Time to add the great Negro League legend Chino Smith to my long-running 1972 sub-set celebrating the greats of the Negro Baseball Leagues:
Smith, one of the most feared hitters
in Negro League history, was called one of the greatest hitters by none
other than Satchel Paige.
His career .434 batting average is
50 points ahead of the #2 player, Hall of Famer Larry Doby, while also
finishing with a .335 career average in Cuban Winter play.
For
a better idea of his hitting accomplishments, please click this link
for his Baseball_Reference page, as it certainly does more justice to
the man than I could here:
Sadly,
in one of the great "what could have been" tales of the game, Smith
contracted Yellow Fever in 1932, still only 29 years of age, and passed
away, leaving behind an already stellar career but full of "what if's"
we can only dream about.