Joe Posnanski's top 100 Baseball Players of All Time

jon abbey

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I am guessing the top ones are in order, but dunno.

Oscar Charleston in at #5 today, looking forward to that one.
 

67YAZ

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Charleston at 5, and a Pos does a fabulous job describing a player who is more legend than fact..and delves into the reasons why that is.

Pos also has an extended discussion of his approach to the rankings.

That’s what the rankings are … they are here to give this project shape and to spark a few feelings. Yes, they’re in the basic order of a formula I used, one based on five things in no particular order:

  1. Wins Above Replacement
  2. Peak Wins Above Replacement
  3. How multi-dimensional they were as players
  4. The era when they played
  5. Bonus value — This might include postseason performances, leadership, sportsmanship, impact on the game as a whole, if they lost prime years to the war and numerous other possibilities.
But I have no illusions about the formula. It is as flawed as anything so, whenever possible, I attached the player and a number that fits. So, for instance, Mariano Rivera is 91 for Psalm 91, the Psalm of Protection. Gary Carter is 86 for his role on the 1986 Mets. Joe DiMaggio is 56 for the hitting streak. Grover Cleveland Alexander is 26 because that was his magical year, 1926.

Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Jimmie Foxx, Greg Maddux, Mike Trout, Jackie Robinson, Frank Robinson and Mike Schmidt, among others, were all given a ranking based on their uniform numbers. I would say at least two-thirds of the numbers have some sort of connection to the ballplayer.

I even skipped No. 19 because of the ’19 Black Sox, the biggest single-year scandal in baseball history.

That’s not to say that I couldn’t defend the individual rankings. I’m sure I could. But to do so would be to say negative things about various players’ talent, which goes against the very essence of this project. And anyway, fighting over the questions — Ted Williams over Ty Cobb? Steve Carltonover Sandy Koufax? Carl Yastrzemskiover Ken Griffey? — is a big part of the fun.
 

Dummy Hoy

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I love that explanation from Pos on his rankings and how Charleston was sort of representing the shame of segregated ball.

If it was straight rankings I bet we’d have seen Christobal Torriente (who was such a good fielder he moved Charleston to left), Martin Dihigo (that’s a guy to look up @jon abbey ), Ray Dandridge, Willie Wells...maybe a few others.

And if anyone wants to find a really fascinating guy, Andrew Foster is the absolute man.
 

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I, for one, am happy people stepped up to kill Nazis.

One amazing thing about Ted is that he came back from 2 wars as good as when he left. Many other players came back significantly lesser, which is no surprise - take the player out of the game for several years of his athletic prime and that’ll happen. But Ted wasn’t a ceremonial figure in the service - he flew combat missions! And he was so good at it, they called him back for Korea. While it robbed him of key years in his career, it didn’t slow him down. Just an incomparable feat.
Minor quibble here. Ted was such a great flight student in his WW II training that he never went overseas. Navy brass kept him stateside to teach new pilots. He was transferred to Hawaii near the end of the war, waiting assignment that never came because of the bomb. He is definitely a WW II veteran, just never flew a combat mission until Korea.

https://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-advice/military-transition/famous-veteran-ted-williams.html
 

PC Drunken Friar

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The Oscar Charleston entry starts off with a story from Posnanski's Buck O'Neil's fantastic book Soul of Baseball". The rest of the story is heartbreaking and even just thinking about it today, makes it a little dusty in the room.

I don't have the book in front of me, but basically, Willie Mays was transfixed on all the players and was hanging on to the chicken wire and started bawling. He just kept saying something along the lines of "It's just not fair, it's just not fair".
 

jon abbey

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I'm pretty sure it will be in book form at some point, not sure if he has said that directly or just alluded to it a lot.
 

snowmanny

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I had put off reading the Bagwell piece. Too soon and all that. Boredom got the best of me. Pos managed to make it even worse than I could have imagined.
 

67YAZ

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Hammerin’ Hank at #4, and it’s a beautiful entry. Pos is really rising to the challenge of writing about legendary players who’ve already been written about more times and in more ways than I can fathom.
 
