. And I don't see any particular contradiction in those two positions.

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There's no doubt that the big Negro stars would've been stars in the majors, but the idea that the Negro Leagues were equal, top to bottom, to MLB is nuts. Properly run, the Negro Leagues probably would've been somewhere around AAA quality, maybe a bit better. As they were, the Negro Leagues were decent AA-to-AAA leagues, nothing more. (And that's completely leaving aside the disgusting fact that the Negro Leagues had to exist in the first place, thanks to good ol' fashioned American racism.)

I don't see anyone really saying that on anything beyond the symbolic rhetorical ("The 'Second' Major League") level. I think what many of us are saying is that if the Majors had been integrated in Babe Ruth's time, the influx of black players would have crowded out the lower rungs of white players and raised the overall level of the game significantly. And some of us, looking at the wildly disproportionate percentage of blacks among the offensive leaderboards and MVP / ROY shares in the first decades of integration, might say that the degree of improvement would have been very significant.

But obviously, with one league drawing from a population base roughly nine times as big as the other league, even a disproportionate amount of talent in the league drawing from the smaller base wouldn't be enough to bring the entire league up to the level of the league drawing from the larger base. That's a whole different matter.

Surprise, surprise. Taylor is black.

Well, cool -- that means he can dance much better than almost everyone reading this.

What's your point?

"Just looking at a few HoFers I pulled out of my ass whose playing time straddled integration; Ted Williams, Stan Musial, and Bob Feller were pretty much as good post-Jackie as they had been pre-Jackie."

The AL didn't integrate very fast, remember. Also Feller didn't need to pitch against Doby, who was IIRC the only good black AL hitter during Feller's career.

The AL didn't integrate very fast, remember. Also Feller didn't need to pitch against Doby, who was IIRC the only good black AL hitter during Feller's career.

Yep. There were only a handful of black players in the AL until the mid-to-late '50s.

1947 wasn't any sort of sudden dramatic shift, of course. Not only was the rate of integration distinctly slower in the AL than the NL (causing the AL to significantly lag in proportion of players of color until the 1970s), even in the NL it was hardly overnight.

The AL didn't integrate very fast, remember. Also Feller didn't need to pitch against Doby, who was IIRC the only good black AL hitter during Feller's career.

Well, there was Minnie Minoso, but he would have been the only first rate black hitter who wasn't Feller's teammate.

1947 wasn't any sort of sudden dramatic shift, of course. Not only was the rate of integration distinctly slower in the AL than the NL (causing the AL to significantly lag in proportion of players of color until the 1970s), even in the NL it was hardly overnight.

And yet.... in the 21 years between 1954 and 1974

---only nine NL RBI leaders were white

---only eight NL BA leaders were white

---only five NL HR leaders were white

---only one NL leader in SA was white

And after Pee Wee Reese won the NL SB title in 1952, the next 41 winners were black, until Craig Biggio finally broke the streak in the 1994 strike year

All of which makes me extremely skeptical of any claim that (a) the NL wasn't a far superior league in that mid-50's through mid-70's period; or that (b)the Jim Crow Major Leagues weren't dramatically weakened by their white only status. Imagine removing that sort of top talent from either league today and think of what you'd be left with---and that's not even taking all the runners-up into consideration, a huge percentage of whom were black as well.

Surprise, surprise. Taylor is black.

Surprise, surprise... the guy *outing* black people is white.

One "problem" with the premise that Ruth et al would have performed worse in integrated leagues is that, for whatever reason, there really haven't been many good to great African-American pitchers. At least not since integration. That may be due to discrimination of course. But I am unconvinced that Ruth would have faced much more superior pitching than he did face.

To follow on #20, from 1954-1974 (sorry, might have missed some, not up on everybody's "race" ... like Sam Jones, good pitcher for a while):

only 1 NL ERA leader was African-American (Gibson)
only 3 NL wins leaders were African-American (Newcombe, Gibson, Jenkins)
only 2 NL strikeouts leaders (Gibson, Jenkins)

Things haven't changed much since either. I think only 2 more African-American NL leaders in ERA since (Richard & Gooden).

