Here's an excerpt from an excellent article by J. B. Cash written almost 20 years ago. Right on target, as always:
Whitewashing Sports History
Another attempt to revise history is to discredit achievements made before the wide-scale integration of sports. Bonds himself has promoted this revisionist history attempt by indicating Ruth's home run records are in some way illegitimate because they occurred before black players were allowed to play Major League baseball. The media has picked this up and repeated it over and over without any critical thinking about the issue. The claim is absolutely ridiculous and should anyone repeat it they should be challenged immediately.
First, the only black presence that would have affected Ruth's home run records would have occurred if there were black pitchers. Other players would not have made a difference to Ruth's career stats unless you figure that there would have been some "Barry Bonds" types of outfielders butchering easy plays and adding extra base hits to Ruth's already prodigious numbers.
The presence of black pitchers affecting Ruth's career totals is laughable! Who would that have been? There have been very few good black pitchers in the nearly 60 years since the sport was integrated. Quick, name the five best black baseball pitchers in the history of baseball  Bob Gibson, Ferguson Jenkins, Vida Blue, Don Newcombe and who? Satchel Paige? Okay, say Satchel Paige managed to get Ruth out a few times. That would mean that Ruth could clean up against the likes of Dontrelle Willis and any other black pitchers that would have somehow made their way to the big leagues.
Thus if there had been more black pitchers during Ruth's career, and since black pitchers are not historically very good, we can assume once again that Ruth's offensive stats would be greater than they are. Humorously, one can also say that Barry Bonds has benefited from not having to face black pitchers. What really good black pitchers has he had to face? By this logic Bonds' records should be suspect because there are so few American blacks playing Major League Baseball. What difference does it make if blacks are barred from the game due to segregation or don't play the game due to disinterest  the result is the same  none of all those (supposedly) superior black pitchers that would have deflated offensive stats.
Some would say that the absence of hispanic players is also a cause of inflated stats since there are at lease SOME good hispanic pitchers. Not in 1930 however. The areas that produce hispanic players were lightly populated and were dirt poor. This is another feature of the ridiculousness of revisionist history  expecting present day circumstances to be the same in the long ago past. Perhaps one day a race of aliens will come to earth and be good at baseball. Will that change the validity of Barry Bonds' records?
The conspicuous lack of quality black pitchers puts in question another dubious aspect of revisionist history â€â€- the Negro Leagues. We are constantly bombarded by tales of the greatness of Negro League players. Today, any remaining living players from that era are treated like heroes and we end up with players of dubious talent being welcomed into the Hall of Fame on a periodic basis.
The real truth of the Negro Leagues is so embarrassing that it is amazing that revisionists even bring it up. It is only through the fear that modern pro-black forces exert that the history of the Negro Leagues can even be taken seriously. Josh Gibson: 800 homers. Sure. Why not 1,000? Who will ever know? Most of the games he played in were basically exhibitions against the local team. No one kept any serious statistics. Teams came and went. Players changed teams during the game. It was a joke by any standard of the word "league". Baseball vaudeville would be more accurate. But who in the media can risk speaking the truth without the racial police destroying his career?
So we have to endure the tales of the Negro Leagues like they were a black version of the National League and not what they really were, a black version of a softball beer league. Compare this to the stats for the pre-1900 professional baseball leagues. There is a box score for every one of those games. Complete stats can be found on players from the National Association from over 120 years ago! I can tell you to the number how many homeruns Jim O'Rourke hit in 1880 (6). We have no idea how many homeruns Josh Gibson hit in 1941. Of course to criticize blacks for sloppy record keeping is getting too close to other sensitive issues about African Americans so that discussion is off the table also and instead we have to treat the propaganda as truth instead of the pure fabrication it really is.
There are many other examples. Olympic records, pre-Negro, basketball pre-Negro, football pre-Negro, all derided as inferior because the caste system that fills those events with blacks was not in existence 60 years ago. Thus everything that was all white or nearly so is re-written as inferior, everything that is nearly all black, or nearly so is considered better. We hear it every day, that the ruinous culture that we must wade through every day is somehow better then the gleaming, glittering America of the early to mid-1900's. Only in America can the bad be made into good and the good is considered bad. Welcome to the 21st century!
Here's the newest J. B. Cash opinion column: WHITEWASHING SPORTS HISTORY Revising history is one of the favorite tactics of people that would like to see classic American culture destroyed. It is apparent in the new additions of history textbooks that malign former American heroes such as...
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