Earlier I was going through some back emails, and came across a question from the Horsehide Trivia listserv: "Who was the first player to lead the majors in batting average in consecutive seasons after the pitcher’s mound was created and set at its current distance?" The first thought that came to mind was Hugh Duffy, as I had just had his player record open in Total Baseball and noticed that he had led the National League (the only league at the time) in batting in 1893 and 1894. Yet Duffy was not the correct answer, once the other hints were taken into account - Jesse Burkett was, who led in 1895 and 1896. Confused by this discrepancy, I dove into Duffy's Baseball Reference page, and began to unearth a statistical story spanning some 130 years.
Let's start at the beginning.
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| Hugh Duffy (credit: Society for American Baseball Research) |
In 1893, Billy Hamilton was the National League's leading batsman when he was diagnosed with typhoid fever in August. His season abruptly ended, having played just 82 games. His absence helped sink his Philadelphia team's chances of winning the pennant. They slid from second to finish in fourth place, 14 games behind the Boston Beaneaters, who were led by the "Heavenly Twins" of Hugh Duffy and Tommy McCarthy.
The season ended on Saturday, September 30. A week later, on October 7, The Sporting News published its tabulations of the batting averages for the league season. The publication listed the top three averages as Hamilton .407, Duffy .374, and Ed Delahanty (Hamilton's Philadelphia teammate) .370. The paper declared that "Hamilton of Philadelphia Leads the League in Batting" with the "largest percentage achieved in many years."
A week later, National League President Nick Young released the official league statistics, which were published in The Sporting Life, followed by The Sporting News the following week. This official record showed a very different leaderboard. Jake Stenzel led at .409, Hamilton was second at .395, and Sam Thompson (another Phillie) third at .377. Duffy was listed lower on the list, at "just" .359.
Spalding's Baseball Guide 1894 contained the "full official league record for 1893". It prefaced the batting record by noting, "It will be seen that the batting average record, given below, places Stenzel of the Pittsburgh club as the leading batter of the season, simply because he has the highest base hit percentage." The guide then published a near identical list as that previously seen in The Sporting News and The Sporting Life, with a major adjustment near the top: Duffy was now listed at .378, ahead of Thompson for third place. The correction of a mathematical error evidently resulted in Duffy's adjusted average - his total of 203 hits and 537 at bats were unchanged from the previous listing.
John Thorn explains what happened to the title from there: "The early record tomes, the Spalding Record Book and the Sporting News Record Book, placed Jake Stenzel (NL) in the lead for 1893 and Nap Lajoie (AL) on top in 1905. Both Stenzel and Lajoie were the leaders during the life of the Spalding volumes, 1908–1924, and in the Sporting News volume from its debut in 1921 until 1929, when Hugh Duffy replaced Stenzel, and 1930, when Elmer Flick supplanted Lajoie. The reasoning behind the Sporting News switches was that both Stenzel and Lajoie failed to meet the unwritten criterion of a representative number of games — Stenzel had played in only 60 games and Lajoie in 65, not even half of their club’s scheduled games. Otherwise the early record books’ leaders were those endorsed by the leagues."
The arrival of baseball encyclopedias in the latter half of the 20th century led to a divergence in the records. The 1969 Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia's recompiled record lists Hamilton as the league leader at .380, followed by Thompson at .370, Delahanty at .368, and Duffy at .363. Stenzel was excluded with too few games, but Hamilton still met the "Big Mac" playing time standard it applied for the 1876-1919 period: "games played equal to at least 60 percent of games the team scheduled". (David Nemec's Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball has the same top four, though using a standard of 350 at bats, which Hamilton barely crossed.)
Meanwhile, as mentioned above, Total Baseball still treated Duffy as the leader. According to John Thorn, "Billy Hamilton’s average was higher than Duffy’s, and he would have met modern criteria for plate appearances. The NL, however, honored Duffy because he appeared in at least 100 games, which was expected of the leading players of that day. The title is thus accorded to him." Evidently Total Baseball was simply going off of the previous official record given by the National League, and not the recompiled record, because otherwise - by Thorn's stated standard - Thompson would have been credited with the title. (Curiously, on the 1893 leaderboard Duffy's average is listed as .362, though as .363 on his player record.)
The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia - the spiritual successor of Total Baseball - doesn't seem to know what to do. Its top four is Thompson .370, Hamilton .380, Delahanty .368, and Duffy .363 - yet Duffy is the only player given the "black ink" treatment on his player record.
Even today, there are at least three different "official" batting titlists for 1893. Baseball Reference credits Hamilton's .380 based on the recompiled record and the modern playing time standard. However, Duffy is still also given credit. As the site explains on a page called Major League Batting Champion as Recognized at End of Year: "The Batting Titles listed are those players recognized by their leagues at the completion of the season as having the highest batting average in the league. Subsequent statistical research and rules changes may mean that we list a different batter as having the highest batting average for that season. When applicable we will give 'black ink' measurement credit to both the league batting champ and the player we believe had the highest batting average."
Meanwhile, over at Baseball Almanac, in what it describes as "the official list of batting title holders", Sam Thompson is given the title at .370.
Given all of this, what is to be learned here? In a sport that has been obsessed with statistics since its inception, reconciling of inconsistencies, reevaluation of omissions, and correction of errors find themselves just as much a part of the story. Because of this reality, the way we treat the statistical record has constantly changed throughout history. To use an analogy from constitutional law: should we take an "originalist" view that the record should reflect what the statistics were at the time they were recorded, or should we treat the record book as a "living document", constantly evolving as new data is uncovered and corrections made?
Whatever your view, one thing is for certain: statistics will always be an integral part of baseball as long as the game is still played.
References:
Kerr, Roy. Sliding Billy Hamilton. 2009
The Sporting News, October 7, 1893
The Sporting Life, October 14, 1893
The Sporting News, October 21, 1893
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