[Cool Papa Bell]

Don't hate me! And yeeesssss...I can turn the light switch off and get in bed and be under the covers before it gets dark...just sayin'... :-)

Seriously though, I do have quite a few years of researching these players and baseball history in general, so any input I'd be happy to give you. As far as Bill James, he and Stats Inc are fairly pompous and not all that knowledgeable about the NeL's. Everything is not pure statistics when it comes to rating these players, since so much of the history was either not recorded at all or lost. Stats oriented guys cannot fathom that. And yes, the 'Black Honus Wagner' reference is just what Lloyd was called as a nickname during his day, but his hitting ability put him on par with Cobb.

By the way, for the past 9 years we have in fact been pitting Victor Starffin against Mel Ott and Satchel Paige facing Babe Ruth and Oh stepping in against Luis Tiant Sr, along with Masaichi Kaneda and Eiji Sawamura and Andy Cooper and Cannonball Redding facing Tris Speaker, Pete Rose, Joe Jackson and on and on...in the Legends of Cooperstown League that I mentioned. It's a Strat-O-Matic based league though, using their HoF 2000 roster set, my created players and a different past season each year. This season we went Deadball with 1912 and had Joe Wood and my favorite Chief Wilson...one of those unbreakable MLB records he holds, do you know what it is...and don't cheat and go to Baseball-Reference.com... :-) Next year we go current with 2006 and see how Manny does against Satchel and Pujols does against Lefty Grove. Excellent league by the way...just sayin'...