as far as the negro leagues are concerned, they did not have the draw of fame and fortune, they worked from a smaller population base, their fielding percentages were lower. clearly the negro leagues were not as good as the NL and AL.

that said, i think paige would have won 300 games and had an era right around 3 and i think gibson would have had 400+ hr.

I'm somewhat shocked that more AA players don't wear #20 in honor of Gibson.

In 1943, in perhaps his most amazing slugging exhibition, Gibson hit 10 home runs in 40 games at Griffith Stadium, while the Senators hit 9 in 77 games, and the rest of the American League hit another 14.

Gibson's ten may all have been to LF while some of the others might have been hit to RF.

i also think george davis is a poor shortsop choice. not as many great hitters to replace him with but you could go with a player like hughie jennings. he eventually learned to hit and he was obviously a great fielder.

Davis was a much better career player than Jennings, plus he was a regular CFer and 3Bman before he went to SS. He could be the team's 3Bman against LHers. Jennings was the best player in baseball for 2-3 years, but he was only great for like 5 years.

We could also go with Arky Vaughan, although he's another LH hitter.

C: Carter
1B: Porter
2B: Uribe
SS: Belanger
3B: Caminiti
LF: Stargell
CF: Puckett
RF: Bobby Bonds

Porter's WAR is heavily driven by being a C. He loses about 1.5 wins a season at 1B. Surely better to put Stargell at 1B (800 starts spread throughout his career) with Murcer in the OF. Murcer/Puckett/Bonds in the OF (and Cowens on the bench) would cover a lot of ground too. Against tough righties, you could get Porter, Milner, Stargell and Murcer all in the lineup.

EDIT: And how did Ruth end up on the heaven team? I'm glad to know the Lord doesn't get worked up about whorin' and drinkin' but I'd still think he'd make Ruth wait an eon or two just like the roiders. Or is the Big Guy willing to look the other way as long as Ruth hits some dingers?

EDIT 2: What era is our all-time team playing in? I'm not buying this 9/10-man pitching staff and, even if I was in a 9-10 staff era, I think I might still find room for Hoyt Wilhelm. His career ERA+ is the same as Walter Johnson's.

In 1943, in perhaps his most amazing slugging exhibition, Gibson hit 10 home runs in 40 games at Griffith Stadium, while the Senators hit 9 in 77 games, and the rest of the American League hit another 14.

Gibson's ten may all have been to LF while some of the others might have been hit to RF.

Good point, and in fact that's almost certainly true, since the RF wall was only 320' down the line.

And how did Ruth end up on the heaven team? I'm glad to know the Lord doesn't get worked up about whorin' and drinkin'

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, sex and beer are God's way of letting us know he loves us and wants us to be happy.

Also Mariano Rivera ... are cyborgs alive?* If not "alive" are they "dead" or simply inert?

* Yes, I've seen that Next Generation episode. I thought Picard's case was kinda weak and he only won because Ryker was tanking it. Next you'll be telling me there's a Cylon god.

I did zero research, so this is just of the top of my head. Feel free to criticize.

Starters:
C - Josh Gibson
1B - Lou Gehrig
2B - Eddie Collins
3B - Eddie Mathews
SS - Honus Wagner
LF - Ted Williams
CF - Willie Mays
RF - Babe Ruth

Bench:
C - Buck Ewing
1B - Jimmy Foxx
2B - Rogers Hornsby
3B - Home Run Baker
SS - Pop Lloyd
LF - Stan Musial
CF - Ty Cobb
RF - Hank Aaron

UT - Martin Dihigo

Starters (NOT in any order):
Walter Johnson
Lefty Grove
Pete Alexander
Cy Young
Satchel Paige

Closer:
Hoyt Wilhelm (I think he's dead)

Bullpen:
Kid Nichols
Smokey Joe Williams

That's 25, if I counted right. Hardest decision - Pop Lloyd or George Wright. If I read the sources right, which I may not have, Oscar Charleston, after several years of great great CF, got fat and ended up as a first baseman. I don't know how many years he was which player, or even if he got fat and played 1B at all, really. Dihigo is the emergency catcher. If you try to make a lineup of the starters, Eddie Mathews bats 8th. - Brock Hanke

CF - Willie Mays
RF - Hank Aaron

Sorry Brock, they're only pining for the fjords.

