Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Archive 5

message: Hi, Need some help and back up here...
Braves/Aaron page reads:
The team returned to Atlanta, and on April 8, 1974, a crowd of 53,775 people showed up for the game — a Braves attendance record. In the 4th inning, Aaron hit career home run number 715 off L.A. Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. Although Dodgers outfielder Bill Buckner nearly went over the outfield wall trying to catch it, the ball landed in the Braves bullpen, where relief pitcher Tom House caught it. While cannons were fired in celebration, two white college students sprinted onto the field and jogged alongside Aaron as he circled the base paths. As the fans cheered wildly, Aaron's mother ran onto the field as well.
A few months later, on October 5, 1974, Aaron hit his 733rd and final home run as a Brave, which stood as the National League's home run record until it was broken by Barry Bonds in 2006. Thirty days later, the Braves traded Aaron to the Milwaukee Brewers for Roger Alexander and Dave May. Because the Brewers were an American League team, he was able to extend his career by taking advantage of the designated hitter rule. On May 1, 1975, Aaron broke baseball's all-time RBI record, previously held by Ruth with 2,217.
On July 20, 1976, Hank Aaron hit his 755th and final home run at Milwaukee County Stadium off Dick Drago of the California Angels.
Page reports that Aaron's HR's=755 
*Q=how is it then that:
a) on October 5, 1974, Aaron hit his 733rd and final home run as a Brave, which stood as the National League's home run record until it was broken by Barry Bonds in 2006, when Aaron hit 755??
and then goes on to read:
"On July 20, 1976, Hank Aaron hit his 755th and final home run at Milwaukee County Stadium off Dick Drago of the California Angels."
How then this when on July 20, 1976, Hank Aaron hit his 755th and final home run (as a player) when it reads "on October 5, 1974, Aaron hit his 733rd and final home run as a Brave, which stood as the National League's home run record until it was broken by Barry Bonds in 2006, when Aaron hit a total of 755?? Bonds had to break 755 (which he did) not 733.
Gosh, clear me up here.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.170.242.173 (talk) 13:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In 1975-1976 Aaron played for Milwaukee, which was then part of the American League.  He hit 733 home runs in the National League, 22 in the American League, and 755 total. Bonds broke Aaron's NL record when he hit 734 and broke the more widely recognized major league record when he hit 756. BRMo 13:36, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What you are dealing with is two separate records that were broken by the singular efforts of Aaron, and later Bonds. When Arron hit home run 661, he surpassed the record of Wille Mayes which gave him the title of holding the National League career home run leader. The second was passed on home run 709. when he surpassed Babe Ruth's American League record. (To the best of my knowledge, nobody has taken out Ruth's 708 in the American League, so he still is the Home Run King for the AL) So before Aaron ever left the National League, Aaron was the career leader in all of Major League Baseball for home runs. He finally ended his career with 755. Does that clear it up at all? RobHoitt 14:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  AARON stats 

message: I think, per policy, these flags obviously need to be removed. First of all, I often see edit-warring because it is unclear whether the flags should indicate birth place or citizenship. Secondly, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags) makes it seem pretty clear not to over-do it with flags and even mentions how it can incorrectly imply citizenship or nationality.►Chris NelsonHolla! 01:02, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The use of these flags is obviously a violation of the original research policy, which is related to why there is disagreement about them. If they were from a cited source (such as MLB.COM) there would be no problem and no edit warring. But they aren't, and there is. They should be removed. In short, you're right. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As long as what the flags are asserting is based on published information, and is cited in the player's bio airticle, I don't see how it can be called OR. Those facts should be pretty easy to check and cite. I do agree that flags should not be used in templates, just as they shouldn't be used in infoboxes. - BillCJ 02:37, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The main problem seems to be disagreement over what they are supposed to represent. And since their placement in wikipedia is an invention of wikipedia authors, that's understandable. Yes, their birthplace and citizenship can be verified. The problem is when those two bits of data are not the same. That's when the arguments ensue, and the "original research" aspect of it becames apparent. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

text: To put it another way, what is the reliable source for the "correct" flag to be placed next to someone's name? Unless MLB.COM does that (in which case that's the one we should use), then it's original research. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well there's nothing on the templates that tell a visitor what the flags mean. Sure a few of us can agree that we're going to decide it means birthplace or decide it means citizenship, but any random visitor to a roster template won't know that. They need to be removed because they don't let visitors to the templates know what they mean, and people interpret them differently. I think reading the manual of style on this makes it very clear this is not an appropriate use of the flags.►Chris NelsonHolla! 02:58, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Until or unless there is consensus on what they mean, they should be removed everywhere. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 03:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of flags in MLB roster templates 

message: This is a shout-out to anyone who has more information about the former GM of the D-backs to please update this new article. Shalom (Hello • Peace) 20:40, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Joe Garagiola, Jr.]] 

message: I am trying to add to the Infobox World Series Expanded a section to list future Hall of Famers. I think my syntax in the Infobox looks ok, but when I try to add names to the Infobox on 1975 World Series, it isn't turning out correctly. Can you help? Thanks. Kingturtle (talk) 15:35, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about this?  —Wknight94 (talk) 15:40, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Awesome. thanks!! Kingturtle (talk) 15:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  help 

message: In regards to Template:Infobox World Series Expanded, some of those categories do not apply to older World Series (such as MVP and TV information). I started working on the infobox for the 1903 World Series. For now I just put "N/A" categories that didn't work. Is there a way to make these categories just disappear from the 1903 World Series page?
Also, what are we to do with pre-TV era World Series that had radio broadcasts? Kingturtle (talk) 16:32, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You should probably put a box for radio on these also. Even modern world series games have radio broadcasts that differ from the tv announcers. Spanneraol (talk) 16:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

text: Check this edit to make the MVP parameter conditional followed by this edit to test the previous edit on 1903 World Series.  Yes?  —Wknight94 (talk) 22:42, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good. You're teaching me some new syntax here. Thanks! Kingturtle (talk) 00:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My pleasure.  See :m:Help:ParserFunctions for more.  —Wknight94 (talk) 00:59, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  World Series infobox... 

message: I've added some links in related articles to this particular article; however someone else will have to put the Batting Average with Runners in Scoring Position link into Derek Jeter's page because since I don't have an account, I can't do that due to the page being protected from vandalism. That said, can someone do two things for me? First, please enter the link into the Derek Jeter article to link his article to this page (it's related--I checked). Second, is it possible to review this page's status as an orphaned article?
I know I added in some additional information on a related article, but I doubt that that is enough to remove the stub tag from the article. Just thought I would put that out there.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.14.170 (talk) 07:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Status as orphaned article? 

message: Can we please start a World Series Task Force? Kingturtle (talk) 13:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What would the objectives be? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 13:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Not sure what that means but I like it so far!  —Wknight94 (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Chicago Cubs should start a World Series task force. The sole objective would be to get there. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 13:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Objectives would be to work together to clean up and further standardize the World Series articles. Certain tasks need to be addressed, like issues concerning Trivia and Quotes, and tasks like adding Radio broadcasting information. Kingturtle (talk) 14:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me.  Does anyone know of a particularly good example to follow for WS articles?  Last I checked, a lot of the older ones had almost no prose at all (like the silly season articles that were created in near bot fashion for no good reason).  I've got a pretty nice book with well-written details on every World Series so I could help there.  I can also help with technical aspects like templates and regex/AWB substitutions if necessary.  —Wknight94 (talk) 14:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Well, there has been a tendency to move quotes to wikiquote, thus splitting content across pages, which I don't much care for. There needs to be a balance between providing enough stats info but not too much. Simple line scores are good, just to give a quick summary. Box scores would be too much, since it would tediously repeat info that's easily linkable on other sites. And the line scores by themselves are not enough, there should be a game summary so the game will be "brought to life." I think there are some particular Series articles that could serve as models for the others. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 14:35, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

