SPOTSWOOD POLES

Many experts on Black Baseball say that Poles was one of the greatest ever to play the game. Spotswood usually batter in the lead-off position where he could use his incredible speed, which was comparable to the of the great Cool Papa Bell. He was clocked one time running the 100-yard dash in under ten seconds.

The 5'7" 165 pounds Poles, a bowlegged switch hitter, played in an era from which most Negro League statistics are lost, but an indication of Poles' greatness was his nickname, "The Black Ty Cobb." He broke into professional baseball in the Negro Leagues as the centerfielder for the powerful 1909 Philadelphia Giants. He moved on to the New York Lincoln Giants in 1911, where he would go on to bat an amazing .440 for the season and steal 41 bases in only 60 games.

Over the next three seasons he would put up some unbelievable numbers. Poles hit .398 in 1912, .414 in 1913 and .487 in 1914. In the 1915 Black Baseball Championship with the Lincoln Giants club Poles batted only .205, but because of his speed and baserunning ability scored 11 runs.

In a fifteen year career that started in 1909 and finished in 1923, Poles is credited with a .400 batting average and a .319 average for four winter league seasons in Cuba, including the 1913 Cuba winter league season where he recorded a .355 average. He is also credited with a .610 batting average in exhibition games against major league competition, many of which took place while Poles was in Cuba. In a game against Grover Cleveland Alexander he rapped thee straight hits against the rangy Hall of Famer.

Poles enlisted in the 369th Infantry, United States Army in 1917 at the age of thirty, and earned five battle stars and a Purple Heart while fighting in France.

Regardless of the lack of complete statistics, eyewitness accounts of his greatness are everywhere. John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants, said that Poles, John Henry Lloyd, Cannonball Redding and Smoky Joe Williams would be the four black players he would have picked for the major leagues had not the color line been so firmly entrenched. Some, like renowned actor/athlete Paul Robeson believed Spotswood Poles along with Jesse Owens, Joe Louis and Jack Johnson were the greatest black athletes of that time.