Clipping:Chadwick critiques scoring of stolen bases
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| Date | Saturday, April 26, 1890 |
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| Text | [Chadwick writes] I am sorry to state that the League record of stolen bases for 1889 has been rendered practically useless as means of judging a player's skill in running bases, simply from the fact that the data is based upon the record of times reached first base. On seeing the note at the end of the table stating this fact I wrote to Mr. Young in relation to it, and here is his reply: “The percentage of 'bases stolen' is based upon the number of times the player reached first base only. The official scores credited a player with having reach first base regardless of whether it was a home run or a one, two or three-base hit. A player making a home run has no chance to steal a base. If he make a three-base hit he practically has none. If he makes a two-base hit his chances are very much reduced, so I thought best to deduct two, three and four-base hits and make up the record upon the times the player reached first base only no matter how he got there” When I advocated the adoption of the record of stolen bases I did it to give due credit to sharp base-runners who were skillful enough to steal bases. No base can be stolen running from home to first base, except in perhaps isolated and very exceptional cases, and certainly no stolen base can be creidted to a runner who, by his safe hit gets two, three or four bases on that hit and by that means only. If a runner makes a hit which julstly entitles him to two bases on the hit itself, and then gets to third on that hit by a clever steal, he becomes entitled to one stolen base, but to credit runners with four stolen bases for ahome run, or three for a three-base hit, and so on, as Mr. Young has done, is to my idea an absurdity and entirely outside of my original plan of giving credit for stolen bases. According to such a data for stolen bases the heavy-hitting home run slugger, who couldn't steal a base to save his neck, becomes the leading base-runner. This is simply nonsense. The Sporting Life April 26, 1890 [N.B. Chadwick seems to have misunderstood Young. |
| Source | Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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