Talk:Ty Cobb

message: We have Ty Cobb's batting average as .367. I get that the boomers grew up on this number, but its been decades since SABR has shown this to be very likely wrong: .366 is the correct number. It's embarrassing that Wikipedia is the sole scholarly-type source giving this badly outdated and probably wrong data. Let's don't.
So, some googling gets me these web source that give Cobb's batting average as .366:
# Baseball Reference (4,189 hits in 11,440 at bats)
# Baseball Hall of Fame (4,189 hits in 11,440 at bats)
# SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
# FanGraphs (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
# Retrosheet (4,189 hits in 11,439 at bats)
# The Baseball Cube (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
# Baseball Almanac (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
# ESPN (4,189 hits in 11,434 at bats)
SABR is the most reliable source of baseball history, including statistics, hands down. Here are a couple of SABR articles that really get into the weeds on this matter:
* Appendix 1: Ty Cobb’s Hit Totals and Lifetime Batting Average
* How Many Hits Did Ty Cobb Make in His Major League Career? What Is His Lifetime Batting Average?
The Hall of Fame has official status with Major League Baseball and is a large, well-known, and generally respected museum with its own Official Historian. Baseball Reference is a large and complex site "often used by major media organizations and baseball broadcasters as a source for statistics" and is highly visible (Alexa rank 6,635); it was started as a doctoral dissertation in applied math by a sabermetrician. FanGraphs and ESPN are large and serious enterprises, and supported by our  template, as is Retrosheet, a non-profit with strong ties to SABR. Baseball Cube used to be but isn't any longer. 
Web sources (not including us) that say Cobb's batting average was .367:
# Major League Baseball (4,191 hits in 11,429 at bats)
# Nobody else on the planet with any standing that I could find.
With books it's a little different; Ty Cobb: A Biography By Dan Holmes (2004) has .367, while Ty Cobb, A Fearful Beauty (2015) by Charles Leehrson has .366. There are a bunch of other books on each side of the matter; I didn't check them, but I assume none of them did their own research and just picked the source they liked.
===How did we get here?===
So, the background to this "dispute" is this: for many decades after Cobb retired, his batting average was given as .367. boomers were brought up on this number, and for that matter their parents too. It was one of baseball's "iconic" numbers, like Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in a season; if a casual fan knew like 10 or even 5 historic numbers, .367 would be one of them. But, much later (starting around 1980) people like Pete Palmer and Jim Thorn and SABR did a deep forensic analysis of old box scores, and determined that the actual number was .366.  
 