Walt - Thanks. I, doing no research, wasn't completely sure who was dead and who was not, although I should have remembered that Aaron is still alive. Obviously, Cobb would move up to the starters, and I'd have to flip coins between Speaker, Mantle, and Charleston for "backup" CF. My next RF would be Frank Robby, but I think he's still alive, too. I know Paul Waner is dead, so I'll go with him in RF, because I have no way of seriously comparing him to, say, Turkey Stearnes or any other of the big NgL OF bats. Or I could go with Bob Caruthers as a RF/P, which would expand the pitching staff to more like current numbers, while adding amusement value. A "bullpen" of Nichols, Williams, Caruthers and Dihigo is hilarious, at least to me. - Brock

[26] How about a team of dead players who played a game after 1980?

C: Carter
1B: Porter
2B: Uribe
SS: Belanger
3B: Caminiti
LF: Stargell
CF: Puckett
RF: Bobby Bonds


SP: Joe Niekro, Flanagan, Perez, Kile, Splittorff, Lima
RP: Quisenberry, McGraw, Beck, Howe

I started to compile a list, but stopped when I realized I was including too many from my home team (Astros) and that therefore I must be forgetting too many others for the list to be worth posting. Turns out, the only Astro I had that Bob M didn't is RP Dave Smith (instead of Howe)

Brock, Ott would be a better choice than Waner for your revised RF slot. Of course, Mantle played RF as a rookie so maybe you could shift him there.

I'd love to see a list of greatest teams composed of players dead or alive born in each decade.

---

The NeL issue is unfortunate. Yes, ideally we would always try to rank NeL players into these lists but it's tough because of the lack of data - at least data that's easily accessible and placed as best as possible into context. What makes WAR the go-to stat is that it's easy to use on b-r, and Jonathan recognizes that.

I agree with Snapper on Gibson. I've been involved in a lot of Gibson discussions over the years, and in my opinion "among the greatest catchers ever" is about the best we can do. The question should not be an emotional one, but too often it is. Ironically, I actually think it would be unfair to the greatest MLB catchers to rank him above them on the basis of fragmentary data and barnstorming.

The NeL issue is unfortunate. Yes, ideally we would always try to rank NeL players into these lists but it's tough because of the lack of data - at least data that's easily accessible and placed as best as possible into context. What makes WAR the go-to stat is that it's easy to use on b-r, and Jonathan recognizes that.

I agree with Snapper on Gibson. I've been involved in a lot of Gibson discussions over the years, and in my opinion "among the greatest catchers ever" is about the best we can do. The question should not be an emotional one, but too often it is. Ironically, I actually think it would be unfair to the greatest MLB catchers to rank him above them on the basis of fragmentary data and barnstorming.

There's nothing unreasonable about that position, as long as you apply the same terminology"---among the greatest outfielders ever"---to Jim Crow Major Leaguers like Ruth and Cobb, rather than omitting the qualifiers only for the Major Leaguers. Since both the Major Leaguers and the Negro Leaguers were playing against obviously restricted competition, that seems about the best we can do. You know damn well that there's no way (for instance) to prove that Ty Cobb was greater than Oscar Charleston, not in the same way you can prove that Barry Bonds was greater than Ken Griffey Jr.

Of course there are two ways out of the bind: The simplest would be to state that your "all-time best" lists are restricted to Major Leaguers only, and don't make any pretense of making any claims beyond that, unless you want to exclude all players from the Jim Crow era, both black and white.

The other would be to let yourself go beyond knowable numbers, take a deep breath, and admit evidence that can't be proven with any mathematical certainty. This is admittedly a messier way to compile a list, but with all evidence considered it might just turn out a team that really is the all-time best, even if no two people might agree with it.

Basically, if Gibson wasn't the greatest catcher of his time, then no one in the Negro Leagues in the 30s and 40s - whom he consistently out-hit - was more than a very marginal Hall of Famer. The conversions required to knock Gibson down to the level of Dickey and Cochrane would take his peers out of the Hall altogether.

The problem is that assuming things are linear like that isn't necessarily safe. Different environments can cause the transition to affect different players in different ways. The same is true for the jump from AAA to MLB, but the difference is that other than raw quality, the environments between those two levels are quite similar. Not sure that can be said about the Negro Leagues vs MLB.