text: There are many good elements to 1905 World Series....As for quotes, we need to discuss what constitutes and worthwhile quote. There are lots of quotes that are IMHO not encyclopedic. Also, I personally do not like the Cquote format. These things need to be discussed. Kingturtle (talk) 14:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a pretty good writeup, if you do say so yourself. :) The one element that's missing is a little more outside-the-box context. In this case, the fact it was 4-of-7 and not 5-of-9 is more than just a matter of that mundane fact, it's a direct result of the Brush rules and of the 1904 boycott. And while the Giants were hot in 1905, they compare with similar media thoughts about the 1986 Mets (sorry about that, Wknight94) who thought this was the start of a dynasty, but it proved to be as good as it would get for that generation of the team and its fans. And I don't much care for the cquote format either. It's excessive. There's no reason not to keep it the same size and font as everything else and just put the quote marks around it. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 15:11, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm at work now so I'll look more closely later.  Other than the composite box score (I get nothing useful from those in general), it appears quite good at first glance.  —Wknight94 (talk) 15:19, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The composite box serves mainly to list the participants, but as with game boxes, that info is available elsewhere. I'm not a figger filbert, so I don't want to say too much about that. Others might argue for it. The stats over a short series aren't all that important, to my mind, unless something jumps out at you... like Ruth going 10-for-16 in 1928, or Reggie hitting 4 consecutive homers on 4 consecutive swings of the bat across two games in 1977. Regarding trivia, there are many trivia-haters here, and I'm not in that group. But trivia list contents should be meaningful and interesting. In the 1905 article, there was a "trivia" section which I had altered to be "firsts", since that's what most of it was. I wouldn't argue for trying to list every tedious stat record that was set in a Series (fewest at-bats by a left-handed second baseman), but at least things of special note, which sometimes read better in a list format than in paragraph style. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 15:28, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Regarding trivia, I like the "Records and Firsts" category. Also, I'd like to move as much of the trivia into the main article (for example). Kingturtle (talk) 15:33, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's typically a question of whether it fits with the flow of the article, or works better standalone. I could argue that a table of results constitutes "trivia" and could be worked into the article verbiage. That would be getting carried away, to say the least. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 15:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Trivia such as "In Game Five" should usually be moved to the part in the article that describes Game Five. Kingturtle (talk) 15:46, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Another thing I'd like to clean out are embedded external links. An article (even in a line score or box score) should refer to Guy Bush, not to  Guy Bush. Kingturtle (talk) 15:51, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I see both sides of the fence for the trivia issue.  Even lists of firsts can be turned into prose: "The 1905 World Series is noteworthy for being the first in several categories.  It saw the first outside-the-park home run, first left handed Hungarian outfielder," etc., etc.  To me, that's almost equivalent to a trivia section but leaves room for elaborating in the future.  Trivia sections with more than about five items become pretty annoying.  KingTurtle's example of the 1991 series had what, about seven million items?!  That looked terrible (but looks much nicer now BTW). —Wknight94 (talk) 15:53, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Even more of the 1991 items could be worked into the article, or possibly into a smaller section. One thing that the writeups suffer from is "recentism"; that is, there is a lot more about recent Series that people remember vividly. We can't easily shape the 1905 Series published info beyond what it is because we weren't around then. We can shape the 1991 article because we not only have good info, we also recall it. However, it probably has too much verbiage. If you could go back to 1905 in a time machine, you could probably make the 1905 article as long as the 1991 article... which would make it too long, most likely. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 15:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  World Series Task Force needed 

message: Is anyone up for the idea of having a periodic newsletter? Either weekly or monthly, I guess. I would be willing to write at least some of it each week (of course, anyone can help with it). We would have to have some sort of "mailing list" so that a bot/deliverer knows who to give it to and who not to give it to.   jj137 ♠ Talk 00:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You could probably talk to User:Maxim for help or some tips since he orchestrated this sort of thing for the hockey project. There have been two of those newsletters so far, and they just come out whenever it's necessary, if there's enough new information. -- bmitchelf•T•F 05:58, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newsletter, possibly? 

message: This article is nearly 50K and doesn't seem to include a single source (I suppose I might have missed an exception). It could also do with some reviewing for tone and POV; as a Limey, I know very little about baseball and I could be mistaken, but I'm fairly confident it could do with some work. Cheers, --Dweller (talk) 16:15, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is one source listed at the bottom, but I agree that work is needed.--Fabrictramp (talk) 16:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of home run calls in baseball]] 

message: I started Mitchell Report (baseball). It will probably be very busy tommorrow. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 18:38, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm ambivalent about the article name, however. Any suggestions for a different page name, like Mitchell Steroids Report? --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 19:40, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Brew's title is fine - although we may have to change it if Mitchell's report has an official title that is different. Kingturtle (talk) 19:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  new article 

message: Check out the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 December 14 about the proposed merger/deletion concerning the two cats: :Category:Major League Baseball players who have used steroids and :Category:Major League Baseball players named in the Mitchell Report. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 07:09, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  category mish mash 

message: On most players pages there is a "See also" section that ususally has "List of all time [team] players. It seems like a waste, because the category section already includes that info. Is this some sort accepted standard on baseball pages? --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 00:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The link to the all-time rosters isn't exactly the same as the category, as one will take you to the all-time roster page, which includes players without an article, while the other only takes you to the category, which only has players with an article (and who are properly categorized). However, I'm not in favor of including the all-time rosters in the see also sections (even though I've spent a lot of time cleaning up the rosters), because it's a slippery slope. Next will be every season the player played in, followed by something else, leading to a Bambi Meets Godzilla type page. One solution might be to just have the categories, and at the top of the category page, have a link to the all-time roster. --Fabrictramp (talk) 00:42, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense. After posing my question I realized that I don't really get the whole basis for Lists. I did some research and the "future article/no article" reason is what was given to rationalize the basis for "lists." But I suspect that Lists are just around because it will be to big of a deal to get rid of them. The "future article/no article" basis doesn't seem like a good reason for having two ways of categorizing pages. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 01:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been removing the links to the all-time rosters from the player articles as I find them (based on a rough consensus to do so made here). There's no sense dedicating all that article space to links to rosters for players who have logged the frequest flyer miles, like Kenny Lofton or Roberto Alomar. Caknuck (talk) 18:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  See also 

message: The Article Score Productions is noted as being withing the scope of this project. Might I ask that one of your members reassess this and then state a reasoning upon the talk page. I am very loth to correct some of the problems with that Article if it falls into a Project for a reason unknown to me. Exit2DOS2000•T•C• 08:00, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree with that.  It doesn't matter what project it "falls under" - if it has issues, be bold and fix them.  Don't be fooled into thinking there's some project bureaucracy at Wikipedia.  —Wknight94 (talk) 13:19, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Ditto what Wknight94 said. And speaking of being bold, I removed the baseball project tag, as the article doesn't seem to have anything to do with baseball.--Fabrictramp (talk) 17:08, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I didnt think it had a connection... but I wondered if someone knew something I didnt. Thanks for the help :) Exit2DOS2000•T•C• 03:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible error ? 

message: Recently and in the past there has been many edit wars over what colors should be in the infoboxes for retired players, for example there is currently a edit battle over Tug McGraw's colors on weather he should have Mets or Phillies colors. In the past there has been wars over the colors for Reggie Jackson, Lenny Dykstra, and Gary Carter, among others. In my opinion there should be neutral colors like there is with the NFL retired players. I also believe the same color should be used, #dcdcdc. Please leave your opinions--Yankees10 (talk) 17:31, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Neutral colors would be best. Kingturtle (talk) 18:14, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm a big supporter of neutral colors. I haven't added infoboxes to retired players because of the slugfests over which colors to use.--Fabrictramp (talk) 18:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree. Neutral colors look better than a team's color scheme (which may have changed since a player played for them). This change would end confusion over which team's colors to use. I had a time trying to decide which team's colors to use for Steve Dillard (baseball). I chose the team he had the best stats with, but I believe the gray color in the example would look better. -NatureBoyMD (talk) 18:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Whenever I add MLB retired infoboxes to any players, I usually just add the colors of the only team they played for, or what team they played for the majority of the time.   jj137 ♠ 23:32, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't always clear (or at least it isn't clear to me). Take Bill Collins (baseball outfielder), for example. What colors do I use? He played for four teams in his four years in the bigs. Granted, he played most of his games with the Boston Doves/Boston Rustlers -- do I use the modern Atlanta Braves colors for him? Do I use the Doves/Rustlers colors? If so, which year? Their uniforms were different the two years he played for them.--Fabrictramp (talk) 23:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We could probably use neutral colors in that case, as suggested above.   jj137 ♠ 00:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't think we should. It provides a quick reference to anyone looking at the article, so that they don't have to search for some major information. I think they're pretty useful.   jj137 ♠ 02:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the infoboxes should stay.  No doubt.  —Wknight94 (talk) 02:38, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutral Colors in Infobox 