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LogansDad

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Beatifully written and makes me furious all at the same time. Some of the people who wrote those quoted letters to Hank are probably still alive, and I hope they feel guilty every day of their lives. I'm 40, and sometimes it's easy to forget just how recent that awful time in our history was (really most of our history, when you put your mind to it). I'm so glad I was lucky enough to have parents who taught me better.

Sorry for the rant.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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Beatifully written and makes me furious all at the same time. Some of the people who wrote those quoted letters to Hank are probably still alive, and I hope they feel guilty every day of their lives. I'm 40, and sometimes it's easy to forget just how recent that awful time in our history was (really most of our history, when you put your mind to it). I'm so glad I was lucky enough to have parents who taught me better.

Sorry for the rant.
I think the rant is exactly what Pos was trying to elicit by including those letters. Joe wants us to feel angry about the role racism has played in our national pastime, both for the open segregation and for everything else that even icons like Aaron had - and still have - to go through.
 

Dummy Hoy

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And another perfectly crafted essay, captures the person and player so wonderfully. Not an easy player to write about, yet Joe does it with his usual skill and touch.

Side note, the commenters on this series are a joke.
 

LogansDad

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Other than Pedro, this might be the one I was most looking forward to, and Joe nailed it. I largely agree with you on the commenters (though, I would argue that this is true of most of the internet.... man, has is it the most amazing thing ever created that also managed to set an entire species back 50 years), but one brought up an interesting point that I was thinking about before:

If Barry Bonds wasn't the one who broke the game, would baseball have ever gone through the steroid reckoning that it did?

What I mean is, if everything else was exactly the same, but we remove Bonds from the equation (or, better yet, he maintains his already Hall of Fame level peak from pre-1998), how big does the steroid scandal get? If Canseco still comes out and says 85% of players are using, if the other players still have their hearings.... would anyone have cared? Or would it have eventually blown over?

If I had a vote for the Hall, Bonds and Clemens would be my #1 and #2. I loved watching Barry Bonds bat, just loved it. He was obviously an egotistical dink, who rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but how many "best of their generation" players (other than Mike Trout) haven't been?

I found Joe's comment in the middle of his work about Bonds always being nice to him really, really interesting. Joe is obviously a guy who pursues his craft as a huge fan of the game, and a fan of people in general, and I wonder if he exudes that so much that he was able to get through and have Bonds act like a real person to him. I wonder how much different (better?) sports writing, and media in general, would be if more people who were as good a person as Joe Posnanski seems to be, also had the talent to write that he does.
 

barbed wire Bob

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Other than Pedro, this might be the one I was most looking forward to, and Joe nailed it. I largely agree with you on the commenters (though, I would argue that this is true of most of the internet.... man, has is it the most amazing thing ever created that also managed to set an entire species back 50 years), but one brought up an interesting point that I was thinking about before:

If Barry Bonds wasn't the one who broke the game, would baseball have ever gone through the steroid reckoning that it did?

What I mean is, if everything else was exactly the same, but we remove Bonds from the equation (or, better yet, he maintains his already Hall of Fame level peak from pre-1998), how big does the steroid scandal get? If Canseco still comes out and says 85% of players are using, if the other players still have their hearings.... would anyone have cared? Or would it have eventually blown over?

If I had a vote for the Hall, Bonds and Clemens would be my #1 and #2. I loved watching Barry Bonds bat, just loved it. He was obviously an egotistical dink, who rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but how many "best of their generation" players (other than Mike Trout) haven't been?

I found Joe's comment in the middle of his work about Bonds always being nice to him really, really interesting. Joe is obviously a guy who pursues his craft as a huge fan of the game, and a fan of people in general, and I wonder if he exudes that so much that he was able to get through and have Bonds act like a real person to him. I wonder how much different (better?) sports writing, and media in general, would be if more people who were as good a person as Joe Posnanski seems to be, also had the talent to write that he does.
Regarding the bolded, this single line is just great writing.

He has a lot of charm. He dispenses it sparingly.”
 

Mueller's Twin Grannies

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Ruth or Mays? People have said Mays is his number one of all-time, but does that mean he surpasses the Bambino, arguably the most recognizable baseball player and name of all time?
 

