42
When Jackie Robinson broke MLB's color barrier in 1947, there were no black umpires (until 1966), no black members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (until after the season), and probably no black official scorers.
I find this significant since there's surprisingly little evidence--anecdotal or statistical--that members of any of these three groups showed bias against big league baseball's first African-American player.
Where could we look for statistical evidence of racial bias?
Umpire bias might be reflected in suspicious K:BB ratios if Robinson got bad calls at the plate. But Jackie walked two or three times as often as he struck out during his first few seasons in Brooklyn, which suggests he was getting fair calls at the plate. His batting average itself is also evidence of a lack of ball-strike bias, as it's impossible to imagine a player who had to protect an expanded zone or was perpetually behind in the count to bat .300+ so consistently.
There are a few things baserunning statistics I looked at for possible bias from field umps. "Caught stealing" wasn't tracked until 1951, but his success rate from then forward was excellent, and the fact that he led the NL in steals his rookie season also makes it unlikely that there was bias. If an "out" call was likely even if he beat the throw, he wouldn't have kept running frequently enough to swipe 29 bags. I also checked batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and runs scored per times on base, as bad calls at any base would hurt those figures. But his BABIP was consistently above league average, and he scored almost half the times he reached base as a rookie--an extremely high rate.
Bias from the scorer's box, like scoring Robinson's hits as errors on the defense to hurt his stats and help the pitchers', would have shown up as either a low batting average or low BABIP (neither appears to have occurred). The final chance for possible bias against #42 would have been bad home-road splits; I figure that Brooklyn management could have kept the scorer in line for Dodger home games, but what about on the road? "Home town scoring" has a reputation for cheating visiting players out of base hits even when they're not challenging white supremacy. But Robinson was even better away from Ebbets Field than he was at home.
And with the BBWAA admitting its first African-American after the 1947 season, it was an all-white group of writers who voted Jackie Robinson the 1947 NL Rookie of the Year, and a mostly-white panel that named him MVP in 1949.
I find this significant since there's surprisingly little evidence--anecdotal or statistical--that members of any of these three groups showed bias against big league baseball's first African-American player.
Where could we look for statistical evidence of racial bias?
Umpire bias might be reflected in suspicious K:BB ratios if Robinson got bad calls at the plate. But Jackie walked two or three times as often as he struck out during his first few seasons in Brooklyn, which suggests he was getting fair calls at the plate. His batting average itself is also evidence of a lack of ball-strike bias, as it's impossible to imagine a player who had to protect an expanded zone or was perpetually behind in the count to bat .300+ so consistently.
There are a few things baserunning statistics I looked at for possible bias from field umps. "Caught stealing" wasn't tracked until 1951, but his success rate from then forward was excellent, and the fact that he led the NL in steals his rookie season also makes it unlikely that there was bias. If an "out" call was likely even if he beat the throw, he wouldn't have kept running frequently enough to swipe 29 bags. I also checked batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and runs scored per times on base, as bad calls at any base would hurt those figures. But his BABIP was consistently above league average, and he scored almost half the times he reached base as a rookie--an extremely high rate.
Bias from the scorer's box, like scoring Robinson's hits as errors on the defense to hurt his stats and help the pitchers', would have shown up as either a low batting average or low BABIP (neither appears to have occurred). The final chance for possible bias against #42 would have been bad home-road splits; I figure that Brooklyn management could have kept the scorer in line for Dodger home games, but what about on the road? "Home town scoring" has a reputation for cheating visiting players out of base hits even when they're not challenging white supremacy. But Robinson was even better away from Ebbets Field than he was at home.
And with the BBWAA admitting its first African-American after the 1947 season, it was an all-white group of writers who voted Jackie Robinson the 1947 NL Rookie of the Year, and a mostly-white panel that named him MVP in 1949.
posted by J. Edward Guthrie at
11:36 PM
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