This week’s Monster Card comes from Pastor Rich and is from the Negro League set. Oscar Charleston is considered one of best all-around players to play in the Negro Leagues and this card gives him his due.
As always, there are very few stats that back this up. You can read his bio on Baseball Reference but be forewarned that the stats there aren’t complete.
To start, Charleston’s defense is great, a 1B-5. That’s just a start though. His hit numbers are fantastic. He has six zeros and three sevens putting the last one at 51.
Fun numbers: 55-0, 51-7, 26-14, 21-37
I do wonder how APBA does their research on the Negro League cards. I haven’t found any extensive stat collection. Charleston, for example, played for the Homestead Grays in 1931 but the stats indicated in the bio link only have stats for his time with the Philadelphia-based Hilldale Giants.
thanks, Rich!
While I cannot answer the “how did they formulate the APBA card without having complete stats” question, I do know that James A. Riley was involved in creating the set for APBA, along with APBA guy David Lawrence (you find him in many AJ articles, some on Negro Leagues). James A. Riley authored this Negro Leagues Encyclopedia:
“http://www.abebooks.com/9780786700653/Biographical-Encyclopedia-Negro-Baseball-Leagues-0786700653/plp”
– Jim
This is simply a reprint of a card made years and years ago when very few stats are available.
The researchers only tally the stats from “league games” and so Charleston’s stats only reflect and fairly closely it would seem about 33 games. That’s about right for the time. He hit .346 and probably only deserves three power numbers (at least one of them a zero).
Just pure laziness on APBA’s part. Those cards garnered quite a bit of criticism back when they were issued. To reprint them and sell them again …
APBA’s original researchers were obviously influenced by several of the “evangelical” authors pushing black baseball in those years, who, in turn, hung on the words of several 80-year old ex-ballplayers who only got better as they got older. Heck. Buck O’Neill almost “talked” his way into the HoF.
Modern stats gathered by research methods are quite realistic. The HoF got involved in the early 2000s (money) and the research groups that exist today are pretty darned careful.
Mr. Staffa,
Thanks for the comment. I know the card and the current APBA Negro League set is a reprint of their same APBA set they issued in 1994. But I did not realize that there is better, more accurate/complete data today. The info I summarized in my comment was what I knew about the “original” set made in 1994. I was not implying at all, that the set was just made, and with the most current data.
I meant you absolutely no disrespect. Most people don’t really know the history of all this stuff.
Now. To be fair, in 1994, the MacMillan Encyclopedia had Charleston with a .386 average and 20 EBH. That sounds more like that card. Had the number of PA’s about the same. Modern research drops him to 10 EBH and a .346 average.
To be critical. The correct numbers were available as early as 2006 in time for that final sweep of the Negro Leagues for that HoF inclusion in 2007.
Strat-O-Matic had connections that provided them that data, as I understand it. At least for the Stars.
I had a connection in the Press who is an APBA fan who provided me with the Voter’s pack of stats … so I made him a set of 50 or so with the new stats to add to his own collection and later sold 50 copies (they went instantly )
So, if Strat could do it, and I could do it … I think it’s a bit disingenuous to redistribute stuff without bringing it up to date. Just my opinion, mind you. “New guys” will buy that set, they will look at Oscar’s card, they will go to Baseball-Reference …
Bill
Hi Bill,
I appreciate your informed comments. You and I have communicated offline about the Negro League set and its inaccuracies and for the most part, I agree with you.
Tom
I was waiting for Mr Bill Staffa to chime in. ;-)
thanks for input. I love the cards as much as anyone but need some sort of way to justify them.
Well. It’s a good conversation piece, produced with all good intent and with whatever stats were available at the time.
It’s the follow-on printing that becomes the issue … at least in my opinion.
It wasn’t like APBA didn’t know.
Bill Staffa is right about the origin of this card, along with the others for which Jim Riley supplied data for the 1994 Negro Leagues “Great Teams” set. Even though I consider Jim Riley to be a friend, I was not thrilled with the inflated ratings (in all respects) on a great many of those cards. It was, per the above, part of the ethos of the times to try to promote Negro League baseball as worthy of serious study.
Those days are over–I hope. The research that’s published now at seamheads.com couldn’t possibly be more serious: it’s done by experts with the highest possible standards.
For the record, I made two sets of Negro League APBA cards consisting of 16 franchises, each populated by their most important players–one in 2003, and one in 2008. Both sets were published by Francis Rose. My goal was to right the wrong from 1994, make the cards as realistic as current research allowed, and make the entire set playable. That said, these sets would ideally be modified by research more current than those dates.
It’s also my sense that Francis was considered competition by APBA, and hence neither of these sets were a product that APBA was ever going to sell or promote.
And I have no idea how one would obtain them now. I occasionally see them offered on eBay and elsewhere.
What I would suggest, if for instance you wish to add a specific Negro League team/year to a league of yours, is just to go to seamheads.com, harvest the stats there, and process them with Wizard. It’s easy and it’s free. I’m not forgetting that Bill Staffa also has Negro Leagues material for sale, but Bill is in the algorithm business, and his calculations are a lot more complicated than Wizarding the stats: you have to choose which method you feel most comfortable with.
–David Lawrence