Baseball is played in all corners of the world, so it is no surprise to learn that some of the greatest hardballers of all time never played on a U.S. major league diamond. Who knows what major league records would have been shattered had Sadaharu Oh of Japan, Josh Gibson of the Negro Leagues, Martin Dihigo of Cuba, Francisco Coimbre of Puerto Rico and Hector Espino of Mexico played in the United States. This work is a survey of the greatest baseball players who never played in the U.S. major leagues. The greatest players from the various professional leagues outside organized baseball in the United States are reviewed, and all-star teams are selected for each league. Finally, the author selects an “all-world all-star team” from the individual all-star teams from Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Negro Leagues.

William F. McNeil is a longtime baseball historian and the author of numerous books on the game. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), he is the recipient of five Robert Peterson awards for increasing the public’s awareness of the Negro Leagues. He lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

William F. McNeil

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 252
Bibliographic Info: 86 photos, bibliography, appendix, index
Copyright Date: 2000
pISBN: 978-0-7864-0784-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1616-2
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii
Introduction      1

1. Baseball in the Nineteenth Century      5
2. An Overview of Baseball (1900–1950)      12
3. An Overview of Baseball (1951–2000)      27
4. Negro League All-Star Team (1900–1925)      43
5. Negro League All-Star Team,(1926–1950)      61
6. The All-Time Negro League All-Star Team, and the Negro League Hall of Fame      79
7. Cuban Winter League All-Star Team (1882–1960)      91
8. Japanese Professional All-Star Team      113
9. Puerto Rican Winter League All-Star Team      136
10. The Mexican League All-Stars      153
11. Other Leagues      170
12. The Ultimate Other All-Star Team      179

Statistical Tables      189
Bibliography      225
Index      227

• Winner, SABR’s Robert Peterson Award for increasing public awareness of Negro League baseball
• “[a] fine book…provocative…will enchant general readers interested in baseball history”—Choice
• “fascinating”—Public Library Quarterly; “a gem, a mother lode of material hitherto unavailable to baseball fans—not even on the Internet”—Nine
• “includes full portraits of such legends as Saduharu Oh, Martin Dihigo and Hector Espino”—USA Today Sports Weekly
• “provides a multitude of statistical tables so the reader can compare the players…illustrated with dozens of black and white photos”—The SABR Bulletin
• “McNeil manages to pack a lot of ‘overview’ histories into the first few pages of each chapter and his all-time all-star teams for each league whet the neophytes’ appetite”—The Diamond Angle
• “wonderful…required reading for anyone who loves the game”—One More Inning