About Me

I am a long time baseball fan who became interesting in documenting the "missing" batter strikeouts a few years back as an outgrowth of my interest in the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Grew up w/ the Big Red Machine. I now follow them and my new hometown, Detroit Tigers. Member of SABR off and on since 1979.

Monday, January 10, 2011

1897 - Batter Strikeouts Year in Review


Season Comments:
-          Cap Anson’s last season in the National League
-          Baltimore and Boston battled down to the last games to determine the pennant winner
-          Last season of 132 game schedule
-          St. Louis Brown went 29-102

Total Pct Completed:   91.3%

Hardest to Strike Out (BK+):

Team:
Cincinnati – 216 k’s

Individual:
  1. Willie Keeler, Balt  - 5 k’s in 564 at-bats  (595 BK+)
  2. Tommy  Corcoran, Cin – 6 k’s in 445 ab’s (423)
  3. Hughie Jennings, Balt  - 10 k’s in 439 ab’s (298)
  4. Mike Griffin, Brook – 13 k’s in 534 ab’s (260)
  5. Bill Lange, Chi – 12 k’s in 479 ab’s (242)

 Keeler's 5 k's:
  1. July 19 (at Clev, Zeke Wilson, 5th)
  2. August 15 (vs. Brook, Brickyard Kennedy, 1st)
  3. August 24, game 1 (vs. Chi, Clark Griffith, 5th)
  4. August 28 (vs. Cin, Red Ehret)
  5. Sept 22 (at NY, Cy Seymour, 1st)
Corcoran's 6 k's:
  1. June 11 (at NY, Amos Rusie, 4th)
  2. July 27 (at Chi, Jimmy Callahan)
  3. August 31, game 1 (at NY, Amos Rusie,5th)
  4. August 31, game 2 (at NY, Jouett Meekin, 4th)
  5. September 2 (at NY, Jouett Meekin, 4th)
  6. September 18, game 2 (at Clev, Jack Powell, 3rd)


Most Strikeouts:

Team:
Louisville – 453 k’s

Individual:
  1. Tom McCreery,  Lou/NY – 72 (Lou-45, NY-27)
  2. Tom Brown, Wash – 63
  3. Barry McCormick, Chi – 51
  4. Billy Clingman, Lou – 51
  5. Ollie Pickering, Lou/Clev – 41 (Lou-22, Clev-19)

Most Strikeouts by a Pitcher:
Season:
Doc McJames, Balt – 156
Cy Seymour, NY – 156

Game:
May 4 - Fred Klobedanz, Bos, 10 (vs. Phil – Lajoie(3), Hallman(2), E Delahanty(2), Grady(2), Fifield))

August 21 – Walter Thornton, Chi, 10 (at Wash – Gettman(2), Tucker(2),  Fox(2), T Brown, McGuire, Wrigley, Mercer)

August 28 – Cy Seymour, NY, 10 (vs. Chi – Everitt(3), Decker(2), Dahlen, Ryan, Callahan, Thornton, T Donahue)




4 or more Strikeouts by Batter:

May 25 - Jerry Nops, Balt  vs. Pitt (Frank Killen)
August 17 – Duff Cooley, Phil vs. NY (Cy Seymour)

Resources:
Brooklyn and New York home & away - New York Evening Telegram (play-by-play)
Boston home - Boston Globe
Cincinnati home - Cincinnati Commercial-Tribune with the assistance of Jim Farmer
Baltimore home -Baltimore Sun with the assistance of Willis Felber (author of “A Game of Brawl”)
Cleveland home - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Philadelphia home – Philadelphia Inquirer
Washington home – Washington Post
Pittsburgh home – Pittsburgh Press & Post
Chicago home & away – Chicago Tribune


Help Wanted Section:

Louisville and St. Louis are my 2 “sore spots” – I have gleaned some scattered k’s from the Louisville Courier- Journal (LCJ).   Have someone lined up to check the Louisville Times.  I have needs for any papers in St. Louis


