Turkey Stearnes

Pro team(s)

Detroit Stars, Kansas City Monarchs, Chicago American Giants

Hall of Fame

⭐ National Baseball Hall of Fame

Norman Thomas "Turkey" Stearnes was born on May 8, 1901, in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up in the era before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier, which meant that the entirety of his brilliant baseball career played out in the Negro Leagues — where he established himself as one of the most feared power hitters the game has ever produced. Stearnes acquired his nickname from the peculiar way he ran the bases — arms flapping — but there was nothing awkward about what he did with a bat. He played primarily for the Detroit Stars beginning in 1923 and over a career that spanned more than two decades he compiled a .352 career batting average while leading the Negro American League in home runs multiple times. Historians who have studied Negro League statistics with modern analytical methods consider Stearnes one of the top ten players — of any era, any league — in the history of professional baseball. He was largely unknown to white audiences during his lifetime because segregation kept him from the mainstream press coverage afforded to his equally talented white contemporaries. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2000, more than 20 years after his death in 1979. Born in Nashville, Tennessee.