100+ Page Biographies of Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees with Information That Will Never Go Out of Date Shut out of the major leagues, African American players picked up games wherever they could until the official Negro leagues were started. Featuring information that will never go out of date, these six biographies paint the racial and political landscape of the first half of the last century, while featuring the life stories of some of the Negro leagues’–indeed, all of baseball’s–greatest players. A biography of James Thomas Cool Papa Bell, the National Negro League all-star who played for the St. Louis Stars and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, who regularly batted over 400, and who is said to have stolen 175 bases in 200 games in one season.