Obviously though Gibson was a major superstar and deserves to be recognized as such.

Position players two a decade:

1890s = Delahanty, Jennings
1900s = Wagner, Bresnahan (needed him here for a backup C)
1910s = Cobb, Pop Lloyd
1920s = Ruth, Hornsby
1930s = Gehrig, Gibson
1940s = Williams (I suppose this is where Musial would be)
1950s = Mantle, Jackie (or Eddie Mathews it's a very tough call)

So that would be:

C - Gibson
1B - Gehrig
2B - Hornsby
3B - Jackie
SS - Wagner
OF - Williams
OF - Cobb
OF - Ruth

C - Bresnahan
IF - Jennings
IF - Lloyd
OF - Mantle
OF - Delahanty

You could, if you like, get rid of Bresnahan and add Gary Carter. But I always thought Bresnahan has gotten underrated because of the reality of how often Catchers could reasonably play back then.

The 1880s guys are hard because of the vastly different nature of the game but maybe you could also get rid of Bresnahan and add Buck Ewing.

versus

1960s = Mays, Aaron
1970s = Bench, Morgan, Carew
1980s = Schmidt, Henderson, Ripken
1990s = Bonds, ARod, Griffey
2000s = Pujols, Mauer

C - Bench
1B - Pujols
2B - Morgan
3B - Schmidt
SS - ARod
OF - Bonds
OF - Mays
OF - Aaron

The team might need an extra lefty hitter as there are only two in that lineup. I guess you could replace Aaron with Griffey (or throw him out and add Yaz) and Mauer would play for Bench a lot against righties.

C - Mauer
IF - Carew
IF - Ripken
OF - Henderson
OF - Griffey

I don't doubt that Gibson belongs on an all-time great team, just not sure if he belongs at catcher. Playing catcher in the NeL was a significantly different job than playing a 162 game, 9 inning grind in MLB.

Looks like the "live" team has the better gloves and the "dead" team has the better bats.

You know damn well that there's no way (for instance) to prove that Ty Cobb was greater than Oscar Charleston, not in the same way you can prove that Barry Bonds was greater than Ken Griffey Jr.

Andy, I don't see it as an equally reciprocal situation. For one player (Cobb) we have lots of evidence; for the other player (Charleston) we have less evidence. That's simply the way it is, and no amount of hand waving will change that.

It may be that the greatest baseball player ever was a wheat farmer in Iowa in 1932. But since she never played against MLB competition, we don't have enough evidence to say, and we can rank Ruth ahead of her with reasonable certainty.

Andy, I don't see it as an equally reciprocal situation. For one player (Cobb) we have lots of evidence; for the other player (Charleston) we have less evidence. That's simply the way it is, and no amount of hand waving will change that.

Concur. For Charleston we have 3000 NeML PAs, for Cobb we have 13,000 MLB PAs. For Gibson we have 1570 NeML PAs for Ruth we have 10,600 MLB PAs.

I don't doubt that Gibson belongs on an all-time great team, just not sure if he belongs at catcher. Playing catcher in the NeL was a significantly different job than playing a 162 game, 9 inning grind in MLB.

The first 162 game schedule in the Majors wasn't until 1961 (AL) and 1962 (NL). But never mind that, because Mickey Cochrane never even played 140 games in a season, and played 130 or more only six times. And in the only nine years Bill Dickey was even eligible for the batting title, he averaged 127 games. Between regular games and exhibition games, including some days he played three games in a row in different towns, Gibson would've easily beaten that.

Cochrane and Dickey also traveled in first class accommodations and ate on a regular schedule. Gibson traveled in beat up buses and cars, and stayed in run down hotels and rooming houses. If you'd dropped Cochrane or Dickey into that sort of environment, I'd love to see how they would've handled it.

Whether Gibson was better than Bench or Piazza, we'll never know, because they played in different eras under radically different conditions. We can argue the points in favor of any of them, but with no definitive answer.

-----------------------------------------

You know damn well that there's no way (for instance) to prove that Ty Cobb was greater than Oscar Charleston, not in the same way you can prove that Barry Bonds was greater than Ken Griffey Jr.