message: Seems to me there was an article or discussion started some time back on New marlins stadium, with the decision made that until there was a firm deal for the stadium it was a bit premature to write an article. But I'll be darned if I can find that discussion now that someone has started an article. So, is it premature? My gut feeling is yes, seeing as how they don't even have a city nailed down yet, but I could be persuaded otherwise. --Fabrictramp (talk) 17:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd agree it's a bit too early. Wait for an official announcement. Also, if the article isn't deleted the article should be moved to New Marlins stadium per the Manual of Style. --Michael Greiner 17:53, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose if reliable sources could be found, it might be plausible to have an article.  Would it be particularly useful?  Probably not.  —Wknight94 (talk) 18:01, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a discussion at Talk:Florida Marlins#New Marlins Ballpark. It's probably the one referred to here. It has been proposed that the the relocation section in the Florida Marlins page be split off to a new page, which is basically what this new page's creator did, but without deleting anything from the old page! Id rather see this new page retooled to cover all the relocation issues, and a separate stadium page created when the deals are all done. Will take this up at Talk:Florida Marlins. - BillCJ (talk) 18:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for pointing me to the Talk:Florida Marlins page, which led me to the original AfD.--Fabrictramp (talk) 18:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New marlins stadium 

message: Greetings! Can I draw your attention to a new article, Mitch Lomax, apparently "a world renowned Little League World Series MVP" please?  I'm rather doubtful that he is notable but I know very little about baseball. Thanks. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:59, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I haven't seen any other articles about Little League players, but this guy apparently may have some notability. 391,000 Google hits, and they're all definitely him. (I don't know any other people with the name Mitch Lomax.)   jj137 ♠ Talk 21:17, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've cleaned up the article quite a bit. However, I do question notabilty -- lots of ghits, but quite a number are passing mentions. Hopefully someone can turn up something a bit better than the two I added.--Fabrictramp (talk) 21:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this article should be deleted. There are basically no articles on Little Leaguers and we shouldn't be starting.--Street20 (talk) 21:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to prod or AfD it. (As to the 391,000 ghits, that may be over estimating. I only get 85,000. And if you search for the name in quotes (to remove articles where the word Mitch appears in one place and Lomax appears somewhere else), it drops down to 1260. Adding the word "baseball" drops it down to 212. None of which makes any difference, according to WP:GHITS.)--Fabrictramp (talk) 22:12, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Little Leaguers don't need articles. If they get to the majors, then they'll get articles. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 01:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Danny Almonte is the exception to the rule, but I agree that the Lomax article needs to go. It's a borderline A7 speedy as it is. Caknuck (talk) 18:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mitch Lomax 

message: Portal:Baseball seems to have beeen broken (no selected articles) since December 1. Just a heads up in case anyone wants to fix it. 62.136.163.200 (talk) 21:58, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it has been pretty inactive for a while. I might go around and update it a bit.   jj137 ♠ 22:14, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Baseball Portal 

message: A RfC has been filed with regard to whether Bruce Chen's Chinese name should be included in the article.  Please comment at Talk:Bruce Chen.  --Nlu (talk) 17:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bruce Chen 

message: I think this team has renamed itself the Princeton Rays, based on some news articles I've seen, but there's no official name change newspaper article that I can find.  I propose moving the article name, but I wanted to be sure before I did it.  Corvus cornixtalk 19:42, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Their website is using both names, and the ticket link on their website says the tickets are for the "Princeton Devil Rays". MiLB.com is calling them the "Princeton Devil Rays", so I'd say there's been no official name change yet. --Fabrictramp (talk) 21:40, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

text: And as a further check the Tampa Bay Rays site at mlb.com says their rookie league affiliate is the Princeton Devil Rays. --Fabrictramp (talk) 21:54, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Some news stories call them the Princeton Rays: , , . Kingturtle (talk) 14:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I remember reading that under Minor League Baseball rules, a team can only change its name and logo within 60 days after the end of its season. That's why the Vermont Expos had to play a year under that name after the move of the Montréal Expos to Washington before they could use their current name of Vermont Lake Monsters. It's entirely possible that the Princeton team MUST use "Devil Rays" until the 2009 season. — Dale Arnett (talk) 20:54, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Princeton Devil Rays]] 

message: I've noticed that Tampa Bay Rays players who used to be with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays just say 'Tampa Bay Rays' in the infobox. Are we forgetting that they used to play for the Devil Rays? -Street20 02:25, 08 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll go fix it now then. -Street20 04:49, 08 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tampa Bay Rays players 

message: For their infoboxes, why do we even include the Japanese team(s) that they played for? I thought the infoboxes were supposed to only include Major League Baseball teams. Examples include Alfonso Soriano and Julio Franco -Street20 05:12, 08 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So is the fact they played in Japan professionally not notable?--Borgardetalk 05:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: When I edit NFL infoboxes, I include all professional leagues. It's all notable. These boxes just shouldn't be for the MLB teams, it should be a timeline of a guy's career.►Chris NelsonHolla! 05:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly--Borgardetalk 05:22, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well if it's a Major League Baseball infobox, why include other information not pertaining to Major League Baseball? -Street20 05:24, 08 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Chris, regarding NFL infoboxes, I could've sworn there was one article where Pats1 was removing an NFL Europa team, if that's what you are talking about. But if it makes sense to include non-Major League Baseball teams in the infobox, I guess we should keep it then. -Street20 05:27, 08 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you explain why NPB information isn't notable then? It's an MLB infobox because that's the league they are currently playing it right?--Borgardetalk 05:29, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major League Baseball players that have played in Japan 

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --Howard the Duck 15:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of [[:Template:{{ucfirst:WorldSeriesRt}}]] 

message: FYI, Jimmy McAleer is a current Featured Article candidate. Caknuck (talk) 18:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: UPDATE It is now an FA. Caknuck (talk) 02:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Jimmy McAleer]] 

message: Would an interested user want to recover some of the images uploaded by this user User_talk:Silent_Wind_of_Doom and deleted due to lack of sources?  Their all baseball stadium themed. MBisanz talk 04:48, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I reckon someone needs to put fair-use rationales on the ones still on the system. The ones that aren't, it's hard to do, since they're deleted. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 04:51, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If you can find the source, (I couldn't otherwise I'd have fixed them), then just grab an admin and they'll undelete the others. MBisanz talk 05:12, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hard to find the source for something that's deleted and thus I don't even know what it looks like. The name isn't necessarily something that can be matched with anything on the internet, as uploaders will often re-name things. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 05:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think if you could find the logo to one, it would have all of them. MBisanz talk 05:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Or you could, since you brought up the subject. :) Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 06:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  image recovery 

message: I would like to merge the three articles into one, as there is a lot of repetition and the other two articles make up a small percentage of the information. Before doing that, I'd like to hear from interested parties, at that article's talk page. Thank you! Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 14:35, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Crosley Field]] 

message: In 1938 World Series, somehow the info box on this article got skewed. Can someone figure out what went wrong? I can't see it. Kingturtle (talk) 15:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I took care of it. A comment was placed inbetween the double brackets following a inter-wiki link which fouled up the infobox. -NatureBoyMD (talk) 17:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[1938 World Series]] 