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Ruth or Mays? People have said Mays is his number one of all-time, but does that mean he surpasses the Bambino, arguably the most recognizable baseball player and name of all time?
Given Joe put Oscar Charleston above Ted Williams, I don't think he'll blink about putting Mays ahead of Ruth.
 

jon abbey

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I’m a little behind, but what a great lead on the Aaron one.
 

Savin Hillbilly

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The wrong side of the bridge....
Ruth's offensive numbers are so huge they're almost cartoon-ish. I can't imagine him not being #1.
+1

One way of looking at it is to consider that he didn't start playing every day until five years into his career, and has almost 2,000 fewer PA than Mays or nearly any of his other peers among the top offensive players ever (one notable exception being Ted Williams). Yet he is in the top five in HR, R, RBI, and walks. His wRC+ is almost 10 points better than Williams' (who in turn is 15 points ahead of anyone else). His walk rate is only slightly behind Barry Bonds' (19.4% to 20.3%) despite spending almost a decade with Lou Gehrig hitting behind him. It's hard to imagine what his numbers would look like if he had started his career as an everyday player. But 2500 runs/RBIs seems likely.

Over all that, Mays gets credit for some of the most brilliant outfield defense and baserunning ever seen. But then Ruth gets credit for being an outstanding pitcher for four years. Both were dominant stars on championship teams while still in their early twenties, and remained dominant stars through their late thirties. Both were larger-than-life personalities with charisma to burn, true legends whose appeal transcended team or regional loyalties. When I was growing up in the sixties, nobody wasn't a Willie Mays fan. I'm sure it was the same for the Babe in the 20s.

I think it would be kind of perfect if Pos declared it a tie.
 

Philip Jeff Frye

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When I was growing up in the sixties, nobody wasn't a Willie Mays fan. I'm sure it was the same for the Babe in the 20s.
Willie Mays was a Star but Babe Ruth basically invented the concept of being a star. Our whole celebrity obsessed culture basically starts with him.
 

Savin Hillbilly

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The wrong side of the bridge....
Willie Mays was a Star but Babe Ruth basically invented the concept of being a star. Our whole celebrity obsessed culture basically starts with him.
He also basically invented the concept of Black Ink:

29749

Has any athlete ever dominated a team sport over more than a decade as utterly as that?

But....it's also true that he was a one-trick pony as a position player: the best hitter the game has ever seen (Ted me no Teds), but a mediocre baserunner and outfielder even when young and relatively fit, and (by all accounts) truly awful at those things in his fat 30s. OTOH, there has probably never been as complete a position player as Willie Mays. He was not just good, but great, at absolutely everything. In Mookie Betts we've seen a mere Platonic shadow of what Mays was in his prime.
 

67YAZ

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Pos does a nice job with the Babe. It’s hard to find an original angle on Ruth. It’s like trying to say something new about JFK or Lincoln (though we now have a great Lincoln movie...so maybe that great Ruth movie is possible). Weaving together the mythos, the accomplishments, and baseball’s unique relationship to its past was well done and thoughtful.

I would argue Ruth is the greatest baseball player ever, maybe the greatest American athlete ever, because I see greatness as a function of two parts: 1. Dominance over contemporaries and 2. Popularity beyond sports. We could argue whether or not the Babe was the most dominant player relative to his time period in baseball history. A few others may have a case, but there’s no doubt he was one of the best players ever. No, it’s the popularity beyond the sport where he blows away all American competition. He’s still a major cultural icon today, a century on. He is one one of the defining figures of celebrity culture. He was baseball at a time baseball was the biggest sport in the country. There will never be a greater baseball player, never be another who is more widely known and idolized than the Babe.
 

TedYaz&JimEd

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Pos does a nice job with the Babe. It’s hard to find an original angle on Ruth. It’s like trying to say something new about JFK or Lincoln (though we now have a great Lincoln movie...so maybe that great Ruth movie is possible). Weaving together the mythos, the accomplishments, and baseball’s unique relationship to its past was well done and thoughtful.