Other Individual Player Comments:
-          Cap Anson struck out 27 times in his final season to give him a career total of 330 strikeouts.
-          Louis Sockalexis, in his spotlight season with Cleveland, struck out 38 times in 66 games, with a BK+ of 42.
-          The top 3 lowest full-time BK+ seasons occurred in 1897 – Tommy McCreery (45), Tom Brown (46), and Barry McCormick (48).
-          Brooklyn’s John Grim struck out only 2 times in 80 games.
-          McCreery had led the NL in K’s in 1896 as well with 58.
-          Anson caught 11 games at the beginning of the season (Apr 23, 26, 28, 30, May 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 20).  He batted 9th 4 times and 8th the other 7 times.  He batted 4th at 1b the rest of the season.
-          Honus Wagner, in his rookie season, struck out 14 times in 62 games, mostly in center field.
-          Napoleon Lajoie, in his 1st full season, struck out 25 times in 127 games, mostly at 1st base.
-          Other Hall of Famers: 
o   Bobby Wallace, Clev – 32
o   Billy Hamilton, Bos - 30
o   Fred Clarke, Lou - 26
o   Jesse Burkett, Clev - 25
o   Ed Delahanty, Phi – 23
o   George Davis, NY – 23
o   Cy Young, Clev – 22
o   Joe Kelley, Balt – 19
o   Kid Nichols, Bos – 18
o   Hugh Duffy, Bos – 16
o   John McGraw, Balt – 16
o   Jake Beckley, NY/Cin – 14 (2/12)
o   Deacon McGuire, Wash – 12
o   Clark Griffith, Chi – 8
o   Wilbert Robinson, Balt – 8
o   Amos Rusie, NY – 8
o   Roger Connor, StL – 4 (last season)
o   Roger Bresnahan, Wash – 2 (1st season, all 6 games as a pitcher)
o   Rube Waddell, Lou – 2 (1st season, 2 games)


Monday, January 3, 2011

New Years 2011 Update

Been a little while since my last post, with the holidays and all.

Here is some of the data I have been able to update and where I got it from:



12/06/10 Louisville 1898 Times scans of some pbp
12/06/10 Philadelphia 1908 Evening Telegraph scans of Sept missing games
12/06/10 St. Louis  1907 Globe Democrat 1st scans from S Hastead - thru Apr 24
12/09/10 New York 1910 Evening Telegram FultonHistory - up through mid-July - referred by Ed Morton
12/10/10 St. Louis  1901 Globe Democrat more scans from D Ispring - July/Aug
12/11/10 Baltimore 1901-02 American Found in Google Archives - referred by Ed Morton
12/11/10 Milwaukee 1901 Journal Found in Google Archives  
12/13/10 Baltimore 1901-2 Morning Herald Found in Google Archives - referred by Ed Morton
12/14/10 Baltimore 1897-99 American Found in Google Archives  
12/14/10 St. Louis  1907 Globe Democrat more scans from S Halstead - thru May 30
12/17/10 St. Louis  1901 Globe Democrat rest of 1901 scans from D Ispring
12/20/10 Philadelphia 1910 Evening Telegraph scans of July arrived
12/21/10 St. Louis  1907 Globe Democrat rest of 1907 scans - working on July/Aug review
12/22/10 St. Louis  1907 Globe Democrat Sept/Oct


I have gleaned information from a number of sources during the course of this work - this is a good example of that.

About mid-2010, I was doing a search for Honus Wagner in Google and discovered that Google had a Newspaper Archives of many older papers (http://news.google.com/newspapers).  That search pointed me to the Pittsburg Press, a paper which I had used in the past for its batter strikeouts in the box scores.  In the past, I had had the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh run copies of the box scores for me - now I could get them myself (Ironically, I had already, in essence, finished my need for the Press as I had already completed 1897-1909 Pittsburgh, its entire missing run).   Anyway, early in December, my Philly assistance, Ed Morton, mentioned to me that he had seen the Baltimore American in the Google News Archives as well.  Further looking by me (and Ed) found the Balt. Morning Herald, the Milwaukee Journal, and the Philadelphia Record.

The American, Morning Herald, and the Journal were all critical finds for me as the 1901 AL was one of the seasons where I needed the most help - primarily in Milwaukee, Baltimore, and Washington.   While none of these papers had batter strikeouts in the boxscores, I found a number batter strikeout mentions in the game accounts (Morning Herald better than American and Journal only sparsely).  Incrementally, I was able to raise my overall complete percentage for the 1901 AL from 78.2% to 82.2% - pretty significant when dealing with game account gleaning.  1902 also improved (due to Balt) up to 81.8%.

Online resources such as this and LOC Chronicling America, GeneologyBank.com (pay), Brooklyn Eagle.com, LA84 (Sporting Life), Proquest Historical Newspapers (pay) have made my job much easier in the past couple of years.  This is especially true in light of my local library discontinuing the ability to do InterLibrary loans of microfilm.  

I have been working on entering 1910 data
That's about all I have for now.

