The Real Value of the Negro Leagues Can’t Be Captured in Statistics
The players found a way to navigate the injustice of segregation, turning it into a means of self-empowerment.
In my major-league career, I hit 59 home runs. You can look it up; it’s right there in the record books. Baseball statistics offer a comforting solidity. They are concrete, tangible, and unchanging.
Only the truth is, numbers drip with bias, like anything else. In baseball, many of them depend on the whims of an official scoring system. In August 1998, I hit a ball down the third-base line that ricocheted off the wall into foul territory. Dante Bichette, playing left field for the Colorado Rockies, overran and missed the ball as I circled the bases for an inside-the-park home run.
