When people ask me questions about how many RBI someone had, or how
many hits someone had, I will usually say "no one knows for sure, but
the best current estimate is X." In many ways I think the confidence
that Dave is talking about that media and fans have in our records is
a "false" confidence, and we are making a strategic decision to keep
alive their false confidence.

I recall in 1976 when Bob Watson scored baseball's one millionth
run. At the time I was a teenager, and I was pretty amazed that
someone had figured out the total, and impressed that baseball was
able to have such precise record keeping. Today, I am more impressed
with baseball's record keepers than ever, though I have little
confidence in who really scored the one millionth run. My lessening
confidence, which Dave would avoid, has not really bothered me at all.

The problem with changing the record books every year is not that
fans would have less confidence in baseball records, its that they
would have less confidence in the record keepers. A five-year period
would likely make the record changes appear to be more serious and
considered.

Mark Armour

--- In SABR_Records@yahoogroups.com, "Trent" <treant985@...> wrote:
>
> I'd just like to add one comment to the great posts by Lyle, Dave,
et
> al. Dave mentioned that changing corrections every year would make
> teams, media, and fans think that all numbers are unreliable. It
> seems to me that a mindset about stats would actually be correct.
> Obviously some totals (like homers) are almost always correct, but
> anything else is always questionable. The last few decades' stats
> have very few discrepancies, but of course there are still a few
here
> and there.
>
> Add in that a lot of fans view stats from different eras as
> inherently different anyway (1990s homer totals vs. 1960s homer
> totals, ERAs from the 1930s and ERAs from the 1900s, etc), and it
> seems to me that having people think the numbers are unreliable
isn't
> that bad of a thing. If and when Bonds hits his 756th homer, it
will
> undoubtably be the new record. But if he happens to get to 2nd
place
> on the RBI total (held by Ruth), then no one will know when he
> actually passes Ruth since no one knows how many RBI Ruth had.
Maybe
> it's better if fans and the media recognize sooner rather than
later
> that a lot of stats (except for most current players) just aren't
> reliable anyway.
>
> Maybe Dave meant something else by 'unreliable,' but I personally
> think it'd be nice if teams, the media, and fans didn't think that
> each stat is an indicator of exactly what the player actually did.
>
> While keeping a list of 'corrections' to individual players' stats
is
> useful (to see why a number has been changed after all these years
> and to make sure that changes aren't counted twice), it doesn't
ever
> get at the problem. It would be nice to think that, in some future
> year, we'll have found almost every mistake on the official sheets
> and can update all players' stats at once. Even if it were
possible
> (it isn't) to find all (or most) necessary corrections, I think
> there'd be a bigger outcry if thousands of numbers were changed at
> once than if thousands of numbers were changed over the years as
the
> discrepancies
> are found.
>
> Sorry for the long post, but I spend a lot of my time dealing with
> discrepancies/errors/corrections/changes/mistakes on the official
> sheets, so I couldn't resist sharing my thoughts.
>
> Trent McCotter
>