Sunday Punch: An MLBNegro Leagues fantasy series

Negro Leagues, MLB stars play fantasy series

These days we are all rethinking our thinking, or we should be doing that, so let’s take a swing at preintegration baseball.

Conventional wisdom has always been that a lot of the top players in the Negro Leagues were good enough to have played in the white major leagues.

What if it was the other way around — that some of top white players, had they been given a chance, were good enough to play in the Negro Leagues?

What if the talent gap between the two entities was smaller than many have assumed? What if there was no gap?

To find out, let’s play a bestofseven championship series between a team of the greatest Negro Leaguers of all time and a team of the best major leaguers of that preintegration era.

No computers, no simulated games, just talk. A theoretical musing.

I got the thought after reading about a project that Joe Posnanski of the Athletic launched to honor the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Negro Leagues in 1920. The project consists of simply asking readers to email a photo or video of yourself tipping your cap, along with a few words if you wish, to photos@ tippingyourcap.com.

I asked Posnanski to help me assemble the two teams. He’s a veteran ball scribe and author of “The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America.” Who would be on our two teams? We could debate those rosters forever, but the two teams presented here are pretty doggone solid, and representative of the very best players of the era, 1920 to 1947.

Major Leaguers

1B Lou Gehrig ,2B Rogers Hornsby ,3B Pie Traynor ,SS Lou Boudreau ,LF Ted Williams ,CF Joe DiMaggio ,RF Babe Ruth ,C Bill Dickey

SP Lefty Grove, Carl Hubbell, Bob Feller

RP Dazzy Vance, Hal Newhouser

Negro Leaguers

1B Buck Leonard ,2B Newt Allen ,3B Judy Johnson ,SS Pop Lloyd ,LF Monte Irvin, CF Oscar Charleston ,RF Turkey Stearnes ,C Josh Gibson

SP Satchel Paige, Smokey Joe Williams, Bullet Rogan RP Leon Day, Hilton Smith, Don Newcombe, Ray Brown

These would be not only the best baseball players of that threedecade era, but the best American athletes of that time. There was no NBA, and the NFL was a relatively lowrent operation. Baseball was king.

The majorleague team has a big advantage over the Negro Leaguers in the size of its talent pool, with white folks making up roughly 85% of the U.S. population back then. Every majorleague team had seven or eight farm teams. Deep pool. The Negro Leaguers shrug that off, saying, “Overcoming odds and obstacles has always been a big part of our narrative.”

The underdog angle would figure heavily into the preseries hype and buildup. Posnanski says, “I’d probably pick the Negro Leaguers to win because they’d have a whole lot of extra motivation.”

I challenge that statement. The white players lived in an ivory tower throughout that era, and fear of being evicted from that tower would be profound, the potential for embarrassment colossal. Many apologists for segregated baseball back then expressed the belief that Black players simply could not perform at a majorleague level.

The Negro Leaguers would not be taken lightly by their opponent. Williams, who spoke up in favor of integrating baseball during his career, would warn his teammates they were in for a serious fight.

I believe the Black squad would be more battlehardened. While major leaguers traveled in relative luxury by train, the Negro Leaguers rode buses, secondclass baseball citizens accustomed to playing tired, hurt and hungry.

The series would be a fascinating contrast of styles. The Negro Leaguers played with a flair and exuberance that the white players of the time would have considered unprofessional. The greater baseball world got a glimpse of Negro Leagues style when a young Willie Mays, who played briefly for the Birmingham Black Barons, rocked the major leagues with his basket catches, flying cap and joyful style.

That would be an eyeopener for the white fans, and probably for the white players, too. The Negro Leaguers would bring down the house in pregame warmups with their phantom infield drill, dazzling plays made with a pretend ball. Then it would come down to playing baseball.

I’ve got Paige and Grove squaring off in the opener. Paige may have been the best pitcher ever. He finally got his shot at the major leagues in 1948, when he was 42, and he went 61 for the Cleveland Indians. That was after pitching a million hard innings on mounds all over the world over a quarter century. In this series, we see Satchel in his prime.

“It feels to me like you could make a good argument for either team winning the series,” Posnanski says, “which to me tells the whole story of how great the Negro Leaguers were.”

I don’t know who wins, but the series goes seven games, and it all comes down to DiMaggio digging in against Paige with the game on the line.

And when it’s over, they all meet on the infield, sharing a new mutual respect and admiration, and walk off, arminarm, into the cornfield.

Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler

Hulton Archive / Getty Images Yankees great Joe DiMaggio would dig in against Paige in our imaginary Game 7 between the Negro League and MLB stars.

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum Satchel Paige, shown in the Negro Leagues circa 1939, finally got his shot at the major leagues in 1948, when he was 42.