Which led to their second, and so far final, world championship.

“but of all players who played at least 1000 games and logged over half of them at third base, he’s just 23rd in career WAR at 44.2, behind the likes of Toby Harrah and Heinie Groh and Bob Elliott, and well behind guys like Graig Nettles, Buddy Bell and Ken Boyer. If he was actually a catcher most of the time he’d rank better, 12th all-time, but he’d still be behind Gene Tenace and Ted Simmons and not much better than Wally Schang.”

You are clearly comparing his WAR based on players on a 162 game schedule. You add in further that he ranked 10th in pre-1900 players (which is pretty impressive by the way) and say it was a “funky choice”. You spend a majority of you post making a direct 1 to 1 WAR comparision with people like Buddy Bell Toby Harrah, etc.

Just…come on people. We’re all wrong sometimes. It’s okay. It’s just extraordinarily irritating when someone feels the need to change their argument and claim they didn’t say something they clearly said just to avoid being wrong. Come on man, that’s what politicians do. If you can’t display some level of intellectual honesty on an basically anonymous comments section of a sports blog, then where can you?

For example, during Ruppert’s entire 25 year tenure of ownership he was part of a cadre that colluded to keep player’s salaries down via the reserve clause and that conspired to ban black ball players from playing in MLB via a “gentleman’s agreement”.

The most egregious steroid user was a saint compared to such men.

The problem with WAR for 1800′s players is that they didn’t play 144, 154 or 162 games a season. In fact, Deacon White lead the league in games played in 1873 with 60. Therefore, a 2.9 WAR in 60 games is actually hella-impressive.

White was inducted 122 years after he retired. That’s probably a record.

But White sort of baffles me. He was mostly a third baseman, but of all players who played at least 1000 games and logged over half of them at third base, he’s just 23rd in career WAR at 44.2, behind the likes of Toby Harrah and Heinie Groh and Bob Elliott, and well behind guys like Graig Nettles, Buddy Bell and Ken Boyer. If he was actually a catcher most of the time he’d rank better, 12th all-time, but he’d still be behind Gene Tenace and Ted Simmons and not much better than Wally Schang. But that doesn’t matter because he wasn’t primarily a catcher. If you narrow it down to just guys who played before 1900 he’d rank 10th, which is certainly fine, but then why didn’t the committee elect Pebbly Jack Glasscock, who had 59.2 WAR, 4th in that era, in addition to a both a glorious mustache and a kick-ass name?

Just seems like a funky choice.