Andy, I don't see it as an equally reciprocal situation. For one player (Cobb) we have lots of evidence; for the other player (Charleston) we have less evidence. That's simply the way it is, and no amount of hand waving will change that.

That completely misses the point. Of course we have more evidence of Cobb's records against white Major Leaguers than we have of Charleston's records in the Negro Leagues. But all that speaks to is Cobb's relative standing within the Major Leagues. It doesn't address how either might have performed in a mixed league against equal competition.

It may be that the greatest baseball player ever was a wheat farmer in Iowa in 1932. But since she never played against MLB competition, we don't have enough evidence to say, and we can rank Ruth ahead of her with reasonable certainty.

It doesn't speak too well of your confidence in your own argument that you'd compare Oscar Charleston to a hypothetical woman as a way of making a point, but then your comparisons are always colorful if nothing else.

That completely misses the point. Of course we have more evidence of Cobb's records against white Major Leaguers than we have of Charleston's records in the Negro Leagues. But all that speaks to is Cobb's relative standing within the Major Leagues. It doesn't address how either might have performed in a mixed league against equal competition.


Is it really likely that the best players in a league drawing from 10-12% of the population are going to be better than the best players in a league drawing from the other 90%?

Is it really likely that the best players in a league drawing from 10-12% of the population are going to be better than the best players in a league drawing from the other 90%?

So it doesn't seem likely to you that Willie Mays could have been the best player in his league. But he was.

This is a classic Musial-related thread in that no one's actually talking about Musial. Stan the Also-Ran.

Actually a not so far-fetched way of putting a Cobb-Charleston comparison into perspective would be to look at the pool world of the 1980's, when the first "invasion" of Filipino players made it over here.

Prior to that, all the known records and all the known championships were held by American players, and whenever discussions took place as to the "best all-time player", the only real dispute was how to compare the tournament players (or "fun players", as they were referred to by gamblers) to the shadow "champions" of the back roads and bar rooms, where no records were kept but the competition was every bit as intense, or even more so.

Bottom line: Within ten years after the first Filipinos came over here and started gambling and playing in our tournaments, it became universally recognized that the top Filipinos were as good as or better than the top American players. And with the competition now coming from all over Asia and Europe, there are no more than a handful of Americans considered to be in the top 20 overall.

And yet before the mid-1980's, the world of Filipino pool was even more unknown to Americans than the feats of the Negro Leaguers were to the general white public of the 1920's and 30's. Even for those who saw the NeLers play, there were only tales of wonder, and few if any concrete bits of written statistical evidence.

Knowing what we do about how the Filipinos fared once they came over here, it's not unrealistic to imagine that their best players prior to that time were a match for our best, even without statistical "proof". And knowing what we do about how the best black players fared in the Major Leagues once they were integrated---and how their fathers and grandfathers fared in exhibitions against the Major Leaguers of their time---it takes more than "hand waving" to pretend that we can say with any assurance at all that the best Major Leaguers in the era of Cobb and Charleston were necessarily better than the best Negro Leaguers.

Is it really likely that the best players in a league drawing from 10-12% of the population are going to be better than the best players in a league drawing from the other 90%?

Look at the NL offensive leaderboards of the 1950's and 1960's and then repeat that comment with a straight face. I'll see your response tomorrow after the Hitchcock mini-festival is over.

If I were to guess how it worked, I'd guess that the top 1% from each league were probably pretty close to even, but then the gap would widen the further down the list you go. So that the top 35% of Major Leaguers were probably substantially better as a group than the top 35% of Negro Leaguers.

It is a little dangerous to necessarily extrapolate the percentage of black players who were top hitting stars from the 50s and 60s to the teens through 30s, particularly since the trend really didn't hold by the end of the 80s. IOW it might have just been a 40s through 60s thing and not necessarily a teens through 60s thing. Or it could have been the same throughout.

The way I see it, you can probably bump a guy like Charleston all the way up into Joe DiMaggio/Tris Speaker territory and be pretty sure he's at least close to there. But it's just so hard to have him surpass a guy like Cobb, because even the tiniest bit of regression based uncertainty would have him come up short. When it came to MLB stars of the teens, there were two groups: Ty Cobb and everyone else. I really think Gibson is the only pre-integration Negro Leaguer with enough of enough to get him up into that kind of rarefied air.