I have no interest in speculating why African-American hitters (and base-stealers) were and continue to be much more dominant than African-American pitchers -- though yes I think "positional discrimination" has played a role -- but I don't see any good reason to think it would have been much different had baseball been integrated in Ruth's day. Of course a lack of dominance by African-American pitchers isn't to deny that there'd have been a somewhat higher level of pitching overall. But I think the numbers of the great pitchers of the pre-integration era might have been changed a lot more than the numbers of the great hitters.

(Note you get into even more historical gymnastics if we raise the question of earlier/heavier integration of Latin players and, as almost pointed out, Asian players.)

I think something Taylor is complaining about is how popular histories of the game have tended to minimalize the Negro Leagues. Rankings of top 100 players throw in a few Negro Leaguers because, well, they have to, but Oscar Charleston, who a lot of people at the time, black and white, thought was the best baseball player they'd ever seen, gets ranked sometimes out of the top 20.

I think he's wrong that Wagner, Hornsby and Cobb were somehow overrated. These guys were seminal players in the history of their leagues, and were brilliant no matter what environment they played in. But he's certainly right that Negro Leaguers don't get enough credit. It's a difficult exercise with conjecture substituting for statistics but it's obvious some Negro Leaguers were among the very best to ever play.

I think something Taylor is complaining about is how popular histories of the game have tended to minimalize the Negro Leagues. Rankings of top 100 players throw in a few Negro Leaguers because, well, they have to, but Oscar Charleston, who a lot of people at the time, black and white, thought was the best baseball player they'd ever seen, gets ranked sometimes out of the top 20.

Perfect example of this:

When The Sporting News All-Century Team came out and ranked Oscar Charleston 67th on its list of the 20th Century's top 100 players, Thomas Boswell blasted them for it. Not for ranking him so low, but for ranking him so high!

And how did Boz put it?

"WHO IS OSCAR CHARLESTON?"

That team, BTW, had all of four Negro Leaguers on it. Four out of one hundred. Early Wynn made it.

you can find lots of fault with TSN's list though; some of it worse than the snubbing of Oscar. Mathewson 7th overall, above Wagner? C'mon, he might be about the 7th best PITCHER! Shows a real obvious lack of understanding of plyaing conditions. But at least they had 2 NgLgers (Gibson & Paige) in the top 20; if anything, Satchel's rank might be too high.

And yet.... in the 21 years between 1954 and 1974, etc.
Interesting point about how blacks dominated the league but a couple of counter-points:
1. Almost all of that talent was in the NL, so if there had been a more normal spread across both leagues, some of those counts would fall
2. There was a burst of phenomonal black players born in the 30s, probably unlike any other such time period: Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Banks (in his prime), Clemente -- all extraordinary players and all in the NL.


And after Pee Wee Reese won the NL SB title in 1952, the next 41 winners were black, until Craig Biggio finally broke the streak in the 1994 strike year
I never knew this. Wills, Brock and Raines won a bunch of those of course; the Pirates had some all-legs, no talent guys who probably bagged a couple of titles in the late 70s.

Look up "unconscious" in the dictionary, and you'll see Phil Taylor.

Actually looking at BRef and stolen bases, some tidbits:
I forgot Vince Coleman, d'oh.
Didn't know that Mays bagged 4 titles in a row and Billy Bruton had 3.
I was right about the late 70s Pirates, Frank Taveras in '77 followed by a double shot of Omar Moreno.
Only Freddie Patek's 53 steals in '77 interrupted what would have been a 36 year run by black players in the AL from '65 - '00. And Latin Luis Aparico, who I think is considered Caucasian, won the previous 9.

And after Pee Wee Reese won the NL SB title in 1952, the next 41 winners were black, until Craig Biggio finally broke the streak in the 1994 strike year

That's pretty weak. The AL SBs were every bit as dominated. From 1951 to 1999, only twice was the black/Latino domination in the AL broken. That's certainly not evidence of the NL being better.

assumption that great talent always finds a way to rise to the top, and that this holds for talent of any era---it's called the ability to adjust. Or you can just call it "baseball genius."

