John Henry Lloyd Marquee Hall of Fame 1977

He started with the Cuban X-Giants in 1906 and was still playing in 1931. Only eight of those seasons fall inside the leagues now counted as major, because for most of his career there was no organized Negro league to belong to: the first did not open until 1920, when he was thirty-six.

What the counted years hold is 568 hits and a .348 average in 434 recorded games, with the Negro National League lead in doubles in 1921. The eighteen seasons outside the count add 715 more hits. He played 604 games at shortstop and 247 at second base, and he moved between more than a dozen clubs, which is what a player did when contracts were handshakes and the money followed the crowd.

Honus Wagner is supposed to have said he was honored to be compared with him. The Hall of Fame elected him in 1977 through its Negro Leagues committee, thirteen years after he died. The archive holds a fraction of what he did, and the fraction is the point.