I am going to be on tonight's Seamheads.com webcast for those who might be listening.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Pitchers batting in a non-9th lineup spot - 1897-1909

When creating queries for my seasonal lineup databases, I started creating some different ones just out of curiosity of certain stats.

One of these was the pitchers batting in a lineup spot other than the 9th spot.

Here is the number of occurrences by year:


Here are the totals by League, Team, and Year::

NL:

Team 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1907
BLN 10 10
BRO 49 7 17 1 3 77
BSN 1 1 1 1 4
CHN 82 6 1 1 90
CIN 2 19 5 26
CL4 1 1
LS3 1 1
NY1 15 3 1 2 21
PHI 1 1 2
PIT 3 1 1 5
SLN 4 1 2 7 14
WSN 1 11 61 73
Grand Total 139 47 73 2 4 39 5 8 7 324



AL:
team 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908
BLA 1 6 7
BOS




1
1
CHA 4

1 1

6
CLE 1





1
DET

9
1

10
NYA
1
1
1
3
PHA

5


4 9
SLA 1


2 2
5
WS1 2 5



1
8
Grand Total 3 17 1 14 2 4 5 4 50


You can see from this summary that the main years with pitchers batting out of the 9th spot were in the 1897-99 time period.  I do not have the data for pre-1897 to compare, but I will discuss two of these years.


1897:


Two teams make up 94% of the total - The Chicago Colts and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms

The Colts had Cap Anson in his last year at the helm and he apparently decided to have his catchers bat in the 9th spot a majority of the games (82 of the 138).   The main 2 catchers in that slot were Malachi Kittridge with 39 starts in the 9th spot and Tim Donahue with 38 starts.  In fact, Anson, himself, had 4 starts in the 9th slot as a catcher early in the season!   

It should be of no surprise that Kittridge (lifetime .219 BA and 39 OPS+ in 1897) was in that slot.  Donahue was a bit better, but not much (53 OPS+).

The main pitchers that Anson had in the 8th spot were 

1. Clark Griffith  - 22 times, once in the 7th spot;  .235, 21 rbis, 67 OPS+
2. Danny Friend - 19 times, .284, 72 OPS+
3. Walter Thornton - 11 times, .321, 106 OPS+  (Thornton also played in the OF 59 games)
4. Jimmy Callahan - 10 times, .292, 86 OPS+ (Callahan also played in the field, 30-2b, 21-of, 18-SS)
5, Buttons Briggs - 10 tiumes, .160, -2 OPS+ (ok, maybe Anson should have had Him batting 9th)

As you can see, for the most part, having the Colt pitchers batting 8th was the smart move.

For Brooklyn, Germany Smith started in the 9th spot 45 of the 49 times a non-pitcher did.  Smith was easily the weakest hitter on the Bridegrooms with a .201 BA and a 32 OPS+.

The pitchers who batted ahead of Smith were the following (all in the 8th spot):

1. Brickyard Kennedy - 16 times, .272, 18 rbi's, 74 OPS+
2. Harley Payne - 11 times, .236, 11 rbi's, 47 OPS+
3. Jack Dunn - .10 times, .221, 17 rbi's, 34 OPS+  (Dunn, of course, later in his life was significant in Babe Ruth's career)
4. Chauncey Fisher - 9 times, .203, 47 OPS+


Again, for the most part, moving Smith down to the 9th spot and having the pitchers in the 8th spot seemed to be the right move.

1899:

The other year/team I want to profile is the 1899 Washington Senators, in their last year in the National League.  This team finished 11th in the league, ahead of the woeful 20-134 Cleveland Spiders.  They also had the emerging slugger and former pitcher, Buck Freeman, who slugged 25 homers (and threw in 25 triples as well). 

Manager Arthur Irwin apparently decided to start the season with a different twist, having his 2nd baseman, Dick Padden hitting 9th and his pitcher, Frank Killen, bat 8th.   Irwin continued this arrangement for the most part through June 22nd.  He briefly did it again at the end of August. 

During the 61 games that the Senators had their pitcher batting 8th,  Dick Padden, .277, 93 OPS+, batted in the 9th spot 39 times (20 at 2b, 19 at SS).  The other primary non-pitcher occupant was leftfiedler, Jack O'Brien, 10 games, .282, 91 OPS+.  

This is one of those cases when the reason (for the most part) for the switch is somewhere in the Washington Post or Sporting Life, because on the surface it doesn't make alot of sense.

