Saturday, August 24, 2019

The Baltimore Elites

Four of the teams in this league are rather straight-forward. They are the two pennant winners and two runners-up in the 1924 major league season.

The Washington Senators went 92-62 and won the World Series, the only one in Washington's history. The New York Giants went 96-57 to win the National League pennant before losing a classic Series. The Brooklyn Robins went 92-62, and the New York Yankees went 89-63.

The fifth team is not intended to replicate any specific team. The real-life Baltimore Elite Giants -- pronounced ee-LITE -- didn't exist in 1924, although Terrapin Park did. This team, the Baltimore Elites, is a collection of players listed by Strat-O-Matic's guide to its Negro League set as "caddy companions" to 1924 -- Negro League standouts who were at their peak in 1924.

I regard this roster as a reasonable answer to the imaginary proposition -- if you could put an all-star team of black players in the segregated majors of 1924, what would it look like?

It's a 25-man roster. Players are listed alphabetically. Two are both pitchers and position players; they are both listed as pitchers.  (l) for pitchers is for throwing arm, (l) for position players is for hitting.

Pitchers
William Bell
Dave Brown (l)
Phil Cockrell
Andy Cooper (l)
Dizzy Dizmukes
John Donaldson (l)
Bill Drake
Bill Holland
Bullet Joe Rogan
Tom Williams
Nip Winters (l)

Catchers
Larry Brown (s)
Biz Mackey (s)

Infielders 
John Beckwith
Tank Carr (s)
Home Run Johnson
Judy Johnson
Dick Lundy (s)
Tubby Scales
Ben Taylor (l)

Outfielders
Oscar Charleston (l)
Hurley McNair (s)
Alejandro Oms (l)
Cristobal Torriente (l)
Cheney White 

My expectation is that this team will win the pennant. But I've been wrong before on this stuff.


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