Bottom line: Within ten years after the first Filipinos came over here and started gambling and playing in our tournaments, it became universally recognized that the top Filipinos were as good as or better than the top American players. And with the competition now coming from all over Asia and Europe, there are no more than a handful of Americans considered to be in the top 20 overall.

Dog meat is a PED.

Pool is nowhere near as popular now as it was 60 or 70 years ago, when bar pastimes were a much more common form of distraction. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a commensurate decline in general ability as the talent pool evaporated. Lord knows it happened with boxing.

Is it really likely that the best players in a league drawing from 10-12% of the population are going to be better than the best players in a league drawing from the other 90%?

At what point since the 1950s has it not been obviously, objectively true that the best African-American and/or "black" players were as good as or better than the best white players? Jackie Robinson, Campanella, Mays, Banks, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson, Clemente, Stargell, Carew, Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Ozzie Smith, Barry Larkin, Frank Thomas, Pedro Martinez, Matt Kemp, etc., etc.

For one player (Cobb) we have lots of evidence; for the other player (Charleston) we have less evidence.

But if the question being asked is, "Who was better, Cobb or Charleston?", the lack of evidence of how good a player Charleston was is equally damning to both sides of the question. How can you express an opinion about how much better Cobb was than Charleston or how much likely he is to have been better without a sense of how good a player Charleston was? If you can't say anything about Charleston, then you can't say anything about Cobb in relation to Charleston.

It is a little dangerous to necessarily extrapolate the percentage of black players who were top hitting stars from the 50s and 60s to the teens through 30s, particularly since the trend really didn't hold by the end of the 80s.

I don't understand what you mean here. The OPS+ league leaders from 1988 - 1991 included Darryl Strawberry, Kevin Mitchell, Fred McGriff, Barry Bonds, Rickey Henderson, and Frank Thomas.

Well if you look at the top five position from the 1960s, probably four of the five were black (Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Clemente). From the 1980s, one of the five (Rickey) were. Maybe you could stretch that to two, but I don't think so. The 90s were a little higher with Bonds and possibly Griffey (not sure how you want to classify ARod), but then there's Piazza, Bagwell and Chipper as well. I'd say two in the 70s (Morgan and Carew).

All I'm saying is, just because during the 50s and 60s more than half of the top five position stars were black, doesn't mean that would have also been the case from the 1910s to 1940s.

If you can't say anything about Charleston, then you can't say anything about Cobb in relation to Charleston.

But you can. If the weather on July 4th this year in Phoenix is 121 degrees, while I can't say for sure it will be hotter than any July 4th since I've been here (since I don't know all the high temps the last 11 years), I can still take an educated guess that it probably would be, since days that hot on any day are so incredibly rare.

Players of Cobb's quality (in the context of MLB when he played) are so rare, if you have another player whose quality you know a lot less about, your best guess would naturally be lower than that. It's regression more than anything.

The 90s were a little higher with Bonds and possibly Griffey (not sure how you want to classify ARod), but then there's Piazza, Bagwell and Chipper as well.

If you're not including Frank Thomas as one of the best hitters of the 1990s, you're not doing it right.

But more generally, the 1950's don't have to be representative of the 1910s-30s to put Gibson and Charleston on a 25-man "best dead" roster. The 1980s work just fine. By BB-Ref WAR, the best player of the 1980s - by 10 wins - was African-American (Rickey), as were 4 of the next 11 (Ozzie, Raines, Dawson, Eddie Murray). Since they started playing together, it has always been the case that the best African-American and/or black baseball players have been at least comparable in talent and value to the best white players. If that was also true in the 1920s and 1930s, then Charleston and Gibson have very strong cases for being comparable in talent to their white contemporaries.

If you're not including Frank Thomas as one of the best hitters of the 1990s, you're not doing it right.

Position players. Thomas was one of the best five hitters, but not one of the best five position players. And yeah, I'd put Gibson in my top 25 dead team, I just did. Delahanty is in there and not Charleston because I wanted representation across several decades (and Hornsby was needed as an infielder). And Williams, Cobb, Ruth and Mantle all fall under the "regression" explanation above.