But I'm not sure how much that holds for journeymen players

Indeed. If we take Bill James's long-ago observation that major-league talent is the very far right end of a bell curve, then the top players of any ethnicity are outliers anyway. Adding another couple or three to a league just gives you another couple or three superstars.

But each slice you add going leftward along the curve from there adds more and more players. Earl Averill is still a good player, and Joe Kuhel will still have a job, but Ski Melillo will be a bench player, and the majority of the roster-filler guys from the white 1930s would really struggle to get out of AAA nowadays.

Luis Aparicio isn't black.

edit: I could have sworn you didn't have the "/latino" qualifier in your post when I replied. Did you edit? if not, nevermind.

2. There was a burst of phenomonal black players born in the 30s, probably unlike any other such time period: Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Banks (in his prime), Clemente -- all extraordinary players and all in the NL

And yet, in 1957 in a league with all of those players, all in their 20's, a 36 year old Stan Musial led the league in OPS, which is what #6 was talking about.

And yet.... in the 21 years between 1954 and 1974, etc.

Interesting point about how blacks dominated the league but a couple of counter-points:
1. Almost all of that talent was in the NL, so if there had been a more normal spread across both leagues, some of those counts would fall

Possibly so, but the fact of the overall disproportion would certainly remain.

2. There was a burst of phenomonal black players born in the 30s, probably unlike any other such time period: Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Banks (in his prime), Clemente -- all extraordinary players and all in the NL.

No question about that, but I'm not sure how it counters what I was saying. I've always maintained that the fact that most of this black talent was in the NL was what made the NL so superior for that time frame. If you'd taken that talent and given half of it to the AL, that would have made the two leagues more equal, but it still would have left those leaderboards with a wildly disproportionate number of black players.

And after Pee Wee Reese won the NL SB title in 1952, the next 41 winners were black, until Craig Biggio finally broke the streak in the 1994 strike year

That's pretty weak. The AL SBs were every bit as dominated. From 1951 to 1999, only twice was the black/Latino domination in the AL broken. That's certainly not evidence of the NL being better.

OK, Chris, now that you've addressed the least important of the five categories I mentioned, you can apply that same comparison to the leaders in BA, HR, RBI and SA, and tell us how "that's certainly not evidence of the NL being better," either. Here are those breakdowns again, just to spare you the effort of scrolling up the page:


in the 21 years between 1954 and 1974

---only nine NL RBI leaders were white

---only eight NL BA leaders were white

---only five NL HR leaders were white

---only one NL leader in SA was white

And for the AL in that same time frame:

---17 of the 21 AL RBI leaders were white

---12 of the 21 (and 12 of the first 15) AL BA leaders were black

---16 of the 21 (and 16 of the first 18) AL HR leaders were white

---15 of the 21 (and 15 of the first 17) AL SA leaders were white

Which shows that by the early 70's the AL was starting to catch up. But that makes the prior gap stand out even more.

2. There was a burst of phenomonal black players born in the 30s, probably unlike any other such time period: Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Banks (in his prime), Clemente -- all extraordinary players and all in the NL

And yet, in 1957 in a league with all of those players, all in their 20's, a 36 year old Stan Musial led the league in OPS, which is what #6 was talking about.

I don't think that anyone here is trying to downgrade the accomplishments of any of the true superstars of any race or either league. These "baseball geniuses" could have adapted to any era and any playing conditions---although I do admit it would have been fun to see how Ty Cobb would have adjusted to being conked by Bob Gibson....

