Charleston v. Clemente

[aljurgela]

Originally Posted by Scocs

Cobb and Williams never faced black players....is Cobb still hitting .366 lifetime? You see the flawed argument on both sides...

And when they did play (like Cuba in 1909 and 1910), the black players did very well against the MLB teams. There has been a story about Bruce Petway throwing out Cobb three times while trying to steal, but I think that it has been refuted. Regardless they were good... Pop Lloyd hit .313 against MLB pitching albeit a small sample size and that is pretty consistent with the .318 that he had in the Cuban League.

http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/pl...rID=lloyd01joh

In the few games that Charleston played against MLB players he raked with an .347 average and OPS of 1.224.

http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/pl...rID=charl01osc

Could he have kept it up? Who knows, but intuition tells me that it is highly likely that he would have been elite if ever given the chance to shine. Why? Because he shined anyway! He basically had the same number (but a lower slugging percentage) when he played against the negro league players on a more consistent basis.

I tend to believe that the negro leagues and the MLB leagues are closer in talent and depth than most people do. Think about it.... this was basically the only professional sport than African Americans athletes played. There was no football and basketball to siphon the talent pool. Anyway, just my 2 cents.