The pitchers who batted 8th were:

1. Gus Weyhing - 18 games, .206, 38 OPS+
2. Bill Dinneen - 16 games, .303, 84 OPS+
3. Dan McFarlan - 10 games, .186, 45 OPS+


===============================================================


A couple other items worth mentioning -

In 1902, the "all-time" worst hitting non-pitcher, Bill Bergen, hit 9th 18 times.  Surprisingly, he hit 9th only a handful of times the rest of his career.  If anyone was meant to hit 9th, it was Bergen, who was well known in his time for his phenomenal fielding.

Also, in 1898, Cy Seymour, then still primarily a pitcher who walked and struck out a great deal of hitters (for the time), batted outside of the 9th spot as a pitcher 12 times - 2nd - 3 games, 4th - 5 games, 5th - 4 games.   A sign of things to come for this pitcher, then outfielder who nearly had a triple crown in 1905 for the Reds.




Friday, December 3, 2010

Lave Cross

In the previous post I mentioned that there were 2 players that were the main "toughest to strike out" in this era.
I profiled Willie Keeler, and now I will profile the other the player, Lave Cross.

Not many times will one associate Cross with this category.  He was mainly known as a solid fine thirdbaseman with the National and American League Philadelphia teams.  Cross was also briefly a member of the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders, before he made the mistake of playing too well and was (rescued) recalled to St. Louis.

One can see from the existing B-R data that Cross had a good record in the K category - 7 in 593 at-bats in 1894 and 8 in 589 at-bats in 1895.   He continued this in through the 20th century.

His totals:

1897 - 15 k's in 344 at bats
1898 - 8 k's in 602 at bats
1899 - 3 k's in 557 at bats
1900 - 5 k's in 522 at bats
1901 - 6 k's in 424 at bats
1902 - 4 k's in 559 at bats
1903 - 17 k's in 559 at bats
1904 - 9 k's in 607 at bats
1905 - 12 k's in 587 at bats
1906 - 17 k's in 494 at bats
1907 - 6 k's in 161 at bats


His BK+ numbers show just how

1898 NL - 444 (2nd)
1899 NL - 991 (2nd)
1900 NL - 557 (2nd)
1901 AL - 459 (2nd)
1902 AL - 809 (1st)
1903 AL - 326 (2nd)
1904 AL - 744 (1st)
1905 AL - 517 (1st)
1906 AL - 300 (3rd)

Keeler and Cross were 1-2 (or 2-1) in 1898, 1899, 1900, 1903, 1904, and 1905.  They both led their respective leagues in 1902 (Keeler - NL, Cross - AL)



Here are the leaders for all seasons, 1897-1909:



Best BK+ [lowest K rate/G, min 100 g] (K's)

NL AL
1897 Keeler 595 (5)    
1898 Keeler 731 (4)    
1899 Keeler 1487 (2)    
1900 Keeler 814 (4)    
1901 Keeler 1052 (5) Dungan 786 (4)
1902 Keeler 397 (13) L Cross 809 (4)
1903 Beckley 325 (13) Keeler 463 (12)
1904 Wolverton 561 (7) L Cross 744 (9)
1905 Dobbs 325 (14) L Cross 517 (12)
1906 Leach 251 (20) Keeler 1148 (5)
1907 Evers 325 (16) Elberfeld 599 (8)
1908 Ritchey 308 (13) T Jones 262 (21)
1909 Bridwell 344 (14) Lajoie 271 (18)

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Wee Willie and BK+

I have spent most of the recent posts talking about individuals related to high strikeout totals, but I am one who enjoys exploring the extreme ends of the bell curve.   As a result, I want to take this post to talk about a couple of players that showed a great propensity for Not striking out.  

The first is quite well known for this asset - Wee Willie Keeler.   Keeler's "hit'em where they ain't" approach is legendary, but, for the most part, the data was not there in regards to strikeouts.

Bob Davids compiled a list of Keeler's strikeouts by year a number of years ago.  I was fortunate to get a copy of this a couple of years ago from John Schwartz.  Of course, his numbers lined up well with mine (of course!), and I found a few more (as had the late Mr. Schwartz).

I will give the numbers first and then discuss them:

1897 - 5
1898 - 4
1899 - 2
1900 - 4
1901 - 5
1902 - 13
1903 - 12
1904 - 12
1905 - 13
1906 - 4
1907 - 10
1908 - 10
1909 - 6
(1910 - 1, already documented)

Fortunately, Keeler played in the New York market for most of this time period, and as a result I was able to document well over 95% of his total games (mostly from New York Evening Telegram and New York Evening World play-by-play accounts).

