Deletion of Major League Baseball team captains

Comment: The comments in this AFD suffer from "|recentism."  The position of team captain has a long history in baseball. During the 19th and early 20th century many or most teams had a player designated as team captain, and he was expected to carry out many of the responsibilities now handled by managers or coaches.  A check of Google Books finds team captains mentioned in dozens of books http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=pw#hl=en&q=team+captain+baseball&wrapid=tlif12847660883832&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=bks:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wp&fp=aadd17073430467a. MLB's official rules ''do'', in fact, briefly mention a team captain (see rule 4.01 on p. 32 of http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/downloads/y2010/official_rules/2010_OfficialBaseballRules.pdf) in a context in which responsibility for the team's lineup may be assigned either to the manager or the captain. I'll try to add a few references.  It may be tough to write a long article, but a well-referenced short article is certainly possible and appropriate for Wikipedia
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Recentism (WP:RECENT)