message: Runs batted in is inherently plural. "Ruth had four runs batted in; Gehrig had one run batted in." But the pluralization of the the abbreviation is RBIs not RBI. "Ruth had four RBIs; Gehrig had one RBI." The URL http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/rbi.html explains it simply. 
RBI is an acronym. The pluralization of acronyms is to add an s. To quote Wikipedia:Manual of Style, "Acronyms and initialisms are pluralized by adding -s or -es as with any other nouns (They produced three CD-ROMs in the first year; The laptops were produced with three different BIOSes in 2006). As with other nouns, no apostrophe is used unless the form is a possessive." (i.e. RBIs and not RBI's). 
RBI and HR will appear without the s in cases of statistical lists, like the backs of baseball cards and encyclopedia-style charts. RBIs and HRs are when used in sentences.
Examples:
*Led AL in RBIs in 1910, 1914, and 1915
*He was also 3rd in the National League in triples (16), RBIs (104), and slugging percentage (.524).
*Consecutive seasons, 120+ RBIs: 8 (1927–1934)
*In four postseason games, he hit .077 (1-for-13) with a run and one RBI.
*After giving up an RBI single to Pete Rose, Lonborg was inexplicably removed from the game by manager Danny Ozark. 
*National League RBI champion: 1952
*3 time RBI leader (1993, 1995–1996)
*Dropo was the first rookie in the 20th century to top 100 RBIs with more RBIs than games played.
*Belle is also one of only six players in major league history to have nine consecutive 100-RBI seasons.
*List of Major League Baseball players with 1000 RBIs
*On all charts and infoboxes, it should be RBI
I bring all this up because many, many articles in Wikipedia have RBI in sentences when it should be RBIs. I started going around changing them, but there must be 100s of articles out there that need fixing. We can't set up a BOT to do it because some of the instances that RBI is used are correct. One really has to read the sentence to know if it is RBI or RBIs. What we can do is keep an eye out. Whenever you edit a baseball article, just double check the article and fix any instances of RBI that should be RBIs. 
I realize "RBIs" might not look or sound right, but it is consistent with our Manual of Style, and many other Manuals of Style. Thanks, Kingturtle (talk) 04:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree wholeheartedly.  The plural form of the abbreviation for run batted in should be RBIs. X96lee15 (talk) 05:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  RBIs 

message: Why does Wikipedia put stats on player pages?  Keeping an accurate article throughout the season would require updating hundreds of players' pages after every game.  It's an absurd pursuit.  Rather, there should just be a link to a page like baseball-reference.com, considering all of their stats are updated every day and it's a very clean, mostly user-supported website.  I mean, am I the only one who thinks this?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.122.188.33 (talk) 06:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Stats add to articles. You could add stats to an article and put something like "Last updated:" Or "Through to" and then reference the link to MLB.com, instead of baseball-reference, seeing as MLB.com is the official website and has the stats.--Borgardetalk 10:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The infobox has a built in field for the last date the stats were updated. There's enough of us here maintaining these articles to make sure they're relatively current. Caknuck (talk) 07:04, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Both MLB.com and baseball-reference.com should be retained, one way or another. They are not identical information. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 11:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  General suggestion for baseball player articles 

message: Template: has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — NatureBoyMD (talk) 19:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  TfD nomination of [[:Template:{{ucfirst:BaseballStub}}]] 

message: I believe this collection of red links belongs here. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:26, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, what a mess.  —Wknight94 (talk) 18:29, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not saying that these redlinks should not be satisfied with articles, but before we spend valuable time creating articles for old seasons or teams, is there any chance that they will be considered for deletion, or changed from redlinks to "black" (no links at all)?  For example, is a prospective article such as "1884 Altoona Mountain City season" encyclopedic in the context of MLB?  I could probably help with this task (at least for post-1900 seasons, for which I have a hardcopy encyclopedia), but I don't want to waste time contributing to articles that may later be deleted.  Thanks. Jonneroo (talk) 19:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: An article about a season for a major league team should not be subject to deletion, provided there is sufficient content.  Personally I'm not a big fan of the laundry list articles with almost no prose but that's more of a personal preference.  I'd recommend not to bother creating an article for no other reason than to turn a red link blue.  —Wknight94 (talk) 19:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless, of course, you are able to add some valuble content. On the list, I think we can simply remove them instead of striking them through, right?   jj137 (talk) 20:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Nevermind about that last part, I see on other lists completed ones are just removed. I'll go ahead and do that.   jj137 (talk) 20:24, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I was under the impression that striking through an item was helpful in that it would be easier for interested parties to assess overall progress on the project.  But personally I don't care either way. Jonneroo (talk) 20:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They could probably just check the history for that. ;)   jj137 (talk) 00:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Please do remove completed templates - we record progress on the project page (although we don't yet have a final count for this sub-page). Cheers! bd2412 T 05:13, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Templates with red links/2008-Jan-MLB]] 

message: I'm new here, and I'm sure this has probably been addressed before, but please indulge me.
What is the standard (if indeed one exists) for capitalizing terms such as Major League, Minor League, and Spring Training?  The team writers on the MLB.com site appear to use a standard of capitalizing these three terms, and to be sure it wasn't just the writer for my favorite team doing this, I spot-checked articles written by other MLB.com contributors.  The writers are very consistent from what I have read.  As such, I am of the impression that these terms might be trademarks of MLB. (Furthermore, I know from having participated in a collecting hobby that "not just anybody" can use terms like Major Leagues, American League, New York Yankees, etc., in print (such as on baseball cards) without permission from, and/or paying a licensing fee to, the appropriate parties.)
In Wikipedia articles, I've been seeing mixed case all over the place.  Earlier today, someone edited an article I had edited less than 24 hours earlier and changed "Spring Training" to all lowercase.  In my understanding, Spring Training should be capitalized, but before I dare change it back, I want to ask others for their insight.  Thank you. Jonneroo (talk) 20:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I should clarify what I meant by "mixed case" since I used the term incorrectly above. As an example, I have seen "Minor League" in some articles and "minor league" in others (most commonly the latter). Jonneroo (talk) 20:29, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know about "spring training", but there is a corporate entity called Major League Baseball and another called Minor League Baseball (the latter formerly known as the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues), so when addressed that way, they should be capitalized. When speaking of just "the majors" or "the minors", I think you could get away with lower case. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 20:41, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that Spring Training should be capitalized and major leagues and minor leagues should be lower cased. Major League Baseball is definitely capitalized. --Street20 (talk) 00:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed on all points.  I have a feeling this has been discussed before.  If so, anyone know where off-hand?  —Wknight94 (talk) 02:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalization 

message: There seems to be a dispute on the place where Chad Fox was born. MLB.com says Fox was born in Conroe, Texas, ESPN.com and Yahoo says he was born in Houston, Texas, and Baseball Reference, The Baseball Cube, and CBS says he was born in Coronado, California. --Street20 (talk) 21:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would trust MLB.com before the baseball reference websites on this.  BTW, Conroe is close enough to Houston that one might consider it a suburb thereof. Jonneroo (talk) 22:17, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

text: There appear to be two different players named Chad Fox (A major leaguer and a career minor leaguer.) I wonder if that is where some confustion is coming in?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fabrictramp (talk • contribs) 22:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Good intuition you have there. I thought there could be two of them but I figured the likelihood of two players with the same name wasn't high enough to seriously consider it. Good job. Jonneroo (talk) 22:28, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Not good enough of a job, apparently. Looks like the minor leaguer was born in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Perhaps at one spot someone heard "Conroe" said with a Texas accent" and thought it was "Coronado"? --Fabrictramp (talk) 22:30, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chad Fox 

message: Is this name correct? The standings on the page say New York Giants. Could someone clarify this and either rename it appropriately or keep it as be. --Borgardetalk 01:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The team was first called the Giants "about 1885". They were definitely Giants by 1886. The theory is that sometime during the 1885 season is when they picked up that (unofficial at first) nickname. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[1885 New York Gothams/Giants season]] 