Some of these years just stagger the mind in their "low-ness".  

The 2 strikeouts in 1899, which I wrote about in my BRJ article (#36) on 1899 strikeouts is simply amazing.

To quote myself :) , "Keeler's two strikeouts occurred on April 17 (Brooklyn's 2nd game of the season) at the hands of Boston's rookie sensation, Vic Willis (in his major league debut) and May 6 (Brooklyn's 19th game) against Boston's Kid Nichols.  After that, he did not strike out again for the remainder of the season."  This is with 136 of his 141 games documented (97%).

As a result of this feat, I wanted to figure out a way to show just how incredible this figure was.   I devised a new "stat" which I called "BK+".   It is similar to OPS+ and ERA+ in that it gives an index of how much better or worse a player is from the average (average being 100).  In this case, I used strikeouts per game.

To give you an example, using Keeler's 1899 season, Keeler had 2 strikeouts in 136 documented games, a rate of 1.48%.

The overall individual strikeouts per game average was 21.9% (3,494 documented strikeouts in 15,920 documented player games).

As a result, Keeler's BK+ = (0.219/0.0148) * 100 = 1,487.  

His strikeout rate was 14 TIMES BETTER than the league average. 

Granted that if one was to use at-bats in the calculation, it would be more precise, but my databases are not set up with documented at-bats and I calculate it based on documented information.  Once the data is in a source that has the projected/adjusted strikeouts and actual at-bats, a refined BK+ calculation could certainly be done.

Even in an era of lower strikeout totals, he dominated the BK+ category:


Here is his year by year BK+ with ranking:

1897 - 595 (1st)
1898 - 731 (1st)
1899 - 1,487 (1st)
1900 - 814 (1st)
1901 NL - 1,052 (1st)
1902 NL - 397 (1st)
1903 AL - 463 (1st)
1904 AL - 496 (2nd)
1905 AL - 491 (2nd)
1906 AL - 1,418 (1st)
1907 AL - 412 (2nd)

The leaders were limited to players with 100 games or more.

Keeler's 1901 and 1906 seasons I feel deserves special mention as well. 

In 1901, as has been mentioned previously, the National League implemented the foul strike rule, in essence counting a strike on any ball that was fouled off.  Prior to this, if a player fouled off a pitch, it was, in essence, a non-pitch.   A player could foul off pitches to their heart's content and be no worse in the ball-strike count.
So players who were capable of making contact, could drive a pitcher crazy and not be penalized.   This did not sit well with everyone and especially with those who didn't like the old Baltimore Orioles (my speculation) as 2 of the experts at fouling away pitches happened to be old Orioles (Keeler and John McGraw).  One of my many side projects is to do a more in-depth study of the foul strike rule, the evolution of it coming into being and its impact beyond the stats.

Anyway, the introduction of the foul strike rule in the National League in 1901 had a dramatic impact on strikeouts league-wide:   Total k's went from 2697 to 4241, a 57% increase.   This changed seemed to affect everyone, except one fine Brooklyn individual, our hero, Mr. Keeler. 

As I have documented above, Keeler only struck out 5 times all season with a BK+ of 1,052.   The second place finisher in BK+ in the 1901 NL was Claude Ritchey with a BK+ of 199 and 28 strikeouts.  Keeler's number "5 Times Better" than the 2nd place finisher.

In 1906, while Billy Maloney was setting fan records across the river in Brooklyn, Keeler was dominating again in BK+.   His BK+ of 1,418 was more than 4 times better than the 2nd place finisher, Nap Lajoie, who recorded a very respectable BK+ of 305 (19 k's)


I will go more into BK+ leaders, both good and bad,  in a subsequent post, but Billy Maloney's record setting 118 strikeouts in 1906 produced a BK+ of 49. 

His doc k's per game rate was 77.5% while the league average was 38%.   His rate was just over twice as bad as the league average thus the number just under 50.

Incidentally, Maloney's BK+ of 49 is not the "record" for the era - that belongs to a well traveled player who, incidentally, would have been perfectly suited for the DH era - Tommy McCreery.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

The League Leaders - 1897-1909

As a follow-up to the post on Billy Maloney, I wanted to post the league leaders in total strikeouts for each season/league for 1897-1909.