I would argue Ruth is the greatest baseball player ever, maybe the greatest American athlete ever, because I see greatness as a function of two parts: 1. Dominance over contemporaries and 2. Popularity beyond sports. We could argue whether or not the Babe was the most dominant player relative to his time period in baseball history. A few others may have a case, but there’s no doubt he was one of the best players ever. No, it’s the popularity beyond the sport where he blows away all American competition. He’s still a major cultural icon today, a century on. He is one one of the defining figures of celebrity culture. He was baseball at a time baseball was the biggest sport in the country. There will never be a greater baseball player, never be another who is more widely known and idolized than the Babe.
Well said. If this series were titled “The Baseball 100: a project celebrating the best baseball players in history”, that would indeed be a different story (and surely less fascinating too)! But no, “great” brings in something extra, that larger-than-life quality that separates the immortals from the rest of us. There is no stat for this.
 

jon abbey

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Eh, I disagree that popularity matters at all when it comes to attempting to quantify ‘greatness’, that would make Tim Tebow the greatest baseball player around currently.
 

Scoops Bolling

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Given Joe put Oscar Charleston above Ted Williams, I don't think he'll blink about putting Mays ahead of Ruth.
Just to toot my own horn.

I like Joe. He's a great writer. But I think these couple choices are nonsense. Oscar Charleston might have been Ted's equal if he'd gotten the opportunity, but he didn't, and Ted is the second greatest offensive force in the history of baseball, and should have gone above Charleston. Ruth may have faced lesser competition, but he dominated to an extent no one else has come close to matching, and he was a brilliant pitcher on tpo of that. He should be #1. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter, but it still makes me roll my eyes.
 

bankshot1

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Totally agree with Scoops.

Mays was a brilliant 5 tool player, I can't think of a negative about the guy, but those tools were put to work in part during the expansion-era, with Mays in his deep prime years, (31-35) where he had 4 of his best WAR years, presumably from feasting off of AAAA pitching.
 

TedYaz&JimEd

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Eh, I disagree that popularity matters at all when it comes to attempting to quantify ‘greatness’, that would make Tim Tebow the greatest baseball player around currently.
What if you changed that to ENDURING popularity beyond sports? Time is a great filter. Tim Tebow will likely be a trivia question for the next generation; the Babe is still in the headlines 100 years after his prime.
 

snowmanny

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Ruth is 2nd, but in the Griffey Jr. piece Pos wrote this:

"When Ken Griffey Jr. turned 30 — Nov. 21, 1999* — he had a shot at greatest ever. Well, that is to say, he had as much of a shot as anybody can have since baseball’s greatest player has long been, and will always be in the minds of many, Babe Ruth. There’s no real way to unseat Ruth because of the way he dominated his era, his larger-than-life feats, the way his legend grows annually and, most of all, because of that trump card: He was a great hitter and a great pitcher.

For the minority of people willing to consider someone other than Ruth, there is an opportunity, a chance for someone to come along the way Michael Jordan did, the way Wayne Gretzky did, the way Tom Brady did (orPeyton Manning — we’re not trying to fight that fight here) and win that top spot as the greatest player of all time.

As he turned 30, Griffey had a chance to be that guy. "

So he knows he's in the minority with Mays and he acknowledges that the Ruth argument is solid, That all seems reasonable to me. But of course mentioning Peyton, even parenthetically, lights all his credibility on fire.
 

jon abbey

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What if you changed that to ENDURING popularity beyond sports? Time is a great filter. Tim Tebow will likely be a trivia question for the next generation; the Babe is still in the headlines 100 years after his prime.
To each their own, for me it is irrelevant.
 

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Tim Tebow? LOL. Over the last 120 or so years, there was a window of about 5 years where Tebow might have been in the same league of fame (in the US only) as Babe Ruth. That window closed a while ago and it will never be open again.
 

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Just to toot my own horn.

I like Joe. He's a great writer. But I think these couple choices are nonsense. Oscar Charleston might have been Ted's equal if he'd gotten the opportunity, but he didn't, and Ted is the second greatest offensive force in the history of baseball, and should have gone above Charleston. Ruth may have faced lesser competition, but he dominated to an extent no one else has come close to matching, and he was a brilliant pitcher on tpo of that. He should be #1. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter, but it still makes me roll my eyes.
In two sentences you go from discounting Charleston specifically because he didn’t play against the best competition, to elevating Ruth. . . despite the fact that he didn’t play against the best competition.

