What's in a Number?

Alan Schwarz of the New York Times has a fascinating look at baseball statistics in Sunday's paper. As he writes, the somewhat uncertain history of the sport prior to the 1920s means that not all baseball stats are set in stone, even those memorialized in Hall of Fame plaques.

Sure enough, when considering Ty Cobb's 4,191 hits, Walter Johnson's 414 victories and dozens of 19th-century numbers less burned into baseball's collective retina, many of the older statistics are either in dispute or downright incorrect. Either because of arithmetical error, sloppiness in early record-keeping or even chicanery, the tablets' numbers highlight not only the players' excellence, but also baseball's fuzzy statistical past.

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But many of these errors wound up on the best players' Hall of Fame plaques. Walter Johnson was believed to have won 414 games when he was inducted in 1936, but several corrections later, he was left with 417. Eddie Collins's plaque says he collected 3,313 hits from 1906 to 1930, but the record-keeper back then apparently switched one game of Collins's statistics with those of his teammate Buck Weaver, so he actually had two more. In the mid-1970s, when an addition error was discovered on Tris Speaker's official stat sheets - which are preserved on microfilm - his official career average went up to .345 from its longtime .344, two decades after his death.

("Numbers are cast in bronze, but are not set in stone," 07/31/05). Sadly, if mistakes like this happened today, I am sure someone would find a way to fashion a lawsuit from it. As it stands, some history may be "re-written" as a few Hall of Fame plaques with minor errors (including those of Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson) will be replaced.

Is this really necessary? Baseball has a great history -- perhaps the greatest of any major sport. The names of Ruth, Gehrig, Mays and Gibson are known to almost any fan of the game -- young or old. And without a doubt, statistics are a part of this history. Quick -- name the all-time record for TDs in the NFL. How many goals scored are needed for greatness in the NBA? What is considered an excellent NBA field-goal percentage? But all I have to say is 755, 3000 or .400, and you know what I am talking about.

But is the game becoming too entranced with numbers? It seems that every time I read an ESPN baseball column, there is a new baseball stat (OPS, ERA+, Crotch Adjustments per 9 innings). A number of fine works such as Moneyball and the Sabernomics blog continue to dive deeper and deeper into statistical analysis. Hall of Fame debates begin when a player reaches somewhat arbitrary milestones -- 3000 hits, 500 home runs, 300 wins.

Has the sport moved too far away from the game and into a calculator? At what point do statistics take over at the expense of really enjoying the game? It seems a bit much to replace Hall of Fame plaques because a player had 3 more hits -- does this change his importance in baseball history? And who cares if Cap Anson had 3,018 or 3,429 hits? Isn't the important thing to know about him that he was one of the game's earliest pioneers -- a star when the game had no stars -- a man who popularized spring training, was in baseball for 27 years and was the greatest hitter ever when he retired? Does Tris Speaker's legacy as (arguably) the greatest doubles hitter that ever lived change if his lifetime batting average goes up one point?

The importance of statistics is especially questionable when debating the Hall of Fame credentials of current major league players (see the excellent pieces by David Schoenfield here and here). Statistical milestones are relevant inasmuch as they provide a level playing field for comparison. But does anyone really believe that 500 home runs is the same today as it was in the 1930s? That 300 wins is the same? One is clearly easier to achieve, one is clearly more difficult -- based solely on the changes within the game.

Thus, it seems better to judge a player based on his peers -- was he one of the greatest when he played? -- and not try to make comparisons based on statistics to those that played a different game in a different era. And the game should strive to remember the greats of the past, not with numbers, but with stories of greatness and tales of innovation. Only by doing this can the game preserve its treasured history -- ensuring that modern advances and the passage of time do not erase all records of baseball's past.

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