Baseball Remembers: The Cleveland Buckeyes

Since the American League first began playing ball in 1901, only 10 major league teams have managed to post a winning percentage better than .750 in a single season. All but one of them played in the Negro Leagues, where the official league seasons were much shorter.

Here are the 10, from lowest winning percentage to highest.

• 1947 Cleveland Buckeyes, 57-19, .750: More on them in a moment.

• 1938 Homestead Grays, 41-13, .759: This team featured future Hall of Famers like Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Ray Brown. They won the Negro National League pennant by 9.5 games.

• 1946 Kansas City Monarchs, 60-19, 759: Another all-time great roster featuring Satchel Paige, Hilton Smith, Willard Brown, and Buck O’Neil, as well as Ted Strong, Hank Thompson, and Jim LaMarque. They won the Negro American League pennant by 16.0 games before losing a classic World Series, 4 games to 3, to the Newark Eagles of Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, and Leon Day.

• 1906 Chicago Cubs, 116-36, .763: Here they are, the only non-Negro League team in modern baseball to exceed a .750 winning percentage. Built around the famous Tinker-Evers-Chance double play combination, they also had Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown anchoring their pitching staff. They won the National League pennant by 20.0 games over the Giants before losing to their cross-town rivals, the White Sox, in the World Series.

• 1940 Kansas City Monarchs, 36-11, .766: The Monarchs of the 1940s were always good with Paige and Smith on their staff, and this club also had league home run and RBI leader Turkey Stearnes. The won the pennant by 7.5 games.