Monte Irvin Marquee Hall of Fame 1973

The Newark Eagles had him from 1938: 360 hits, 41 home runs and a .336 average in 291 recorded games, four East-West All-Star selections, and the Negro National League lead in hits, doubles and runs batted in in 1941. The war took the middle out of it. The archive has one game for him in 1943, none in 1944 and two in 1945; he spent those years in the army in Europe.

He was thirty when the Giants finally played him, in July 1949, and eight seasons was all there was time for. His 1951 was the best of them, 174 hits and 24 home runs and a league-leading 121 runs batted in, and New York won the pennant. Across eighteen seasons in both leagues he had 1,091 hits, 140 home runs and 693 runs batted in, batting .306.

Plenty of people in Black baseball had thought he, not Jackie Robinson, would be the one to go first. What he lost, he lost to the war and to waiting. He played a last season for the Cubs in 1956, later worked in the commissioner's office, entered the Hall of Fame in 1973 by way of its Negro Leagues committee, and lived to 96.