I’d worry about people underrating them.Īaron was, obviously, the greatest of the three. People would be telling tall tales about the power of Stretch McCovey or the impossibly quick bat of Henry Aaron or the gorgeousness of Billy Williams’ hitting and … would you believe it? I wouldn’t worry about people overrating Negro Leaguers. * And if you ever find yourself wondering about the quality of the players in the Negro Leagues, think about this: If Aaron, Williams and McCovey had been born 20 years earlier, all three of them would have spent their primes in the Negro Leagues, and their stories would be told as legend. It’s one of baseball’s beautiful mysteries that three Hall of Fame hitters of that magnitude were born in the same place at the same time.* That was four years after Henry Aaron was born in Mobile and six months before Billy Williams was born in Whistler, just a few miles away.
