RIP, Lee Elder.
Posted on 11/29/2021 10:53:49 AM PST by nickcarraway
I didn’t know Lee Elder was black. I knew he was a golfer and a gentleman.
RIP, Lee Elder.
Oh, you are so right. Pro golf is a pure meritocracy.
“(I didn’t mention Babe Ruth because nobody compares to Babe Ruth!)”
Depends on what part of the game you are looking at. Neither Ruth nor Williams were great outfielders. But hitting wise Williams is about as close to Ruth as can be determined, factually I think better.
Williams career batting average was .344 and his power was 521 home runs. Babe Ruth career stats was .342 and 714. But when you consider Williams lost 6 years to WW II and Korea in the military, hi stats could have been much higher sans injury. So his average run total could easily have been much higher as he hit .333 for the remainder of his career after his discharge from the marines. Home runs in his last years after he left the marines he hit 259 home runs with an average of 37 a year career. If you add back that 37 a year he missed for those 6 years it would have been 222 home runs. that would have given him 743 total.
In my mind Williams was the greatest hitter that ever played MLB. But he was no ambassador.
wy69
Gave prime years of his career to serve our military. Yes, he had a right to be grumpy to the press and could reasonably be argued his home run statistics would have surpassed Ruth had he not served in WW2 and Korea.
“What choice to Robinson have?”
When Rickey introduced Robinson to the idea of playing at the top level, he required Robinson to do a number of things that were not considered a problem with white players. He could get knocked down in the box, and was not going to say a thing. He was going to get nailed at second base on the takeout and couldn’t fight back. He was being placed in a position that made him a target for anyone that wanted to get him.
Even some of his own teammates were against his being on the club and threatened a walk out. An example was Dixie Walker. He reportedly initiated a player petition within the Dodgers in 1947, opposing Jackie Robinson joining the team, and he wrote a letter to Dodgers owner Branch Rickey asking to be traded. In that year he was traded to Pittsburg. Two years previous he had won the NL batting title.
The whole reason was to try to integrate the game by Rickey and Robinson had to agree with these things or he wouldn’t be signed. At times he wasn’t allowed to stay at the hotels the club used, drink out of the same fountains, talk to white women, eat at the same restaurants. It was the problem of the time and has since been worked on in the US. Still ongoing. So it wasn’t baseball. That was the tool. The game was integration into the business.
wy69
“...had tried out Robinson and Willie Mays...”
Depends on your determination of a tryout. Robinson actually did a physical tryout with the Red Sox. Mays never did.
When he was a teenager playing for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, the Red Sox had a minor league team that shared a field with them. Multiple teams scouted Mays, including the Red Sox, and former Sox scout George Digby actually had a deal in place to purchase Mays’ contract for $4500 in 1950 before it was scuttled by the front office. He never got the offer nor did he actually try out. He did mention in his latest book he would have jumped at the chance as he grew up a Sox fan. He was observed by a number of clubs, just not tried out.
“You really think the Red Sox wouldn’t have been better in the 1950s if they had Robinson and Mays?”
They would have lost Williams to military duty part of it, but they would have had more talent. Their pitching was suspect and that short porch left field in Fenway was just as much a weapon to other teams as to them.
wy69
Yes, it's terrible that they forced these conditions on him. But, how likely was it that he would say "no" to playing in the majors? Because he took that step, other black players didn't have to put up with that. You seem to know more about baseball than I do. These conditions didn't last too long?
You bank the obit ahead of time. Even now, with Google, that's still how they do it.
The BBC ran a rehearsal recently of the Queen's (not-long-in-) passing, and some rube in Urdu of all places breached protocol and tweeted it, thinking it was real.
Lee didn't even make the cut in 1975 and didn't actually make a first shot.
If there was a deal in place, to me, that's more than a tryout.
If I was a scout and I found and tried to sign a player as good as Willie Mays, and the team nixed it for no good reason, I'd be angry, among other things. 24 time All Star?
I just looked it up. Besides Mays, Robinson, and whoever else, it says the Sox didn't want to take Wade Boggs when Digby scouted them. Why didn't this guy go to a team that trusted his judgement?
“These conditions didn’t last too long?”
The transition of black players in MLB has gone up and down, many times due to financial reasons for the teams. According to WBUR radio, Boston, in the 1970s, black baseball players made up about 20% of MLB. Today, that number has dropped to nearly 8%.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/08/27/black-baseball-players
The largest influx lately of players have come out of latin areas, especially places like Puerto Rico, the Dominical Republic, Venezuela, and places that baseball schools have been established. These school, funded and overseen by the MLB, teach the ABC’s in the morning and baseball in the afternoons. They have been in existence since the late 1950’s and have spawned such players as Victor Martinez, Albert Pujols, Robinson Cano, Carlos Gonzalez, Jose Bautista, Nelson Cruz, David Ortiz, Felix Hernandez, Mariano Rivera, and Pudge Rodriquez. But they still only cover 8.9% of mlb.
https://www.zippia.com/professional-baseball-player-jobs/demographics/
Reason? Cost of players. They are willing to accept low priced contracts for a few years, and sign at 16 according to their laws, as the money looks better than it is in comparison to their country’s worth and lifestyle. But when they ask for a raise, consistent with their counterparts, unless they are the example of a player with game changing capacity, they can be traded or released without a large investment involved and replaced easier and cheaper. According to the articles I read, 81% of the players in MLB are listed as white. How that’s defined I’m not sure. They aren’t talking about it too much.
wy69
Yep. Teddy Ballgame/Baseball is the Greatest Hitter to ever play the game.
Babe Ruth is the Greatest Player to ever play the game.
“Why didn’t this guy go to a team that trusted his judgement?”
They made decisions based upon his work. When you consider, from both white and black players, some of the talent involved with players such as Ted Williams, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinson all played at Rickwood Field in Birmingham around that time. They got Williams, and lost Robinson and Mays. But a lot of that was because of Tom Yawkey, owner with long time anti-black determinations in MLB. The Red Sox were actually the last team in MLB to diverse. They wanted to sign Mays but Yawkey shot it down. He went to New York in 1951. Robinson in his tryout didn’t do well and was not signed.
wy69
I think those are two separate issues. I was referring to the treatment of black players. I don't think you can knock down black players now without repercussions, etc.
As far as the percentage of black players in baseball, I viewed that as baseball has lost popularity with black players, so the percentage has dropped, because black athletes are opting more to go into different sports.
Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders played professional baseball AND football, while the Jacksons and Sanders of today just go into football.
As far as Carribean players, they go into baseball, because that is the dominant sport there. They are far less likely to pursue basketball or football.
“I viewed that as baseball has lost popularity with black players, so the percentage has dropped, because black athletes are opting more to go into different sports.”
Basketball has had the most impact in changes. And it has to do with money. And there are a lot of factors there.
Everything in sports is money now. And has been for since the late 80’s. The purity of sports doesn’t have a place in our society with the salaries and the money floating around professional teams have become more of a novelty than the play.
Rule changes, new stadiums, officials calls being replaced by machines, strike zone sizes, redetermination of fouls on players....the list is endless as to each sport changing into a profit has become more important than the play. So who gets hired to spread out the booty? The hype. There is even a commercial on TV where the guy says we have all those stars on the field, the problem must be in the front office. Not as long as they are making money from TV contracts. They don’t need talent, they need a dunk, a home run, a fist fight...pick your poison.
wy69
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