The recent reinstatement of Pete Rose, Shoeless Joe Jackson, the rest of the famed 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” and a few other long-deceased and long-forgotten players from more than a century ago made big news in baseball circles this month. Commentary continues on the Hall of Fame-worthiness of Rose, Jackson and perhaps a couple of the newly un-banned standouts.
Lurking too is the discussion about Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez and a few others whose career numbers would get them to Cooperstown easily but whose off-field activities, primarily connections with performance enhancing substances, have kept them out of the Hall and, in some cases, out of baseball.
Just how good were the newly reinstated players compared to the “shadow-banned” stars of more recent vintage? Strat-O-Matic (@strat-o-matic), the market leader in sports simulations, put it to the test with a contest between squads made up of the best players from those two groups. Taking the hill for the “Shadow Banned” stars was Clemens, facing Eddie Cicotte, famed for being among the ringleaders of the group throwing the 1919 World Series.
Dotted with multi-time All-Stars like Bonds, Canseco, Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Mark McGwire and others, the modern team looked on paper like a more accomplished squad than Rose, Buck Weaver, Chick Gandil, Happy Felsch and the others. But in the Strat-O-Matic simulation, it was Cicotte who held that juggernaut team to six hits over seven innings, getting relief help from co-conspirator (and three-game loser in the ‘19 Series) Lefty Williams for a 4-2 Reinstated Team triumph.
Rodriguez led off the game with a solo home run, and Bonds hit one out in the fifth for a 2-0 lead. But Jackson drove in two runs with a sixth-inning double, and shortstop Swede Risberg brought in the go-ahead marker with a double in the seventh, followed by unheralded catcher Gene Paulette’s RBI single for the final margin.
The eight reinstated Black Sox make up a significant portion of that 1919 Chicago team that is one of the eight teams in the Strat-O-Matic Deadball Diamond Gems set releasing next month, with eight extensively researched and fully super-advanced squads from that era.
Shadow Banned… 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 – 2 7 0
Reinstated…… 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0 – 4 5 1
WP: Cicotte; LP: Clemens; SV: Williams
HR: Rodriguez, Bonds