José Mendéz Marquee Hall of Fame 2006

The seven seasons the archive counts, 1920 to 1926, have him at 30-9 in 69 games. Seven earlier seasons in independent Black baseball, from 1908, add another 27 wins and 263 strikeouts and fall outside the count. His arm gave out somewhere in between, and the second half of his career he spent as much at shortstop, third base and in the outfield as on the mound.

He played 118 games at pitcher, 79 at shortstop, 76 in the outfield and 64 at third. He managed the Kansas City Monarchs while playing for them. The record is partial because these statistics were not kept with the resources the white major leagues had.

The bulk of what he did was done in Cuba, which this archive does not hold at all, and it is where his reputation was made: he beat touring major-league clubs there, repeatedly, before he was twenty-five. He died at forty-three. The Hall of Fame elected him in 2006 through the special Negro Leagues committee, seventy-eight years later.