Quibble with Joe’s rankings all you want (I would’ve put Ruth first, too) but at least he’s logically consistent. He reasoned that the incredible success black players had in the late 40s and 50s proves that the high-end talent of the Negro Leagues was every bit as good as that in the Majors (and how could anyone argue against that?). And it only stands to reason, then, that the player who, by all accounts, is the best Negro League player of all-time would of course be a top ten player overall, and would further be deserving of consideration of the number one spot.
 

jon abbey

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Tim Tebow? LOL. Over the last 120 or so years, there was a window of about 5 years where Tebow might have been in the same league of fame (in the US only) as Babe Ruth. That window closed a while ago and it will never be open again.
Yep, I said currently (I don't pay any attention to these things but I'd guess his Q score is above every current MLB player), but more my point is that how famous an athlete is/was shouldn't factor into any serious analysis of how great they were.
 

Scoops Bolling

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In two sentences you go from discounting Charleston specifically because he didn’t play against the best competition, to elevating Ruth. . . despite the fact that he didn’t play against the best competition.

Quibble with Joe’s rankings all you want (I would’ve put Ruth first, too) but at least he’s logically consistent. He reasoned that the incredible success black players had in the late 40s and 50s proves that the high-end talent of the Negro Leagues was every bit as good as that in the Majors (and how could anyone argue against that?). And it only stands to reason, then, that the player who, by all accounts, is the best Negro League player of all-time would of course be a top ten player overall, and would further be deserving of consideration of the number one spot.
Ruth did play against the best competition of his time; his "lesser competition" was speaking to his era. Williams and Mays also played against the best competition of their times, again even if it does not compare to modern standards. Charleston did not play against the best competition of his era. The top end of the Negro League may have been as good as best of the MLB, but that doesn't mean the rank and file was, just like the best Japanese players may be capable of playing at the same high level in the Majors...but by the same token, some aren't. I'm not willing to call Sadaharu Oh the greatest power hitter ever for the same reason I would never put Oscar Charleston among the Top 5 players ever...he never played the best competition. Not his fault, but he didn't.
 
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67YAZ

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Eh, I disagree that popularity matters at all when it comes to attempting to quantify ‘greatness’, that would make Tim Tebow the greatest baseball player around currently.
And Michael Jordan is the greatest Baseball player of the last 30 years?

No, certainly not. Both Jordan and Tebow were famous for their accomplishments in other sports, but neither were major league caliber players never mind dominant players.Greatness is something more than being the best, qualities that go beyond performance on the field. No two people have to define that something extra the same way, big it’s certainly not reducible you just being famous.
 

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Ruth did play against the best competition of his time; his "lesser competition" was speaking to his era. Williams and Mays also played against the best competition of their times, again even if it does not compare to modern standards. Charleston did not play against the best competition of his era. The top end of the Negro League may have been as good as best of the MLB, but that doesn't mean the rank and file was, just like the best Japanese players may be capable of playing at the same high level in the Majors...but by the same token, some aren't. I'm not willing to call Sadaharu Oh the greatest power hitter ever for the same reason I would never put Oscar Charleston among the Top 5 players ever...he never played the best competition. Not his fault, but he didn't.
What evidence do you have that the average MLB player in the 20s was better than the average Negro Leagues player? Talent after the very top level players dropped off quickly in the majors. And those were the guys most loudly against integration, because they knew they'd lose their jobs.
 

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What evidence do you have that the average MLB player in the 20s was better than the average Negro Leagues player? Talent after the very top level players dropped off quickly in the majors. And those were the guys most loudly against integration, because they knew they'd lose their jobs.
Good point. The thing that always struck me about that famous 1927 season was that while Babe Ruth went bananas and outhomered every other AL team...he had a teammate who also happened to outhomer half of the AL teams. When one guy outhomers several teams, he might just be a freak....but when two different guys outhomer several teams, it might be fair to conclude that some of those teams just aren't any good.

In fact, the bottom four MLB teams in home runs that year - the Indians, Red Sox, Senators, and Reds - were each outhomered by four different players: Ruth, Gehrig, Cy Williams, and Hack Wilson.
 