message: There are two Frank Thomas' that have played in the major leagues. I originally changed them from Frank Thomas (AL baseball player) and Frank Thomas (NL baseball player) to Frank Thomas (designated hitter) and Frank Thomas (outfielder), respectively. MisfitToys then changed it back and I do not agree with this because it is NOT standard to distinguish it by the league they play in since there is no difference in the AL and the NL except the designated hitter rule. We usually distinguish the pages by position if there are more than one players of the same name but this is extremely stupid to distinguish it by league. --Street20 (talk) 01:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Revert back.  It's quite common that we disambiguate first by "(baseball)" and then "([position])" for the next step.  Ksy92003(talk) 01:19, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I did revert it back but MisfitToys just reverted it back again and that is why I took the problem here. --Street20 (talk) 01:21, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO, it's not worth an edit war.  I suggest that you find another article to edit. BRMo (talk) 01:24, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No I won't. And I wasn't really editing the article and it's not really an edit war. It's just moving the page. Now is someone else going to agree that the proper name of the page should be Frank Thomas (designated hitter)? --Street20 (talk) 01:36, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The best solution is to adopt a standard.  An old proposal is found here, and the issue also came up earlier today on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Players#Player naming standards. BRMo (talk) 01:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: How about (I) and (II) as IMDB would do? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 01:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Thomas could get traded to the NL. Calling him by his position is also shaky. You could say I and II. You could say 60s player and 90s-00s player. You could also (gasp!) say white and black. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 07:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I like Bugs' suggestion, 60s player vs. 90s-00s player. Suppose a reader is needing to look up the 90s-00s Frank Thomas, because (s)he doesn't know anything about him.  Do you think the reader will already know whether Thomas played in the AL or in the NL, or what position he played? Perhaps so, perhaps not. But the reader probably has a preconceived notion of what era the player represented.  E.g., the reader may have seen him play on TV last year, and that (plus Thomas' name) may be the sum total of his/her knowledge of the player.  Besides, as Bugs also stated, there's nothing to prevent the 00s Thomas from ending up in the NL (except his declining fielding skill at his relatively advanced age, making him less attractive to an NL club). Jonneroo (talk) 07:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If a reader knows nothing about Frank Thomas, they are going to wind up at the disambiguation page, which should have enough information in the one line description to let a reader choose which one it is. --Fabrictramp (talk) 16:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: The NL could adopt the DH next week if they wanted to. The AL/NL designation would work at the moment. How many times do we want to mess with it? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 08:11, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't like to use 90s-00s player except in extreme cases like Mike Smith. --Street20 (talk) 08:41, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: But if we are able to do it with position, then why not? I mean the current Frank Thomas has played more games as a designated hitter than a first baseman and the retired Frank Thomas played more games in the outfield than any other position. --Street20 (talk) 08:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're only going to get to it from the disambiguation page anyway, so it really doesn't matter much. 09:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It wasn't hurting anything as AL vs. NL.  As for "what if he goes to the NL" or "what if the NL gets the DH", it doesn't matter.  The move button will still work if that happens.  Frankly, I'd prefer someone expanded the Frank Thomas NL article instead of spending all this time arguing over the title.  The man had a 16-year career and his whole article is a peculiar unsourced opening and an ugly five-point laundry list of highlights. —Wknight94 (talk) 12:11, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: This is a very silly debate. Either way works for me. Just pick one and go with it. Does it really matter that much? Spanneraol (talk) 16:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There's been a lot of standards-wonking going on lately.  "We always use position first" and "We need to get standards in place for examples that may come up ten years from now", blah, blah.  Just do whatever is least confusing right now and move on.  If everyone concentrated more on actually filling out the little stubs we have littering the whole project, the encyclopedia would be much better off.  I could write a computer program that would extract Baseball-reference data as XML and use XSLT to format that into all the little stubs we have - and it would be more accurate.  Why doesn't one person do that, everyone else flesh out the stubs, and there will be no one left to fret over disambiguation standards.  —Wknight94 (talk) 16:39, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: As a side note, what if Frank Thomas (90s-00s) was traded to the National League? Then we couldn't use Frank Thomas (NL) and Frank Thomas (AL).   jj137 (talk) 16:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Your side note is part of what I've tried to address - if he gets traded to an NL team, then use the move button.  It's a wiki.  —Wknight94 (talk) 17:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I've slept on this, and now believe that it doesn't make any difference whatsoever (I originally said to go by position).  True, it has been a certain way for a long time and there haven't been any problems.  I've always been a proponent of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" saying.  Wknight94 is right: spend more time worrying about the articles themselves rather than what they're titled.  Ksy92003(talk) 16:48, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I like the suggestion of using Frank Thomas (1960s baseball) and Frank Thomas (1990-2000s baseball).  Those labels will never change and require the least knowledge of a players' career in order to choose which article to go to.  But I also agree with other comments that this discussion isn't that important.  The Frank Thomas dab page is all you need to know which article to go to.  X96lee15 (talk) 17:00, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I decided to let the discussion take its course over the weekend before offering my thoughts. I think there are several disadvantages with using positions to distinguish the two Frank Thomases; perhaps primary among them is that the first player played several positions in his career - he played primarily in left field for four seasons (1955, 1961-63), in center field for four seasons (1951-54), at first base for four seasons (1957, 1960, 1964-65) and at third base for three (1956, 1958-59). (He was used only as a pinch hitter in 1966, his final season.) Complicating this is the fact that clearly his best season (1958, the only year he was an All-Star starter) was at third base, the position where he played the least of his top four positions. As for the current player, he's indeed played more games as a DH - but his two MVP awards were won in seasons when he played first base. He also won his batting title as a first baseman, and clearly the strongest part of his career was the period when he was primarily at first base (1990, 1992-97); since then, he's never led the league in any offensive category. (It wouldn't be advisable, for instance, to refer to Ernie Banks as a first baseman when his best seasons were as a shortstop, even though he ended up playing more at first base.) Both Thomases are right-handed hitters, which rules that out as disambiguation notation. Using middle initials violates the Wikipedia policy that article titles should reflect how the person was primarily known. Neither player used his middle initial during his career; middle initials should be used in article titles only for players who generally were known by their initials (e.g. A. J. Pierzynski, B. J. Surhoff) or players who used their middle initial during their career to distinguish themselves from a contemporary player with the same name (e.g. Bobby J. Jones, Bobby M. Jones). Using years in the title is somewhat cumbersome; neither player's career has been limited to one decade (and the current player's might extend into a third decade), so we'd likely have to note the specific years (i.e. Frank Thomas (1951-1966 baseball player), but that would mean revising the current player's title annually until he retires. Right now, the single clearest distinguishing factor between the two is that the first player spent his entire career in the National League, playing for seven different teams, and the current player has spent his entire career in the American League, with three teams. While it's possible that he could move to the NL if it adopted the DH rule (highly unlikely for reasons of both economics and tradition), it's also possible (though highly unlikely) that he could move to the NL and start playing first base again. Using the leagues as the disambiguation point is the best option. MisfitToys (talk) 20:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: P.S. I continue to maintain that DH is not really a position; it's not a field position (like shortstop), and it's not an offensive position in the batting lineup (like leadoff or cleanup hitter). The most similar comparison to "designated hitter" is "pinch hitter", and I can't imagine anyone describing that as a position; for example, from 1974 to 1980 one would not have described Manny Mota's position as pinch hitter - rather, he was a left fielder who was primarily utilized as a pinch hitter. Likewise, Thomas is a first baseman who in recent years has been primarily utilized as a DH. MisfitToys (talk) 20:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good point; I'd say a DH is closer to a position than a pinch hitter: some will play that game in and game out (and occasionally will play positions), while pinch hitters come in for one at bat and usually don't do anything more than that for the game (well, sometimes they'll stay in at a position).   jj137 (talk) 23:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well do you think it is best to disambiguate Thomas as a first baseman? --Street20 (talk) 01:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Just throwing this out - how about a standard where we use the player's debut year to disambiguate?  At least in complicated cases (not including this one where the AL vs. NL is pretty clearly the best choice as MisfitToys described)?  —Wknight94 (talk) 02:49, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There's an idea. It's like with films of the same title issue in different years. The other unambiguous fact, of course, is race. I'm guessing you don't want to go down that road? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 03:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Uh ---- no.  —Wknight94 (talk) 03:12, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I like Wknight94's idea.  The debut year in unambiguous and won't have the year-to-year renaming problem that would befall the "Joe Blow 2002-2007", "Joe Blow 2002-2008", etc. type of scenario. Jonneroo (talk) 04:47, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Frank Thomas 

