Kansas City Monarchs: Comparison to Royal Greats

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Aug 7, 2009 3:45 PM EDT Comment 8 comments

Before the Royals (or even the A's) were in Kansas City, the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs were thriving. They were considered the Yankees of the Negro Leagues with the team getting the best available players. I plan on looking at some of the players, managers, owners and teams for the Monarchs (yes I have RoyalRetro's permission to do history work). Today I will start off with a comparison of 3 Negro League people, a hitter, a pitcher and a manager and compare them to 3 Royals greats. Go ahead and try to guess the 3 Negro League greats.

	G	AB	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
George Brett	159	634	11	89	13	0.31	0.353	0.456	0.809
George Brett	159	645	7	67	21	0.33	0.377	0.462	0.839
George Brett	139	564	22	88	14	0.31	0.373	0.532	0.905
George Brett	128	510	9	62	23	0.29	0.342	0.467	0.809
George Brett	154	645	23	107	17	0.33	0.376	0.563	0.939
George Brett	117	449	24	118	15	0.39	0.454	0.664	1.118
George Brett	89	347	6	43	14	0.31	0.361	0.484	0.846
George Brett	144	552	21	82	6	0.3	0.378	0.505	0.884
George Brett	123	464	25	93	0	0.31	0.385	0.563	0.947
George Brett	104	377	13	69	0	0.28	0.344	0.459	0.802
George Brett	155	550	30	112	9	0.34	0.436	0.585	1.022

Negro Leaguer	37	145	0	6	8	0.297	0.327	0.441	0.768
Negro Leaguer	66	199	4	13	19	0.286	0.352	0.462	0.815
Negro Leaguer	62	200	13	33	15	0.390	0.458	0.695	1.153
Negro Leaguer	68	209	7	45	5	0.364	0.412	0.550	0.962
Negro Leaguer	60	195	5	51	8	0.395	0.437	0.590	1.026
Negro Leaguer	56	139	2	11	5	0.381	0.425	0.590	1.015
Negro Leaguer	57	147	1	8	2	0.306	0.388	0.422	0.809
Negro Leaguer	56	116	2	9	1	0.328	0.421	0.457	0.878
Negro Leaguer	64	201	3	22	5	0.348	0.395	0.512	0.907
Negro Leaguer	71	256	7	33	26	0.359	0.436	0.570	1.006
Negro Leaguer	29	107	0	5	5	0.299	0.383	0.355	0.738

	W	L	ERA	G	GS	CG	IP	BB/9	SO/9
Brett Saberhagen	10	11	3.48	38	18	2	157.2	2.1	4.2
Brett Saberhagen	20	6	2.87	32	32	10	235.1	1.5	6.0
Brett Saberhagen	7	12	4.15	30	25	4	156.0	1.7	6.5
Brett Saberhagen	18	10	3.36	33	33	15	257.0	1.9	5.7
Brett Saberhagen	14	16	3.80	35	35	9	260.2	2.0	5.9
Brett Saberhagen	23	6	2.16	36	35	12	262.1	1.5	6.6
Brett Saberhagen	5	9	3.27	20	20	5	135.0	1.9	5.8
Brett Saberhagen	13	8	3.07	28	28	7	196.1	2.1	6.2

Negro Leaguer	5	3	2.26	9	9	8	79.7	3.0	7.7
Negro Leaguer	12	8	2.24	22	20	20	181.0	2.8	5.1
Negro Leaguer	8	6	1.99	19	14	13	131.3	1.9	5.5
Negro Leaguer	16	10	2.85	33	23	19	239.7	2.8	5.5
Negro Leaguer	18	6	2.69	27	25	21	204.0	2.9	5.1
Negro Leaguer	17	2	2.31	24	18	17	171.3	1.3	5.4
Negro Leaguer	16	5	3.19	24	14	13	158.0	2.3	4.4
Negro Leaguer	13	7	2.30	27	14	13	144.7	1.8	6.3
Negro Leaguer	10	2	2.99	17	10	8	114.3	1.1	4.3

	W	L	Percentage	Won Conference	Won Championship Series
Whitey Herzog	85	77	0.525	n/a	n/a
Whitey Herzog	92	70	0.568	N	n/a
Whitey Herzog	102	60	0.630	N	n/a
Whitey Herzog	90	72	0.556	N	n/a

	W	L	Percentage	Won Conference	Won Championship Series
Negro Leaguer	56	19	0.747	N	n/a
Negro Leaguer	36	18	0.667	n/a	n/a
Negro Leaguer	50	29	0.633	n/a	n/a
Negro Leaguer	62	17	0.785	Y	N
Negro Leaguer	39	26	0.600	n/a	n/a

Scroll down for answers

Answers to the 3 comparisons:

Hitter: "Bullet Joe" Rogan

Pitcher: "Bullet Joe" Rogan

Manager: "Bullet Joe" Rogan

"Bullet Joe" Rogan is possibly one of the greatest two way players to in baseball history. He played for and managed the Monarchs in some fashion from 1920 to 1938 (several years the Monarchs weren't with a professional league due financial troubles of the team or the league). He was on the 1924 championship team and in 1998 he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veteran's committee.

Charles Wilber Rogan was born on July 28th, 1893 in Oklahoma City Oklahoma. Many documents have his birth date as 1889 because his family change his birth date in order for him to dropout of high school and join the army. He moved to Kansas City after his mother died and his dad remarried and joined the Army in 1911 and stayed enlisted until 1919. While in the Army he served in the Philippines and played on several military base baseball teams.

In 1920 he joined the Monarchs and quickly became a league favorite. He batted right handed and mainly played in the outfield, but played all positions at sometime except catcher. He also threw right handed with a great fastball (source of his nickname "Bullet Joe") and good curve and control. He showed his versatility early on by being second in the league with 13 home runs in 1922. In 1923 he combined with Jose Mendez to throw a now hitter and lead the league with 16 wins and 151 strikeouts.

In 1926, he became the manager and led the team to a 62-17 record, the best ever in the league. He quit playing baseball in 1938 and stayed on as an umpire until 1946. After his retirement, he went to work for the post office in Kansas City and died in 1967 at the age of 73.

Bullet Joe won more games and had the fourth highest career batting average in Negro League history. Mr. Rogan was a great player in Kansas City baseball history and I hope to show you more players like him in the future.