Negro Leaguers Who Deserve the Hall of Fame

On the Twin Bill Podcast I got the chance to be on last week, Scott Bolohan asked me a good question that I didn’t have an immediate answer for. The subject of our talk was my book about the long road traveled by players from the Negro Leagues to get into the Hall of Fame, and the presence of two more Negro Leaguers - John Donaldson and Vic Harris - on this year’s Class Baseball Era Committee ballot. Scott wanted to know how many Negro Leaguers remained that I felt were worthy of being in Cooperstown but haven’t been elected yet.

I had to honestly tell him that I didn’t have that number off the top of my head, but that it was probably ten or twelve. I mentioned Rap Dixon, and Donaldson, and Harris by name, and later threw in Dick Lundy as well, and I think all of those guys are worthy. But I wanted to form a more complete answer, so I went back and looked at the subject on more detail.

After looking at it a bit more closely, I think I underestimated the number when I gave Scott my answer. There are at least 15 former Negro Leaguers who, in my view, deserve to be elected to the Hall of Fame, and possibly more than two dozen. Here are the ones I’m comfortable supporting right now.

• John Beckwith: A remarkable third baseman/shortstop in the years before the East-West All-Star game was launched, he had a career batting line of .349/.403/.583, a 161 OPS+, and averaged 25 homers, 152 RBI, 123 runs, 210 hits, and 6.8 WAR per 162 games. On top of that he pitched a little bit and had a career ERA+ of 132.