message: OK, we've got a "situation" brewing on those pages, from some over-zealous Reds fans who insist on trying to date their team from the 1869 Red Stockings, on the strength of the "time line" at the Reds MLB.com history site. They're calling me a vandal and they're probably going to try to get me on a 3RR now. Sorry, but the current Reds date from 1882, not 1863. The famous Reds team broke up and some of its players formed a new team, the Boston Red Stockings. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:11, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I saw that brewing.  How about adding a footnote saying exactly what you said here?  I was going to do it but thought maybe it was dying down.  —Wknight94 (talk) 17:12, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The facts as stated above are fully explained in the Reds article already. I'm assuming you mean in the Cincinnati article. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  To keep the peace, I'd recommend leaving as 1869 (or 1863 or whatever) and adding a footnote stating that technically the Cincinnati Red Stockings were a different team and that the current team officially dates to 1882 when the N.L. did something-er-other, etc., etc.  Links to History of the Cincinnati Reds would help.  In general, the layperson, esp. a Cincinnatian layperson, isn't going to care about such technicalities and I predict you'd be far outnumbered.  Just like the astronomer folks who insist on Halley's Comet being at Comet Halley or 1P/Halley or something else that looks silly to a layperson like me.  —Wknight94 (talk) 17:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I explained the facts a little bit more on the Cincinnati page, and added further comments on the Cincinnati talk page. I'm going to have to go back to Lee Allen's history of the Red and see if there really is any connection that the conventional baseball historians have overlooked. It's a slippery issue. It's like dating the Chicago/St.Louis/Arizona Cardinals to 1898, which is a questionable proposition for a team that was out of business for a number of years prior to 1920. Closer to home, it's like trying to date the Cubs to the White Stockings of 1870-71. They suspended operations for 1872-73 and resumed play in 1874. To my mind, that means the current team dates to 1874. If you don't field a team, are you really a team? That kind of thing gets tricky. And meanwhile, as per your advice, if they still insist on switching the article back to 1863 or whatever, I'll leave it be. But if they keep calling me a vandal, I might run to "Mommy" with that. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:33, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the vandalism assertions need to stop.  But I try not to get overly technical with baseball stuff, esp. when it flies in the face of an official team web site.  —Wknight94 (talk) 17:42, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The team site conveniently leaves out a few facts, as it's a marketing page. The 1919 Reds tried to claim it as their "50th Anniversary" also. I don't know of any historian who takes that kind of assertion seriously, but I need to rustle up some additional info. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:50, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Interestingly enough, the Braves date their "timeline" form 1876, contradicting themselves on their history page where they talk about the Red Stockings of 1871-75. So much for the accuracy of the team pages. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:53, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Cincinnati, Ohio]] and [[Cincinnati Reds]] 

message: Should teams be doubled linked in infoboxes? Take Steve Trachsel for example. Should his second stint with the Cubs be double linked? I mean we have been double linking the year for a long time now, don't see a problem with double linking the team. And this type of trend is in other infoboxes too. To me, I think it should be double linked, or it won't 'look good', IMO --Street20 (talk) 02:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, it just looks nicer. And if there is a long list of  teams it sometimes is tedious to hunt down the first link. Spanneraol (talk) 02:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: But, see the Existence at all? discussion above re: unlinking years in some situations. One could use a similar line of reasoning to argue that the team doesn't need to be double-linked. Just playing devil's advocate here. Jonneroo (talk) 04:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I agree with Spanneraol, just like in tables when you have a bunch of award winners related to the league and the team name comes up more than once, it's annoying to go searching for the original team name to find the link.--Borgardetalk 05:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that there are really any true reasons for or against double-linking.  Just double-link them just so it's all blue.  Ksy92003(talk) 05:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Double linking in infoboxes 

message: I'm not sure exactly where I should be looking, but I have not found a WikiProject for the Royals. What are the responsibilities of a team-specific WikiProject? What is the benefit in having one? What would it take to start one? Thanks in advance. Jonneroo (talk) 04:50, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know exactly how they work, but I'm assuming the team specific WikiProjects like to have an organisation of just the team specific articles in general, like Boston would have all the Boston players and articles related to the Red Sox organisation and take the responsibility of just those articles. I've added the currently existing ones to the side bar anyway, to try to keep them linked with this project for better organisation.--Borgardetalk 05:03, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I know little about setting up projects.  I'd imagine you need a certain amount of interest in order to sustain one.  Otherwise, it's a waste of time.  —Wknight94 (talk) 15:40, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kansas City Royals WikiProject? 

message: I ran across an oddity with Portland, OR, minor league ball that I think needs addressing, as there seems to a lack of uniformity in the way minor league franchises are handled. For major league teams, usually there is a separate article for each club, e.g. separate articles about the various Washington, D.C., clubs. For minor league teams, it doesn't really seem justified, as the minors are much less stable and there have been countless franchise shifts in countless minor leagues over the years, as well as frequent nickname changes. However, in this specific case, there is one article covering four different unrelated clubs that all happened to be called Portland Beavers, and a separate article for Portland Mavericks. The only justification for doing things that way is that the Mavericks were in a different league. But all of them were different clubs. I would argue that they should all be in a single article about Portland professional baseball. By extension, every minor league city could (not necessarily "should") be handled that way. Now, I'm not set in my ways on this one, as there is certainly more than one way to do this. I'd like to hear other opinions on the matter. Maybe there's already a consensus that I don't know about. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 18:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would actually prefer to separate the various Beavers teams into separate articles. The info box information on that page is for the current version not the past ones. In my opinion, each team that is separate should have it's own article. Now if a team moved from one city to another and changed its name but was essentially the same team it should be one article but if its a new team it should be separate. Spanneraol (talk) 19:04, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: A good thought, and raising new complications. Look at articles about other PCL teams like the Vernon/Venice Tigers, Mission Reds, Hollywood Stars, San Diego Padres (PCL), etc. Note that there is often just one article covering totally different teams, and having to jump to other articles when the teams moved, and you'll see the can of worms that this subject opens. This has been debated in the majors, too, as with the Expos which have an article separate from the Nats, even though they are the same team, and an approach that has not been done with other cities' clubs, but the Nats' fans won that one. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 19:14, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well I disagree with the Nats and Expos having different articles... makes no sense.. but I'll stay out of that one... I know the Reds have different articles for the older 19th century versions of the team which is the proper way... This minor league stuff really should be cleaned up at some point... I can see it is a mess in the way it's been handled in the past. Spanneraol (talk) 19:56, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I've also noticed the inconsistent treatment, but I don't see any urgency to make changes. Taking the example of the Portland Beavers, the article is not too long and if it were split into four articles, you'd have a series of short stub-length articles that would need to be disambiguated.  We can wait until the article grows to a length where a split would ordinarily be considered. I strongly dislike the idea of consolidating a minor league team's history across multiple cities in a single article, as is done with the major league teams. I think this approach would create difficulties for readers, who generally are interested in learning about a city's history in minor league baseball rather than the genealogy of the franchise.  It would also be difficult to create and maintain such a system, because it isn't always clear from available sources when a franchise moves and when a franchise is replaced by another.  (As was noted earlier on this talk page, this type of confusion can also arise regarding the early history of major league teams, such as the relationship between the modern Cincinnati Reds and the original Cincinnati Red Stockings.) Most articles on minor league teams focus on the history within a single city, and I strongly support maintaining that as the standard (despite the inconsistency with the articles on major league teams). BRMo (talk) 05:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of connecting both major and minor league clubs to cities in some way. That's kind of the concept I used in History of baseball team nicknames, except it was restricted mostly to the current major league cities, some of which once featured minor league teams. From 1900 onward, the majors have remained stable, i.e. no franchises have disappeared, although some have moved and/or changed nicknames. The minors are notoriously unstable, even today. The majors were like that in the early years also, which is another place this issue comes to the fore. Although the Altoona club in the Union Association has its own article, how much can you write about a "major league" city whose entire life in the 130-plus years of the majors consisted of a few weeks? Calling Altoona a major league baseball city is akin to calling Shreveport a major league football city. Meanwhile, is there any truth to the rumor that Altoona is a distant relative of Charlie Tuna? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 06:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