Just a random point on this issue. Up until 1964, the AL Pennant was won virtually every year by the Yankees, who were less than ideally integrated, to put it delicately. Starting in 1965, virtually every AL pennant winner had minorities among their best players, including the 1965 Twins, the 1966/1969/1970/1971 Orioles, the 1967 Red Sox, the 1968 Tigers, and the 1972-1974 A's. A lot of these guys ended up falling short of the Hall of Fame, but the best teams in the American League were relatively integrated starting in the mid 1960's.

although I do admit it would have been fun to see how Ty Cobb would have adjusted to being conked by Bob Gibson....

He would have done exactly what he used to do when a white pitcher conked him. The next time up, he would have bunted to the first baseman, then spike the pitcher covering the bag as he ran by. The only difference is he have called him a ####### ###### as he ran by.

And how did Boz put it?

"WHO IS OSCAR CHARLESTON?"

Boswell also once said that perhaps the Yomiuri Giants should move to Washington because Yomiuri had to have a smaller population than Washington did.

For about a 20-year period, Boswell could only see things in the context of how they aided the conspiracy to keep baseball from returning to D.C. He probably thinks Iran-Contra was Bob Short's estate secretly funneling cash to Bud Selig.

Andy, I was responding to this:
All of which makes me extremely skeptical of any claim that
(b)the Jim Crow Major Leagues weren't dramatically weakened by their white only status.

Would the Negro League stars of the 20s and 30s let's say, have had the same impact as the young super-talents that came along in the 50s? Surely Gibson, Paige, et al would have had a big impact but not as much as that particular point in time.

I agree that the willingness to integrate faster was the driving force behind the NL superiority during the late 50s through the 60s. I wonder if the dominance of the Yankees forced NL teams to think "outside the box", if you will. Or maybe with the success of the Dodgers, the NL teams had to change faster to keep up.

The only difference is he have called him a ####### ###### as he ran by.
And probably be the recipient of a major league haymaker. It would have been one horrible fight.

Seeing Gibson pitch to Cobb would be a matchup worthy of heaven. Though it may be more likely to be found in hell.

reminds me of the classic joke about baseball in the afterlife...

http://jokes4all.net/jokes/umpires/jokes.html

I agree that the willingness to integrate faster was the driving force behind the NL superiority during the late 50s through the 60s. I wonder if the dominance of the Yankees forced NL teams to think "outside the box", if you will. Or maybe with the success of the Dodgers, the NL teams had to change faster to keep up.

This is how I see the racial dynamics of the two leagues, both of which were influenced by enlightenment (or a lack of it), economics, aversion to risk, or a combination of the three.

The NL: The Dodgers integrated and immediately won the pennant, and let it be known that they intended to keep looking for the best black players. Meanwhile their old rivals, the Cardinals, remained all white and after 1949 descended into mediocrity, while the other teams that were the quickest to pick up on acquiring black players (the Giants and the Braves) became the Dodgers' chief rivals throughout the rest of the decade, both before and after the move to the West Coast. The last holdout team (the Phillies), once its influx of late 1940's white stars had run its course, quickly dropped into the cellar for five straight years. None of this was exactly any coincidence.

The AL: The Indians integrated, were World's Champs within a year with Doby and Paige playing key roles, and became perennial contenders for the ensuing decade, aided by the likes of Doby, Luke Easter and Al Smith. The Yankees resisted, but since they had the overwhelming advantages of money and the best existing farm system that enabled them to stockpile the cream of the white talent, they still wound up dominating the league. And as a result, they (meaning George Weiss in particular) thought they could get away with remaining a virtually all-white team forever.

Meanwhile, in the AL you also had outright racist owners (or owners with a financial stake in the Negro Leagues) like Yawkey, Briggs, Mack and Griffith, who were just---comfortable with being the only game in town, and saw no reason not to keep things exactly the way that they'd always been. Much better to keep your small profits and indulge your small minded prejudices than to try to challenge the Yankees by going after the black talent that the Yankees didn't seem to want. That would have involved both risk and comments from your fellow huntsmen back down in South Carolina, or your country club compatriots in Grosse Pointe. Who needed that?

