Yes he did.
I may be a Neanderthal but I do understand the difference in the argument whether a player cheated with steroids or not and how it should affect how players are evaluated for the Hall of Fame. But this isn’t about who should be in the Hall. It is who the greatest players are in the history of the game. Ty Cobb was a racist jerk, I’d argue that is worse than breaking the rules of baseball but I’d still consider him for this list. I may have missed the rules of who should be considered but I am coming from purely how much did players dominate their era and how they stack against each other.
Like Trout and Pujols, I assume he was roiding in HS.
I compartmentalize that aspect. I have no problem considering Cobb or Puckett or Rocker. But I can’t include Sosa or ARod. Baseball is baseball, personality is not. Bonds played the game that was placed in front of him. ARod played in the shadows.
I have never heard of Charleston, and can tell you now I will never vote for him without some serious stumping, but he is a HOFer, so I will add him for you next poll.
Oscar Charleston's baseball reference page. Google him. Buck O'Neil said he was the best that ever played the game. He said Oscar could have hit 50 homers and stole 100 bases every season.
www.baseball-reference.com
You’ve never heard of him?
True story
You’re in for a real treat learning about this unicorn then.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if he did them for over a decade. But if we're saying Bonds didn't cheat because there were no official rules with suspensions and testing til that went into effect then you kind of have to give Rodriguez a pass until then. And he put up some great numbers in the seasons before that. I guess it depends on where you cut off his numbers or whether the later career suspensions disqualifies him from being in the all time great list. But again, yeah, he definitely used steroids and probably for a long, long time.
You’re in for a real treat learning about this unicorn then.
Pretty much Willie Mays before Willie Mays. Except maybe more power and faster.
He’s in my Top Ten.
And we don’t have all the stats from the N-Leagues. I have a very hard time giving them ANY veracity because you are dealing with such an incomplete dataset. and, to be fair, I am not even sure how those leagues were run. Were there schedules? Did they have playoffs? Championships? Were they just barnstorming? If so, were they playing against themselves, or did they play against local “all star” teams? I just don’t know how they were structured.
His stats do back up the stories. He dominated his leagues until he was 30.