Position players. Thomas was one of the best five hitters, but not one of the best five position players.

BB-Ref WAR, 1990 - 1999, position players only:

1. Barry Bonds, 77.9
2. Ken Griffey, Jr., 65.0
3. Jeff Bagwell, 55.0
4. Craig Biggio, 51.4
5.(t) Barry Larkin, 50.6
5.(t) Frank Thomas, 50.6

You're using a different interpretation (and one that punishes players whose careers start in the middle of decades), obviously since ARod isn't on there. The players get ranked first, and then I group them roughly by decade. ARod missed half the 90s, but he's a better fit there than the 2000s. WAR also unfairly punishes catchers, and I definitely put Piazza ahead of Thomas. Chipper also didn't play throughout the entire 90s, but is best fit there and I think bests Frank by a nose.

So no, neither Frank, nor Larkin would be in my 90s top 5. Nor Biggio for that matter either.

You're using a different interpretation (and one that punishes players whose careers start in the middle of decades), obviously since ARod isn't on there. The players get ranked first, and then I group them roughly by decade.

Well, you're the one who mentioned "90s". But we're getting into semantics. There was a period of time where Frank Thomas was unquestionably one of the two or three best players in major-league baseball, even with his horrific baserunning and fielding.

At what point since the 1950s has it not been obviously, objectively true that the best African-American and/or "black" players were as good as or better than the best white players? Jackie Robinson, Campanella, Mays, Banks, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson, Clemente, Stargell, Carew, Rickey Henderson, Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Ozzie Smith, Barry Larkin, Frank Thomas, Pedro Martinez, Matt Kemp, etc., etc.


As good, yes. Better, I don't think so.

All I'm saying is, just because during the 50s and 60s more than half of the top five position stars were black, doesn't mean that would have also been the case from the 1910s to 1940s.

Exactly.

Look at the NL offensive leaderboards of the 1950's and 1960's and then repeat that comment with a straight face. I'll see your response tomorrow after the Hitchcock mini-festival is over.

Andy, are you arguing that blacks have some inherent superiority to whites in playing baseball? Because, if that were true, why are approximately zero of the best players today American blacks?

Isn't it more likely that baseball drew a disproportionate amount of attention/effort from blacks in the '50s and '60s because it was a rare escape from poverty, and now there are lots of other options?

When a large percentage of the white population had baseball as a rare escape from poverty (1900-1930's), it's likely you got a lot more great white ballplayers, than in the '50s and '60 where an average white guy could earn a decent living anywhere, or even go to college with relative ease.

I would say if you took the best 20 position players whose careers were the bulk amount between 1890-1942, having 8 black players would be about the right amount. Whereas from 1946-1998 maybe that number is more like 10 to 12. The increase in players from the Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and then Venezuela complicates that latter half though. For the first group, almost all the foreigners of note were Cubans. (And we'll leave Japan out of this).

So something like Gibson, Suttles, Wells, Lloyd, Charleston, Torriente, Home Run Johnson or Frank Grant and maybe Pete Hill would cover a nice range of positions and active years. And you can then add Cobb, Ruth, Hornsby, Collins, Cochrane, Wagner, Delahanty, Gehrig, Jennings (my list so "peak" guys rule), Speaker, DiMaggio and Foxx would be a good dozen. There's not a lukewarm HOFer in there besides Jennings and I felt like I needed another shortstop, and for four years Jennings fit in quite well with the rest.

There's plenty of solid HOF guys from that era who wouldn't be in that top 20, whether it's Charlie Gehringer and Arky Vaughan or Biz Mackey and Turkey Stearnes. But if I were to guess at the right ratio, that (around 40%) would be my guess. A little less from like 1890-1910, a little more from say 1925-1942.

But that's still just a guess.

why are approximately zero of the best players today American blacks?

How small is your set of "best players today" that it doesn't include Andrew McCutchen and Matt Kemp?

I guess circa right now, if you were to list the top 12 American (or Canadian or Cuban) position players, something like: Mauer, Posey, Kemp, Braun, Trout, McCutchen, Zobrist, Votto, Tulowitzki, Longoria, Pujols (I guess he belongs on here) and David Wright maybe? Who is the best black American position player not on this list? Fielder, Granderson, Phillips, one of the Uptons, Bourn or Stanton? I think Stanton will be on this list real soon.