text: And you're right, it can be hard to keep track of what team is what in the minors. One problem is a tendency to place too much importance on nicknames, which are nothing more than marketing vehicles. The Greensboro Grasshoppers have been around since 1979, initially known as the Hornets and then as the Bats, but it's a continuous operation albeit affiliated with a number of major league teams. Their predecessors, in several different leagues (especially the Piedmont League) were typically called the Greensboro Patriots. That team had no connection to the current team (nor does it have its own article, apparently), but viewed from a city standpoint, it's part of a near-continuum of professional ball in the city. So, would I want to start a separate article on the Patriots (which had multiple incarnations), or would I be better off to start "Greensboro professional baseball" or some such, and link to articles that happen to exist? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 06:07, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Having just been to the Cleveland Indians page, it seems clear that we don't necessarily need a fully separate article on each city's minor and/or major league teams, as the current team article often has just such a capsule summary, with links to the prior teams where such links exist. That would seem like a pretty good way to do it. In fact, then the Porland article works. So I'm working this out with this continual talking to myself, and sometimes I even listen. :) Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 06:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor League franchises 

message: Please see recent changes here by an anonymous user. The deleted section needed to be rewritten, IMHO, but I'm concerned that its deletion smacks of vandalism and may not be a good faith edit. The anon didn't leave an edit summary that explained the rationale for the edit. I'm new here. I am willing to do a revert, but I'd like the opinion of more knowledgeable individuals, and I don't care to partake in an edit war. That's precisely the opposite of the goals I hope to accomplish here. Thoughts? Jonneroo (talk) 03:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Reverted. My philosophy is, if a vandal makes some possibly useful edits but also posts something stupid, then the whole thing gets reverted. It's not an edit war, it's just reverting vandalism, and any good admin would stand behind you. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 04:26, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch. I only compared the version before his first edit with the version after his second edit. I didn't look at his first edit. You're absolutely right. But hey, my gut feeling was pretty accurate. Thanks. Jonneroo (talk) 05:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, you were right on target. You just gave the vandal more "good faith" than it deserved. :) Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 05:25, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible Vandalism? 

message: There are see also sections on some pages. These sections include links to all-time rosters, mainly Tampa Bay Rays all-time roster and Arizona Diamondbacks all-time roster. I think this has been brought up before but these links should be wiped out from the pages since it is pointless. --Street20 (talk) 22:07, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To clarify, I believe Street20 is referring to player pages in particular, not the team pages themselves.  For example, Derek Jeter's page would link to the New York Yankees roster page, but not to the all-time roster page.  On the other hand, the New York Yankees roster page would contain a link to the Yankees all-time roster page. Am I understanding you correctly? Jonneroo (talk) 04:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Some may wonder why such see also sections are pointless. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but the purpose of a see also section is to link to related topics that are relevent to the subject of an article, but are too large and/or complex to include in the aticle itself (for instance, large tables or lists). Now consider the inclusion of all-time rosters links on individual player articles. First, you wouldn't even consider including a list of other player that played with a player in their article. Second, the all-time rosters don't add any useful information to the article. If you wanted to find out who else played for a particular team at the same time, you could easily navingate to the team's article and click on their all-time roster link. Third, if such see-also sections existed for every player, imagine how big some sections would be. In other words, they are just an unnecessary waste of space on player articles. Opinions? -NatureBoyMD (talk) 18:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that explains it perfectly. I've stopped adding those.   jj137 (talk) 18:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  See also sections 

message: There is one editor who insists that this is a Circle changeup grip and not a Four-seam fastball grip.  Can I get some opinions because I think that is clearly wrong.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTD)  21:47, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What do you want us to look at? I think you forgot to link something. --Michael Greiner 22:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: He's talking about the pitch in this picture. That's obviously not a circle change.--Rabbethan 22:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Circle changeup 

message: A couple days ago I noticed a user changing the years of the infoboxes on J. G. Taylor Spink Award winners.  For example, the infobox used in the article H. G. Salsinger lists him with the Hall of Fame class of 1969.  The award was until this year announced in the before it was presented at the HoF ceremony.  So, sources list Salsinger as having won the 1968 Spink Award, including the HoF website: http://web.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/spink.jsp .  HOWEVER, the award was presented in 1969, along with the 1969 HoF inductees, which is of note.  Recently, "the BBWAA changed the year designation for the Spink Award to coincide with that of the Hall of Fame induction ceremony" (from the link).  I think it is deceiving, or at least confusing, to list awardees in the infobox of their award presentation, rather than the year that is commonly referred to (example: Peter Gammons is in the 2005 HoF box, but the award he received is referred to as "the 2004 winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award" ().  You can see some previous discussion I had with the user here: User talk:MisfitToys#Spink Award Winners.  Open question: is there a decent way to reconcile these facts into the :Category:Baseball Hall of Fame navigational boxes?  Wickethewok (talk) 03:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spink Award years in Hall of Fame infoboxes 

message: Just one illustrative example of what I'm going to point out. The History of the Chicago Cubs is one of a number of MLB related baseball articles called History of.... that are written in a journalistic style and have few (if any at all) cited sources. Seems like I read somewhere that such articles are frowned upon. Anyone (an WikiProject Baseball Admin preferably) care to weigh in on policy/guidelines for articles? These are rather substantial bits after all, seeing as they are directly linked to MLB teams both in subject and content. 76.223.30.228 (talk) 08:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Certainly. Another issue is that these "history pages" are often copy-and-paste from the main pages with little or no attempt to trim the main page down. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 08:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: And... what are editors supposed to do according to the WP regulations state? Besides what I already stated, cutting and pasting are violation of copyright policy. If you cared enough to remove the templates I added, why not help clean these up? At least the Cubs one, since you seem to be a fan. That's why I'm pointing it out here, so that dedicated baseball project members might add these to the task list.76.223.30.228 (talk) 09:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: My primary objection is to the "press release" nonsense. No team would issue a press release bragging about how they haven't won a World Series in 100 years. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 09:37, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Some sources are listed on the main page, though not enough. No question that fans writing from memory nonetheless need to point the casual reader to something they can verify. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 09:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Another thing is that some pages just have references listed at the bottom of the page. Although not a major priority, I've been trying to move them to in-text citations where possible.   jj137 (talk) 14:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aren't citations and adherence to style guidelines policy requirements of WP articles? 

message: Someone has nominated this category for merger with Tampa Bay Rays players... see this discussion here. They should really remain two separate categories per our current policy for keeping separate categories for each successive team name. Please particiapte in that discussion. Spanneraol (talk) 14:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category:Tampa Bay Devil Rays players 

message: I myself have been using The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, a book which lists pretty much all modern era pitchers with a relatively long or notable career, and most specifically, what each of them threw, making it an ideal reference for a wikipedia article, seeing as that unless that pitcher was specifically known for a special pitch, like Koufax's curve, Ryan's fastball, Cicotte's knuckler, etc., it hardly ever mentions what pitchers the pitcher threw.. I've been going around a few random pitchers and adding their pitch selection as a paragraph, citing the book as the source. (The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches. Bill James and Rob Neyer. 2004.) Here's an example: Mike Flanagan (baseball) - 4th paragraph. So, thoughts? Good, bad idea? Anybody want to help me out on this with more entries? - Experimental Hobo Infiltration Droid (talk) 18:11, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. Obviously some pitchers are well-known for trick pitches like the knuckleball or screwball, and those cases are well-documented. These are arguably one man's opinion (or two men, actually), but these are widely known historians, not some casual fans, so their analysis presumably has some veracity. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 18:15, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that was my feeling too, since James and Neyer are leading baseball scholars, so to speak - also, they themselves get most of the information in the book from other books, magazine or newspaper articles, etc., so it's also not like they're writing it down on the spot from memory. - Experimental Hobo Infiltration Droid (talk) 18:24, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pitch Selection 

message: In the recently created template Template:Nationals Retired Numbers, the retired numbers from Montreal Expos history are included. As Washington has issued these numbers to new players, thereby returning them to active use, should these numbers be included in this template? Isaac Lin (talk) 01:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If they're active for the Nats, the they shouldn't be on there, there should be a separate retired numbers template for each team, seeing as they differ in retired numbers. That's my feeling anyway. - Experimental Hobo Infiltration Droid (talk) 02:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Nats have tried to distance themselves from their Montreal roots, and that's one way to do it. It obviously trashes their past, but aside from number 42, I don't think MLB has any jurisdiction, it's strictly up to the teams as to what to do with their numbers. So if the numbers are in use by the Nats, they obviously aren't retired for the Nats. There should either be a separate section on the Expos within that template, or there should be a separate template, much as there are separate articles for the two teams. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Unretiring Expos' numbers is utterly awful. MLB should really be ashamed of it. One might consider listing formerly retired numbers on Template:Nationals Retired Numbers. Kingturtle (talk) 03:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It should not include it. It will confuse people who wouldn't understand why those numbers are in use if they saw that template. --Street20 (talk) 05:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should Template:Nationals Retired Numbers include Expos retired numbers? 

