Episode 86: One of the Best Baseball Players You've Never Heard of, Spottswood Poles

Record keeping was haphazard in the early days of baseball - it was even less standardized for African American players in the Negro Leagues. Even so, with the statistics that are available, we can say for certain that Spottswood Poles was one of the best. With hitting like Ty Cobb and speed that rivaled Cool Papa Bell, it is likely that if Poles had played in the heyday of the Negro League, not long before Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier, that he would be in the Hall of Fame today.

Poles baseball career was interrupted by World War I. He joined the unit that would go on to be known as the Harlem Hellfighters (see Episodes 31-32) and see some of the heaviest fighting of any American unit in the Great War. Army Sergeant Spottswood Poles was 74 when he dies in 1962 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 42, Grave 2324.