Well, the boomers really resented that, same as their dads had resented Roger Maris's 61 home runs. Many people refused to accept the new number. This wasn't on the basis of criticism of SABR's methodology or presentation of alternative research or anything like that. It was pure boomer pig-headedness. Arguments were of the nature of "That's not how I was taught" and "Who are these pencilneck geeks to mess with baseball's sacred numbers" and "This fact distresses me" and "Dammit, I saw Cobb play when I was a boy" and even "Well whatever, but .367 should be grandfathered in as permanent because it's been the accepted value for so long". 
It says here that MLB, led by Bowie Kuhn, was in this camp: "As the leader of a sport that always sold its present, Kunh tried to make the matter go away". Note sold: this is a business decision, not a research decision. I guess they are still not backing down from that still. (Scrolling up a couple pages in that book (which is The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics by Alan Schwarz (2005)), there's a description of the first anlysis of the problem, by Pete Palmer in 1981.)
Anyway "historian with way too much time on his hands" does not strike me as a very useful refutation of research. If there are better arguments, let's hear them. Statistics is a real discipline. History is real discipline. Research is a real thing. Real people have applied their time, energy, and intelligence to the matter. So as far as the records that we have show, .366 is the correct number (Of course, many facts in this world we can't be 100% sure of; it could be .365 or .368 or something, but we go with the best data that we have). Thus, the world of people who pay attention to this came to accept .366. All of them.
Except MLB/Elias. Why? Well first of all understand is that MLB is a business organization. It does business stuff like make the schedule and negotiate labor contracts and so on. They're not a history organization or any kind of academic or intellectual entity. Another thing to understand is that is no such thing as an "official history" of anything, generally. Certainly not for baseball. There is no one organization that can "officially" say how how many people lived in the Roman Empire, or if Homer was a single real person, or exactly why Runnymede happened, or how many hits Ty Cobb had, such that we have to say "Well, that's the official story, so right or wrong we have to go with that". There are only different historians using different methods to come up with different answers, and people -- including us -- have to weigh all that and decide what's most likely correct.
How does Elias come up with .367? I don't know, because they're a private for-profit business and they don't reveal their methodologies (I don't think; they didn't use to anyway), if they even have any methodologies beyond "MLB told us to use that number, and the client is always right". Elias does have science type people on staff (two Research Directors, a Director of Research, a Senior Research Director, and more). What they do I don't know; they don't publish papers as far as I can tell. Maybe there's other ways to find out how they came up with .367. Absent that, we're left with just argument from authority. 
(Here, we have the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2013-2014 with "history can be rewritten [but] the past can also be unyielding". Yes it can. But that doesn't have anything to do with our mission. We don't tell our readers that Betsy Ross designed the American Flag or that Mrs. Murphy's cow started the Chicago fire just because a lot of people think so or were brought up thinking so and don't want to change. We shouldn't make an exception here.
Anyway, this was talked about at Talk:Ty Cobb/Archive 1#Cobb's Hit Total and it wasn't resolved, but it was considered to be a trivial matter. It's not trivial, and it's way past time to end this embarrassment. I propose to do so absent cogent objection. Herostratus (talk) 17:27, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Just for the record, I checked my dusty old copy of the hallowed The Baseball Encyclopedia, The Macmillan Company, 1969, second edition. This book was a landmark in its time with regard to detail, and was thus extremely influential. It has (p. 689) Cobb with career totals of 4,192 H in 11,437 AB.  (I remembered this as the only place where I say his hits in excess of 4,191.)  This ratio is .366529684, which they reasonably round to .367 for display purposes. On p. 64, "Lifetime Batting Leaders" Cobb is listed (first, of course) with .367, and his hits are shown as 4192. Macmillan must have corrected this in a subsequent edition, but I don't know which and when. WHPratt (talk) 16:55, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  It's time and past time to fix the batting average thing 

message: So, the background to this "dispute" is this: for many decades after Cobb retired, his batting average was given as .367. boomers were brought up on this number, and for that matter their parents too. It was one of baseball's "iconic" numbers, like Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in a season; if a casual fan knew like 10 or even 5 historic numbers, .367 would be one of them. But, much later (starting around 1980) people like Pete Palmer and Jim Thorn and SABR did a deep forensic analysis of old box scores, and determined that the actual number was .366.  
 
Well, the boomers really resented that, same as their dads had resented Roger Maris's 61 home runs. Many people refused to accept the new number. This wasn't on the basis of criticism of SABR's methodology or presentation of alternative research or anything like that. It was pure boomer pig-headedness. Arguments were of the nature of "That's not how I was taught" and "Who are these pencilneck geeks to mess with baseball's sacred numbers" and "This fact distresses me" and "Dammit, I saw Cobb play when I was a boy" and even "Well whatever, but .367 should be grandfathered in as permanent because it's been the accepted value for so long". 
It says here that MLB, led by Bowie Kuhn, was in this camp: "As the leader of a sport that always sold its present, Kunh tried to make the matter go away". Note sold: this is a business decision, not a research decision. I guess they are still not backing down from that still. (Scrolling up a couple pages in that book (which is The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics by Alan Schwarz (2005)), there's a description of the first anlysis of the problem, by Pete Palmer in 1981.)
Anyway "historian with way too much time on his hands" does not strike me as a very useful refutation of research. If there are better arguments, let's hear them. Statistics is a real discipline. History is real discipline. Research is a real thing. Real people have applied their time, energy, and intelligence to the matter. So as far as the records that we have show, .366 is the correct number (Of course, many facts in this world we can't be 100% sure of; it could be .365 or .368 or something, but we go with the best data that we have). Thus, the world of people who pay attention to this came to accept .366. All of them.
Except MLB/Elias. Why? Well first of all understand is that MLB is a business organization. It does business stuff like make the schedule and negotiate labor contracts and so on. They're not a history organization or any kind of academic or intellectual entity. Another thing to understand is that is no such thing as an "official history" of anything, generally. Certainly not for baseball. There is no one organization that can "officially" say how how many people lived in the Roman Empire, or if Homer was a single real person, or exactly why Runnymede happened, or how many hits Ty Cobb had, such that we have to say "Well, that's the official story, so right or wrong we have to go with that". There are only different historians using different methods to come up with different answers, and people -- including us -- have to weigh all that and decide what's most likely correct.
How does Elias come up with .367? I don't know, because they're a private for-profit business and they don't reveal their methodologies (I don't think; they didn't use to anyway), if they even have any methodologies beyond "MLB told us to use that number, and the client is always right". Elias does have science type people on staff (two Research Directors, a Director of Research, a Senior Research Director, and more). What they do I don't know; they don't publish papers as far as I can tell. Maybe there's other ways to find out how they came up with .367. Absent that, we're left with just argument from authority. 
(Here, we have the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture 2013-2014 with "history can be rewritten [but] the past can also be unyielding". Yes it can. But that doesn't have anything to do with our mission. We don't tell our readers that Betsy Ross designed the American Flag or that Mrs. Murphy's cow started the Chicago fire just because a lot of people think so or were brought up thinking so and don't want to change. We shouldn't make an exception here.
Anyway, this was talked about at Talk:Ty Cobb/Archive 1#Cobb's Hit Total and it wasn't resolved, but it was considered to be a trivial matter. It's not trivial, and it's way past time to end this embarrassment. I propose to do so absent cogent objection. Herostratus (talk) 17:27, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Just for the record, I checked my dusty old copy of the hallowed The Baseball Encyclopedia, The Macmillan Company, 1969, second edition. This book was a landmark in its time with regard to detail, and was thus extremely influential. It has (p. 689) Cobb with career totals of 4,192 H in 11,437 AB.  (I remembered this as the only place where I say his hits in excess of 4,191.)  This ratio is .366529684, which they reasonably round to .367 for display purposes. On p. 64, "Lifetime Batting Leaders" Cobb is listed (first, of course) with .367, and his hits are shown as 4192. Macmillan must have corrected this in a subsequent edition, but I don't know which and when. WHPratt (talk) 16:55, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: How did we get here?

