Clipping:Chadwick calls for a repeal of the base hit for a base on balls
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| Date | Wednesday, October 26, 1887 |
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| Text | [from Chadwick's column] [reviewing the 1887 rules] There is but one solitary exception, I believe, to the successful working of each amended rule, and that is in the case of the rule giving the credit of a base hit every time the batsman is sent to a base on balls. This is the one solitary failure of the new code's rules. One result of the adoption of this exceptional rule has been to play havoc with the batting averages, which it has made utterly useless as a criterion of batting skill. It has also materially interfered with the value of the pitching averages. In fact, it has destroyed the usefulness of the averages in question as a basis of estimating the relative skill of batsmen and pitchers. Unfortunately, not only base hits, but earned runs have been recorded in the averages on the basis of base hits on called balls, and consequently the estimate of a pitcher's skill as tested by runs clean earned off the pitching have thereby been rendered valueless. The Sporting Life October 26, 1887 [from Chadwick's column] ...the really fraudulent computation of “base hits on called balls,” one of the greatest blunders ever committed in connection with League statistics. This latter rule renders the batting averages for 1887 entirely worthless. Here is a batsman who faces a wild, swift pitcher with little command of the ball, and who, by patient waiting for a good ball, gets his base on balls four times out of five times at the bat, while a skillful hitter, who goes for the first ball over the plate, gets no base on balls, but makes three clean hits out of four times at the bat, (and this is done at about the same ratio game after game) and on making up the averages at the close of the season the batsman who has waited for bases on called balls in twenty-five games gets a percentage up in the three-hundreds, while the batsman who has the best average of clean hits in over fifty games is placed down in the two-hundreds of percentage, and at the close of the season we are called upon to select our batting teams on the basis of such statistics as these. The Sporting Life November 2, 1887 |
| Source | Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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