Posted By:
JustinI am not arguing that there was not talented players in both the Negro Leagues and Japanese Leagues.
But having read alot of first hand accounts by negro league players most of them point out that although there were plenty of star players, most of the Negro League teams weren't particularly deep and thusly had to field alot of subpar players.
So while at any given time you might have had 20-30 legitimate major league quality players(maybe a low estimate, I am not sure, but I doubt it was much higher) in the Negro Leagues, you also had a lot of fill-ins, scrubs and has-beens that filled out rosters.
Also the Negro League teams played against tons of different opponents, many of them semi-pro and hardly top-flite.
A team of negro league allstars particularly in the 1930's and 40's would likely be quite good in the majors, but that's not the means by which to judge the quality of play in the Negro Leagues.
I believe Josh Gibson was better than any major league catcher from 1928-1947(even Dickey and Hartnett), so I am not denying his talent, but I am just pointing out that he hit against a lot of schmoes from Palookaville.
As for the Japanese Leagues, the same argument I believe holds true. Even if the quality was quite good, I doubt it was major league level. You probably had a lot of potential major leaguers, but the talent pool wasn't nearly as deep as in North America. So Oh as good as he may have been, also faced alot of lower quality talent.
I do know that in 1974 the Japanese Champions were able to play close to .500 ball against the NL Champion Mets in a post season series. So obviously there was some talent.