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Kliq

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I've said this before in this thread, but I'll reiterate it again. In the conversation between "How good were the Negro League players compared to their MLB contemporaries?" it is impossible to have a definitive answer. However, if we look at the era of integration and examine how successful the players who played in both leagues were, we can get an idea. The dying days of the Negro Leagues produced many major league baseball players, and two of them, Willie Mays and Henry Aaron are among the very best players of all time. If integration never came, we would be having the same kind of conversations about not knowing how good they really were. Nobody asks "Well, how good was Willie Mays really?" because he played virtually his entire career in MLB. We have the answer, he was really, really fucking good.

Almost everyone, from historians to Negro League players to contemporaries of his career, believe that Oscar Charleston was the greatest player in Negro League history, or that he is 1A and 1B with Josh Gibson. Given that we know from the time of integration that the best black baseball players were the equivalent of superior to the best white players, it is reasonable to believe that Charleston was one of, if not the best player of his era, regardless of race.

The idea that Oscar Charleston didn't play against the best competition of his era almost doesn't matter. Maybe he wouldn't have hit .437 in MLB in 1921, which is what he hit in the Negro Leagues, because he feasted on below average, rank-and-file Negro League pitching. Although, he did hit .326 lifetime in exhibitions against MLB teams, which would be typically against the best MLB pitching since those games were typically made up of barnstorming all-stars during the offseason. What matters is that Charleston was regarded by everyone as the best black player of the first 50 years of the 20th Century. For the entire period of post-integration baseball, the best black baseball players have been the equivalent of the best white baseball players, why wouldn't that still have been the case pre-integration?
 

bankshot1

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What evidence do you have that the average MLB player in the 20s was better than the average Negro Leagues player? Talent after the very top level players dropped off quickly in the majors. And those were the guys most loudly against integration, because they knew they'd lose their jobs.
I'm not a statisitician but I would say the law of large numbers probably indicate that in two populations, one about 8-9X larger than the other (US black population was about 10-11% in the '20-30s) and assuming that both populations are roughly equally skilled, there will be more excellent, good, average, below average players in the larger universe than in the smaller universe. And I'm estimating (ballparking) that the size of the players populations and demand for the best players in both universes were roughly equal (16 MLB teams, ~12-20 Negro League teams played at different times), but the white player pool to draw from was much bigger. And assuming that only the best of the best played in both MLB and the Negro leagues it might not be that much of a stretch to conclude the average MLB player was better than the average NL player.

But there is little doubt the borderline average white player was rightly concerned there were plenty of better NL players more than capable of taking his spot in the roster.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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I see your math, but we really can't tell. When was becoming a baseball player a "good" profession? Just in Joe's Top 100, you see so many players who had families that hated the idea. I would venture to guess that no, the best white baseball players did not play professionally. And the attraction/money for black players was much more likely to have black players try to make it a profession. We have no idea of knowing.
 

Sad Sam Jones

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Negro league teams and leagues were folding constantly, which is why the capitalized "Negro League" is such a misnomer. Guys may have persued it to get away from home or for the lifestyle, but they weren't making money. I have to think MLB had a better scouting system set up than negro league teams did, but until the minors were really organized and affiliated it was all such a crapshoot that if you read about how players were discovered you realize how unlikely it was for any league to max out the best available talent. IIRC, Honus Wagner signed his first professional contract because the team confused him for his more highly regarded brother Butts Wagner and they were short-handed enough they didn't care when they realized their mistake. I was just researching a bottom rung minor league team that discovered a teenaged Rube Marquard, only to release him after he failed to retire any of the first 5 batters he faced.
 

Al Zarilla

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Every time I read about Ted Williams getting screwed out of three MVPs (1941, 1942, 1947), my blood boils.
Part of it was Williams’ disdain for baseball writers, or some of the writers, who of course voted for the thing. The other part is that a player on a pennant winning team (DiMaggio 2 times over Williams, and Gordon once) got an additional boost. The most galling must have been losing to Joe Gordon. While Gordon was a hall of fame player who had an excellent season, Ted had one of his best, with black ink everywhere including of course the triple crown.