message: The article is way too long and there are too many game by game recaps. There are already a couple game by game recaps of this year's spring training. --Street20 (talk) 16:29, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems this comment should have been on the Byung-Hyun Kim talk page, not here. Timneu22 (talk) 20:26, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably, but I don't see a problem with it being here. It has a much better chance of being seen by many people and the article being improved.   jj137 (talk) 17:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have taken an axe to the 2007 season section, including removing the whole bit about the Mets' collapse, which has been removed/reverted several times. (One or two editors persist in claiming that one win by Kim over the Mets precipitated the team's whole September collapse last year, and spent 2-3 long paragraphs talking about it. Oy.)  I have advised the interested parties on the talk page to achieve consensus before reintroducing it into the article. It looks like there's some sockpuppetry going on there too, so we should keep a close eye on what transpires over the next little while there. I, for one, am going to watchlist it. I do think that project members should look at the article to try to restore some sanity there. caknuck ° has a nasty slice in his golf swing 19:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: WestArmyComm seems pretty intent on edit warring over this. Assistance from experienced baseball bio editors would be appreciated. caknuck ° has a nasty slice in his golf swing 23:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Way too much detail. The article is over 3 times the size of the Christy Mathewson article, for example. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 23:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Bugs, take a look at my rewrite and let me know what you think. caknuck ° has a nasty slice in his golf swing 23:37, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Even that is probably too much detail, and is still twice the size of the Mathewson article. But it's a considerable improvement over the previous version, which is like a game-by-game recap of this guy's career. Maybe I should expand the Mathewson article to include a paragraph about each of his 373 career wins. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 23:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If I took much more out, I would need to essentially start from scratch. Regardless, it needs a ton of work. Maybe you can reason with WestArmyComm. He hasn't responded to my post on his talk page. caknuck ° has a nasty slice in his golf swing 23:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: caknuck, I did respond to your message to my talk page one hour ago.  It's in your talk page.  It's very similar to what I said below.  WestArmyComm (talk) 02:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

text: In my experience, if someone won't respond to someone else, they won't respond to me, either. I recommend you take this to the Incident page (WP:ANI) and lodge a complaint. That will likely get more attention. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 23:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I read WP:ANI religiously, and one-off nasty edit summaries & content disputes are summarily dismissed. However, if we can get a clear consensus of experienced editors who agree that the excess detail needs to go, then that will bring a quick resolution to the matter. caknuck ° has a nasty slice in his golf swing 23:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right. I was thinking of the ANI regarding his refusal to discuss, not about the content itself. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 00:18, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

text: First, please put four tildes after your post, so we can tell who you are. Second, see what you can do to cut down this article to no more than the size of the Christy Mathewson article. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Actually, what I really want to do is go back to caknuck's original edits so you can all see what he did.  WestArmyComm (talk) 02:16, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Another user did that. Now you could work on correcting the problems you see with his version. Just don't balloon it out again. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 02:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Byung-Hyun Kim]] 

message: Some guy has been running a program to remove linked years, including "year in baseball xxxx" stuff. I don't care about those links one way or the other, but if someone else does, maybe they should go to WP:ANI, specifically this:  Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 21:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Units and years 

message: Just wondering whether there's anyone out there with the expertise to fix the problem within Template:MLB yearly infobox-pre1969? I was trying to disambiguate links to the American Association article, but this template doesn't properly display this league when trying to use a piped link. There's a note on the template's talk page about the problem from the middle of last year, but no activity that I can see toward fixing it. I'd really love to get those dab links cleaned up.  Mlaffs (talk) 03:35, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template problem 

message: Hello,
there are currently 15 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of  and may be slightly outdated.)
I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability. 
If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:28, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll get right on it :) Kingturtle (talk) 16:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Baseball: Articles of unclear notability 

message: Hello. I was doing some red linked category cleanup and came across a small discrepancy in your peer review categories.  adds articles to :Category:Requests_for_Baseball_peer_review, however, :Category:Requests_for_baseball_peer_review seems to have been created for the purpose. I would have reconciled the two, but I was not positive which was the correct category. If someone with more knowledge on the subject could fix this, I would appreciate it. Thanks. - AWeenieMan (talk) 01:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peer review categories 

message: Hello. There has been a large backlog at the Good Article Nominations page for a while, and some articles wait up to 50 days for a review. Since most of my editing is in the Sports and Recreation category, that is the area that I am currently focusing on. To try to cut down on the backlog, I'm approaching projects with the request that members from that project review two specific articles over the next week. My request to WikiProject Baseball is to try to find time to review SummerSlam (2007) and Notre Dame Fighting Irish football under Tyrone Willingham. If these are already reviewed by someone else or you have time for another review (or you'd rather review something else altogether), it would be great if you could help out with another article. Of course, this is purely voluntary. If you could help, though, it would help out a lot and be greatly appreciated. The basic instructions for reviewing articles is found at WP:GAN and the criteria is found at WP:WIAGA. I recently began reviewing articles, and I've found it fairly enjoyable and I've learned a lot about how to write high quality articles. Best wishes, GaryColemanFan (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help request: GA backlog 

message: User talk:Street20 keeps on deleting my entry on Craig Breslow, supported by three footnotes, including the official mlb.com site, indicating that he was claimed off of outright waivers.  Mr street20 appears to believe they are all incorrect.  My view is that he should take that up with them, but that is not a good reason to delete the properly footnoted entry, especially to the official mlb source.  He keeps on deleting me however.  Discussion is both at the entry changes on breslow, and on mr street20's talk page.  Can someone weigh in and help?  thanks.--Ethelh (talk) 00:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Whatever source that is saying he was claimed off outright waivers is wrong. Outright waivers is to remove a player from the 40-man roster and Breslow is still clearly on the 40-man roster. --Street20 (talk) 01:00, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Actually now that I look at it it seems that the Indians claimed Breslow off outright waivers then re-added him to the 40-man roster. You can put that fact in the article. I won't revert it now. This is now solved. --Street20 (talk) 01:11, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please help 

message: I want to know what people think about adding links of players stats in the infoboxes, like the NFL ones do. I think it should be under the stats in the infobox, and that we should use baseball-reference.com. So what do you think?--Yankees10 01:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: So you are proposing to have two links, one in the infobox and another one at the bottom? --Street20 (talk) 01:39, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: we can just get rid of the link on the bottom, the NFL pages dont have them on the bottom--Yankees10 01:40, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Which would you want to use? MLB.com is only good for active players.  What about for retired players and/or guys who haven't debuted yet? Baseball Reference? Cube or Fangraphs? JustSomeRandomGuy32 (talk) 03:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: MLB has stats for all players, not just active players. And those are the ones to use, since they're official. That does not preclude using baseball-reference.com as an alternate source, since it has additional info such as trades. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 03:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think baseball-reference.com is best--Yankees10 03:45, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No. It is not official. The official stats must take precedence. Baseball-reference.com is good as a supplemental reference, though. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 03:52, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we need to link to the stats website in the infobox.  There really isn't any reason for it; the purpose of these infoboxes is to summarize the crucial information within the article.  An external link should just be used as an external link, or a reference.  I don't think it's necessary to add the link to a different place.  Ksy92003 (talk) 07:30, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Yankees10, you'll notice that the NFL ones use NFL.com because it is official. If this was implemented it should be MLB.com. MLB.com has stats for all players, not just active, so there is no problem there. --Borgardetalk 08:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

text: I'll bet they show Lajoie beating Cobb in 1910. But that's not the official ruling. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 16:20, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

text: I second-base that. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 16:31, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

text: I couldn't find it on the page as such, although there are numerous refrences to Elias if you go into "Search". Meanwhile, the Elias page  states that they are the official stats source for MLB, NFL, etc. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:07, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: And by the way, Elias still officially credits Cobb with 4191 hits, which squares with MLB, but not with independent researchers such as baseball-reference, SABR, etc. Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? 17:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stat Links in infobox