And the result was what anyone who isn't blind can plainly see: By the last half of the 1950's, the National League was well on its way to dominance, and it had gotten such a big jump that the AL wouldn't begin to catch up until the 1970's. The fact that the Yankees were able to remain on top for as long as they did had much more to do with their prior unique organizational strengths than anything else, but in the end their racism finally caught up to them, until the 1970's when they finally began to see the light.

although I do admit it would have been fun to see how Ty Cobb would have adjusted to being conked by Bob Gibson....

He would have done exactly what he used to do when a white pitcher conked him. The next time up, he would have bunted to the first baseman, then spike the pitcher covering the bag as he ran by. The only difference is he have called him a ####### ###### as he ran by.

In 1947 Cobb would have been able to survive such an encounter, since the majority of the players would have sympathized with him. But by 1968, if he'd tried any of those racist comments he would have not only been beaten into a bloody pulp by Gibson, but many of his own teammates would have been cheering Gibson on. Times change, and so do baseball's unwritten rules.

Now if Cobb had tried the bunt 'n' brawl move without the racial comments, then that would have been another story. That might have been fun to watch.

I think that's pretty much what happened, Andy. The other team to capitalize on the collapse of the color line was the White Sox – not in signing African-American players but by signing Latin players who would have been subject to discrimination before 1947 (some might have passed the line, others certainly would not have, on the basis of skin color). By the mid-1950s the Sox were the third-best team in the league after NY and Cleveland, with Minnie Minoso (who had come up to the majors initially with the Indians), Sandy Consuegra, Mike Fornieles, Jim Rivera, and Chico Carrasquel. By 1959 that wave of Latin players had actually pretty much passed on by; Aparicio was their only Latin star, though they had some African-American players by that point, notably Earl Battey (both Larry Doby and Suitcase Simpson played briefly for the '59 Sox as well).

You're right, Bob, and I should have mentioned the White Sox, especially since Minoso was the AL's premier black star of the 1950's. Once you take the Yankees out of the equation, there was an almost perfect correlation within each league between a team's willingness to integrate and its overall success---and this correlation applied to leagues as well as teams.

Of course many of these laggard teams subsequently saw the light (the Twins are one good example), but that doesn't negate the point.

I agree that the willingness to integrate faster was the driving force behind the NL superiority during the late 50s through the 60s. I wonder if the dominance of the Yankees forced NL teams to think "outside the box", if you will. Or maybe with the success of the Dodgers, the NL teams had to change faster to keep up.

Larry Doby, in an interview, made your point about NL teams feeling a stronger urge to get an edge on the AL in general (and presumably the Yankees specifically). The NL was considered an inferior league at the time, in part because of the Yankees' dominance, in part because to that point the AL had dominated the All-Star Game.

Doby also pointed out that the AL was a power league while the NL was a speed league, and black players were more generally identified as speed-oriented. That was his explanation for why Jackie went to the AL and he, Doby, went to the AL.

Veeck had been offered a package of both Doby and Monte Irvin together, and probably should have taken it. I don't know myself why he didn't -- maybe he thought it was too big a spoonful of integration for the team and fans to take, or maybe logistically he just thought it was too many infielders to take -- Irvin and Doby were middle infielders for the Newark Eagles -- when he already had Boudreau and Joe Gordon.

One thing that seems to get dropped from discussions of the theoretical integration of the major leagues in the first half of the century is whether and for how long the league would have remained at 16 teams with that increased pool of talent. There were certainly other factors that led to the timing of western expansion, but might other cities east of the Mississippi have been granted teams much earlier if there had been so many players available? Baseball seems historically to have grown more or less even with the talent pool (even if that wasn't the obvious rationale for any given expansion).

Yes! Maybe if we had gone to 20 teams earlier (say 1953), MLB could have added LA and SF without taking the 3rd team out of the NY area. There's no good reason why today NY/northern NJ/SW Connecticut cannot support 3 teams. Or 4. Why we keep thinking about moving teams to Portland or Vegas or Nashville or Charlotte (or DC) instead of some place where they would draw well AND have a good cable contract is beyond me.