message: Regarding the rivalry with Sam Crawford, the article states:
"Although they may not have spoken to each other, Cobb and Crawford developed an ability to communicate non-verbally with looks and nods on the base paths. They became one of the most successful double steal pairings in baseball history.[159]"
I don't dispute that they made a lot of double steals; in fact, if they didn't actually hold the record for that I'd be surprised. The implication that that was due to some uncanny communication is dubious.  Is that from the referenced biography, or a Wikipedia editor's own good idea?  Either way, it doesn't follow.
What do you need to get a double steal?  First you need one guy to get to second base, then a second guy gets on first, then they attempt the double steal.
Well, Cobb got on second base more than anybody.  He averaged 48 stolen bases and 39 doubles per 162 games according to baseall-reference.com.  Given that he stole more bases than anyone, and stole home several times, we can be sure he stole third quite a few times.  
So if you have one guy who steals third a whole lot, to be the greatest double-steal combo in history,
all the second guy has to do is 
1) play behind Cobb for years
2) get on first a reasonable percentage of the time
3) also be a prolific base-stealer.  Crawford had a 300 lifetime batting average and over 300 bases stolen, so while not in Cobb's class, he qualifies.
They don't need to communicate.  Crawford just has to go when Cobb goes.  He could just be watching to see when Cobb goes, or they could both be getting signals from the third base coach.  I'm guessing Cobb didn't signal Crawford; he probably didn't care that much whether Crawford stole second behind him, and he wouldn't want to tip off the defense (not that they didn't know he was going anyway, but they didn't know when).
I'd like to see this corrected, but I don't know the best way, and I don't want to get overruled.Wood Monkey 19:42, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Doesn't Follow 

message: *.366. Reasons given below. The only way to dispute this is argument from authority (see below), and I call on the closer to discount those.  Herostratus (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: They didn't, but it doesn't matter. Stats are records of facts. There are lots of stats that governments and other official bodies such as MLB can't change altho they would sure like to. Historical facts are stubborn like that. If you look at Cobb's player page at MLB.com it actually does still say .367 (altho all the other statements, that I have found, of Cobb's lifetime average on other MLB.com page give .366, or else ".366 or .367 depending on source"). MLB flat-out said that they were going to stick with .367 now and forever in defiance of the facts and research and (I infer) any new research discoveries that come up ever, because, well, they can. "Because we can" is actually the entirety of their argument. Herostratus (talk) 17:27, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Survey 

message: With the inclusion of the "Negro League" statistics, Tyler Cobb no longer holds the record for career batting average. Ambndms (talk) 23:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Noted now. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:51, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Record surpassed