JACKIE ROBINSON MEMORIAL LEAGUES

This is an open discussion about a proposed league(s) I would like to start sometime in the next several weeks. It will be a Franchise League where each owner has one of the Pre War franchises and then supplements their roster with as many Negro League players as they want. We are trying to simulate what would happen if 12 modern day owners time traveled to the era before #42 broke the color barrier and purchased the services of NeL players to improve their teams, rather than the slow tickle of players who gradually integrated the game. It took until 1959 before every franchise had at least one black player (Boston was the last as many of you know). Since there were only 16 PRE teams it will have to be a 12 team league, but if more owners want to participate we can create 1 or more parallel leagues under the same rules. Between 1920 and 1946 there were 3 teams who failed to appear in the World Series and 2 who only appeared once. I'm suggesting that SLB, PHI, CWS, and BSB not be among the franchises we select from. To start the season all of your players would be either from your franchise, PRE eras only, or come from the NeL list of players. Trades can happen anytime after the draft is complete. In this era there were 3 dominant teams, based on World Series appearances. NYY (14), STL (8), NYG (7). It might be better if franchises were randomly assigned rather than everyone flocking to these 3, but this discussion is to get opinions and assemble a list of owners who want to participate.

Cool idea. I like it. I do recommend a draft for franchises and I think it was mentioned among the BOS emails to have a gradual scale of how many NEL players allowed per team. NYY doesnt need any extra help so maybe allow max of 1 or 2 for them. STL and NYG maybe max of 3 and so on.

But I think there should be a max like no more than 10 for any team so that the actual team makeup stays somewhat close to real life are my thoughts.

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe basing it on how many WS appearances a team made, then setting a cap on how many NeL players those teams are allowed. As an example
NYY-2
STL-3
NYG-4
DET, CHC-5
WAS, PHA,-6
BKN, BOS, CIN, CLE, PIT, WAS-7
This way the franchises retain their basic character.

Appreciate the feedback.

How do you plan to disperse the negro league players. Is it a free for all frenzy or are we doing territories (for instance Josh Gibson p,ayes most of his career in the Pittsburgh area and so can be territory protected by the pirates. Or, staying with Gibson, you could say he was born in Georgia so his rights go to the Braves. Or you could go to schools which for Gibson takes us back to Pittsburgh.

Alternatively you could have a dispersal draft

Or you could combine them where we have a dispersal draft for one round but the player must have played in the city at some time which would mean that someone like Gibson could also be drafted by the Senators franchise since the Homstead Greys played a significant portion of their home games in DC whole Gibson was on the team. The drafter has the responsibility to explain the connection. It would require some Negro League knowledge or research which serves to increase knowledge of the. Negro Leagues, a positive note IMO

Fantastic idea...count me in...I like franchise leagues and this wrinkle will be an interesting experiment...Henry

Seems interesting would be interested in playing.

How do you plan to disperse the negro league players. Is it a free for all frenzy or are we doing territories (for instance Josh Gibson p,ayes most of his career in the Pittsburgh area and so can be territory protected by the pirates. Or, staying with Gibson, you could say he was born in Georgia so his rights go to the Braves. Or you could go to schools which for Gibson takes us back to Pittsburgh.

Alternatively you could have a dispersal draft

Or you could combine them where we have a dispersal draft for one round but the player must have played in the city at some time which would mean that someone like Gibson could also be drafted by the Senators franchise since the Homstead Greys played a significant portion of their home games in DC whole Gibson was on the team. The drafter has the responsibility to explain the connection. It would require some Negro League knowledge or research which serves to increase knowledge of the. Negro Leagues, a positive note IMO

It's one of many reasons I want to kick this around with you all before deciding anything. I think assigning by region, while the research might be stimulating, could tip the balance and leave some franchises short. Since SOM does not specify a team for NeL players we'd need an extensive script of which players each franchise has "rights" to. I did look to see what the PRE Pirates would have looked like if they had been integrated just with Grays and Crawfords players and it was impressive. Waner-Charleston-Waner in the OF. Gibson at C. Traynor 3B, Vaughan SS, Paige and Matlock shoring up the pitching staff. It's easy to understand why Ted Williams wanted baseball to be integrated, besides the right reasons, his Red Sox with just a few key additions could have won that elusive title finally.

The Red Sox gave a tryout to Jackie Robinson and two other players and declined to sign him... the play "johnny Baseball" indicates that Boston could have had Willie Mays, but passed...

Well the AGT9 set has roughly 106 players from the Negro Leagues listed (not including guys with solid major league careers such as Campanella or Doby who would already have franchises assigned to them).

You could put a roster of the most expensive 25 man roster you could build for each franchise and see what the cost is and then rank them. So it looks something like

Yankees. 228,840,000
Indians 221,220,000
Cubs. 220,790,000
Cardinals. 219,020,000
Red Sox 218,440,000
Dodgers 214,930,000
Pirates 206,990,000
Giants 202,073,000
White Sox 201,620,000
Tigers 202,250,000
Phillies 200,950,000
Athletics 199,650,000
Reds 196,380,000
Braves 188,060,000
Twins 182,700,000
Orioles 181,532,000

And let the negro leagues have a reverse order dispersal draft. You can set parameters for your 25 man roster to get different numbers. Should be fairly close to the order though

Interesting idea, but I want to limit it to only Pre-War Era teams and rosters.