So right now that ratio looks like 25 to 30% (3 out of 11 or 12 on the list).

EDIT: I forgot Cespedes who should count, but I don't think he would make the top 12 yet either.

Bottom line: Within ten years after the first Filipinos came over here and started gambling and playing in our tournaments, it became universally recognized that the top Filipinos were as good as or better than the top American players. And with the competition now coming from all over Asia and Europe, there are no more than a handful of Americans considered to be in the top 20 overall.

Dog meat is a PED.

Yeah, but practicing rotation and then playing nine ball is even more of one. It's like going from Justin Verlander to Carl Pavano, and the Filipinos have been doing it for many decades.

Pool is nowhere near as popular now as it was 60 or 70 years ago, when bar pastimes were a much more common form of distraction. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a commensurate decline in general ability as the talent pool evaporated. Lord knows it happened with boxing.

It's possible, but not likely. BITGOD (and there actually was such a thing in pool), there was so much easy money to be had from suckers on the local level** that local players never had to be that good to take it down. Whereas today, the easy money to be picked up from one-on-one pool gambling has evaporated, since the fish are throwing away their money on lottery tickets, poker and casinos, where they think they can win, rather than in a game that takes far more apparent skill. (I say "apparent" since poker is every bit as much of a skill game in the long run.) Which means that in order to make a living at the game today a MUCH higher level of skill is required.

In addition, the equipment today is far tougher than BITGOD. The pockets are smaller and cut at angles that make shots down the rail far more likely to jar than they used to on most tables. Add the foreign players to the mix and the overall level of talent at the top is almost certainly at an all time high.

**There were over 2000 pool rooms in New York City in the 1920's. You'd be lucky to find two dozen today. More proof of our declining culture.

Who is the best black American position player not on this list? Fielder, Granderson, Phillips, one of the Uptons, Bourn or Stanton? I think Stanton will be on this list real soon.

He may not be the right answer, and he's definitely not top 12 overall, but Adam Jones probably belongs in this part of the conversation.

I would say if you took the best 20 position players whose careers were the bulk amount between 1890-1942, having 8 black players would be about the right amount. Whereas from 1946-1998 maybe that number is more like 10 to 12. The increase in players from the Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and then Venezuela complicates that latter half though. For the first group, almost all the foreigners of note were Cubans. (And we'll leave Japan out of this).

This seems to me to agree with Andy's basic point. If you agree that the top NeL players deserve to be considered in the conversation, then I'm not sure there's any disagreement.

My point is that you would ultimately have something like 1 out of the top 5, 3 out of the top 10, and 8 out of the top 20 because of regression. Because our best guess for any player we have some uncertainties about is just never going to be Ty Cobb or Ted Williams or Barry Bonds. That's not a best guess for anybody.

Andy, are you arguing that blacks have some inherent superiority to whites in playing baseball? Because, if that were true, why are approximately zero of the best players today American blacks?

Isn't it more likely that baseball drew a disproportionate amount of attention/effort from blacks in the '50s and '60s because it was a rare escape from poverty, and now there are lots of other options?

When a large percentage of the white population had baseball as a rare escape from poverty (1900-1930's), it's likely you got a lot more great white ballplayers, than in the '50s and '60 where an average white guy could earn a decent living anywhere, or even go to college with relative ease.

First, I'm not arguing for any "inherent" superiority of black ballplayers, either then or now. What I am saying, and all I am saying, is that you can't show with the statistics we have that the best MLB players in the Jim Crow era were better than the best NeL players. Was Cobb better than Charleston? Was Grove better than Paige? To state either of those propositions---or their opposite---is more a matter of faith and / or intuition than any sort of rigorous study.

I brought up the leaderboards of the 50's and 60's not to show any "inherent" superiority of black ballplayers, but to make the point that simply assuming the superiority of the best white Major Leaguers in the Jim Crow era over their best black contemporaries in the Negro Leagues is just that---an assumption, an assertion that can't be proven. It's the same reason I brought up that comparison of American and Filipino pool players. There are simply too many unknown and conjectural factors out there to make any blanket statements of superiority, no matter how many closed circles of statistics you can gather about one of those sets of players.