League Leader - Most

NL AL
1897 McCreery 72    
1898 Gettman & Joyce 60    
1899 Holmes 59    
1900 J Barrett 63    
1901 M Cross 91 J Barrett 62
1902 Flood 70 Howell & Strang 66
1903 Babb 66 Pickering 75
1904 Lumley 105 J Stahl 98
1905 Maloney 83 Hoffman 106
1906 Maloney 118 M Cross 86
1907 Maloney 100 Hoffman 99
1908 T Jordan 75 N Ball 90
1909 Becker 80 J Stahl 91

I should mention at this point that these totals are based on what I term "projected and adjusted" totals.

First,  I calculate the percentage of documented games to actual games played.   Then take the total documented stirkeouts and divide it by the pct of documented games to get a number of projected strikeouts that that hitter "would" have had.   I then make any minor adjustment (by team or league) if the team/league totals are off from the summed projected totals ("tuning in").

As an example, I will use Bill Joyce in 1897.

Joyce played in 110 total games.   Of those 110 games, I have been able to document strikeouts for 103 of those games (including games where he had 0 k's).  I was able to document 36 strikeouts in those 103 games.

As a result,

his pct of documented games/actual games = 103/110 = 93.8%

To calculate his "projected k's", I divide 36/0.938 to get (rounded) 38 strikeouts.

I then calculate an "adjusted" number.   In this case, the 1897 NY Giants projected team total came to 331, off by - 1.2% from the actual documented total of 327.  I multiply the 38 strikeouts by 1 + (-.012) to get the "adjusted total".  In this case, the total remained 38 strikeouts.

While this may not satisfy everyone in regards to "matching up" exactly or not having complete data, with the amount of data I have for most players and the small variances (projected team/league totals from the actual team/league totals being in most cases within 2% if not smaller), I am very comfortable with my method.

One observation I noticed when I was originally putting my leaders together was that in the NL after the foul strike rule went into effect, 1901, there was the predictable spike (represented by Monte Cross's 91 k's and league total of 4241).  The next 2 years, 1902 & 1903, the k's totals in the NL dropped each year (1902 - 3895 and 1903 - 3767). 

I have yet to do any research into what may have caused this, except to casually speculate that hitters "got wise" to the foul strike rule and used a different approach in their hitting league-wide.  Again, I have not done any in depth research on this.

What is interesting is that in 1904, the league strikeout total spikes back up to stay, going up by 510 to 4277.  Again, I am not sure what the cause was - a rule change, more stringent calling of the rule.  I do know that the foul strike rule was not universally loved when it was implemented, but that discussion is for another post.

As a last note, for those Brooklyn fans, you can wallow in one more thing.  A Brooklyn player led the NL in sitrkeouts Every year from 1902 through 1908 (Flood, Babb, Lumley, Maloney, Jordan), with the exception of Maloney in 1905.   Apparently, the Superbas didn't take kindly to a non-Superba (Maloney was with the Cubs in 1905) leading the league in K's, because he was acquired by Brooklyn in time to lead the league and set an new batter strikeout record of 118 in 1906!

Thank you to all the assistance

I need to take care of this before I post any more. 

This research, by no means, has been a solo project.   I have had the help of many people in many cities - running copies/scans for me, documenting batter strikeouts in boxscores, and the most thankless task of them all, reading game accounts and pulling batter strikeout references for me.  Special kudos go to Dave Smith/Tom Ruane of Retrosheet for sharing "unproofed" play-by-play from many seasons, Ed Morton for his tireless work going through the 6 or 7 Philly papers running scans and documenting those in game accounts as well, and Bob Richardson, who did a similar thing for me in Boston.

A special thank you goes to Paul Wendt, who greatly encouraged me at the beginning of this journey and supplied me with the MS Access template which I have used to enter all of my lineups and batter strikeouts.

And lastly to Pete Palmer, who I have had the great pleasure to work with.  He has encouraged me, made suggestions, corrections, and is helping me "mainstream" my data.

To all, a tremendous thank you.


Baltimore Bill Wagner




Boston Bob Richardson Lee Panas Bill Nowlin


Brooklyn Cliff Blau




Chicago Walt Wilson




Cincinnati Cincinnati Public Library Jim Farmer Tom Chase Rick Huhn Esta Day Chris Eckes
Cleveland Peter Garver Rick Huhn



Detroit Me




Louisville Esta Day (UKy)




Milwaukee Dennis Pajot




New York Cliff Blau




Philadelphia Ed Morton




Pittsburgh Carnegie Public Library




St. Louis St. Louis Public Library Keith Carlson Mary Hegel Dwayne Ispring





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