The difference is that the Major leagues from 1910-1942 and the Negro Leagues (and the random assorted games that go with them) are not two sets of leagues that we know equally as much about, nor did they have the same level of uniformity in competition and environment, nor did they have the same level of statistical accuracy and completeness in their numerical records (and the Negro Leagues had much shorter seasons usually). That's a huge part of the tragedy of it all, guys like Charleston never really got to show exactly how good they really were at the same level of competition and so we're left with little lingering what ifs that can never be answered.

Ultimately we just know more about Ty Cobb's playing career than Oscar Charleston's. And at that extremely high level of performance, it gives Cobb an advantage if we were to take a best guess at how good they were. Gibson is the only one whom the statistical and contemporary evidence we have is so overwhelming that I think he reaches that level of certainty. People thought Lloyd and Charleston were great players. They stared in disbelief at Gibson.

BITGOD (and there actually was such a thing in pool), there was so much easy money to be had from suckers on the local level**...**There were over 2000 pool rooms in New York City in the 1920's. You'd be lucky to find two dozen today. More proof of our declining culture.

But I'd say that only supports my belief, not rebukes it. All of those old-timey pool players would be doing something else these days. Surely you can't think that only the most naturally talented potential pool players are attracted to the game; there's a discover process, a winnowing, a refinement of talent that produces the best wheat when allowed to shed much chaff. The same thing certainly held for boxing during this same period, when New York played host to hundreds of boxing clubs and you could find a professional card every night of the week. In today's environment do you think there's a chance in hell Benny Leonard (still universally considered an all-time elite lightweight) becomes a boxer? All-time elite lightheavyweight Gene Tunney? That's boxing's loss. Obviously that's a good thing for an contemporary Leonard or Tunney equivalents of course, their brains have more value to society as something more than targets but that's neither here nor there.

In addition, the equipment today is far tougher than BITGOD.

Well that's an entirely separate issue, and one very pertinent to boxing as well, as the 1920s was an era with 6oz gloves, almost no referee stoppages, varying judging rules and standards, and nonexistent athletic commissions that allowed Harry Greb to fight 20+ times a year. Today's bigger, more uniform gloves with high tech padding means broken hands are things of the past, opening up new techniques of punching and blocking, for example. I don't think that detracts from the larger point - bigger pool equates to better talent at the top, all things considered.

Ultimately we just know more about Ty Cobb's playing career than Oscar Charleston's. And at that extremely high level of performance, it gives Cobb an advantage if we were to take a best guess at how good they were. Gibson is the only one whom the statistical and contemporary evidence we have is so overwhelming that I think he reaches that level of certainty. People thought Lloyd and Charleston were great players. They stared in disbelief at Gibson.

Charleston was often compared to Cobb by many of their Major League contemporaries, and not unfavorably, and by white sportswriters who saw him play. McGraw thought Charleston was better. There's no way to prove any of that, but there's one more thing we do know: Cobb refused to compete against blacks after a not so great showing against some black Cuban teams early in his career. Perhaps it was merely racism on Cobb's part, but in that case it seems strange that that same racism wouldn't have stopped him from playing against blacks before. OTOH Charleston never ducked competing against whites.

All of those old-timey pool players would be doing something else these days. Surely you can't think that only the most naturally talented potential pool players are attracted to the game; there's a discover process, a winnowing, a refinement of talent that produces the best wheat when allowed to shed much chaff.

I'd say that's true if you were just to talk about the United States, but that bigger American talent pool has now been replaced by the foreign pool, which is infinitely deeper, especially in Asia. If that hadn't happened, I'd be more likely to consider your point valid. Speaking from my relatively limited experience, there was far more pool talent in the Washington area 40 or 45 years ago than there is today. But since the top local players now compete on a national level, and the top national players compete against the best foreign players, the talent at the very top hasn't really dropped. I've seen the best of them play since the mid-1960's and the best players from any era aren't any better or worse than the players from other time periods.

Of course pool is also different from boxing in one very important respect: In pool, there's almost never been a (male) player since Willie Mosconi who's been capable of winning more than about 20% of the biggest tournaments against world competition; the talent difference among the top 10 players is much smaller than the difference among the top 10 boxers in any weight division.