Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Archive 51

Mass change from ballpark to home field
There was a recent change to several ballpark articles changing the word "ballpark" to "home field" by. This editor unilaterally moved Ballpark to Baseball Stadium a couple of years ago, but it was never discussed further.. This is being discussed at Truist Park| since I noticed the change there, but generally speaking isn't home ballpark/stadium preferable to "home field" when describing ballparks? There was discussion about baseball stadiums vs. ballparks a while back the loose consensus lead to most ballpark articles opening with "baseball stadium" and then using ballpark later on in the lead article as another word for baseball stadium. Nemov (talk) 02:48, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Home field is a common enough idiomatic phrase when describing which team is hosting the visiting team. However in the context of a stadium article, I agree it's more precise to use the term ballpark to describe the function of the stadium. Thus I feel "ballpark of (team X)" is a better summation of the role of the stadium. isaacl (talk) 17:05, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Home ballpark" is likely the best phrasing for what Fred was trying to accomplish. The real problem is once more removing the link to the specific ballpark article in favor of the more general stadium article. Yes, ballparks are a type of stadium, but why would one link only the broader article when the more-specific and specialized article exists? oknazevad (talk) 00:51, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I really think we don't need "home" before ballpark... "ballpark of team x" is pretty self explanatory... it would clearly be the home stadium without needing to specifically say that. Spanneraol (talk) 00:58, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * @Fred Zepelin just made more mass changes after they've been reverted. Nemov (talk) 01:00, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I saw that... He mass reverted an IP that seemingly was making correct revisions based on current consensus. Spanneraol (talk) 01:21, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And the IP got blocked for it., I see that IP has been warned for disruptive behaviors, but FZ is the source of the disruptions on this and is ignoring discussion. I warned against edit warring yesterday and they reverted it and today they're right back at it. Nemov (talk) 01:28, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It's self-explanatory but it's not idiomatic. Like seriously unidiomatic to the point it sounds awkward. At least to my ear. oknazevad (talk) 22:11, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * How is it not idiomatic? The ballpark of the atlanta braves sounds perfectly fine. .. adding home before ballpark doesnt make it sound any better. Spanneraol (talk) 22:13, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * One might say "the team's ballpark",indicating ownership, but not "the ballpark of the team". The latter is awkward, because it doesn't indicate the specific relationship with regard to the team. A spring training ballpark could be said to be "the ballpark of the team" as well, but it's not their full-time home ballpark. It's much more common to include the word "home" than not in writing. See also the various other sports' stadia articles across Wikipedia. It's not just a baseball thing. But also look at he sources and how they phrase it. The "the ballpark of the [team]" construction is absent. oknazevad (talk) 22:25, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You took the words out of my mouth. "Home ballpark" or "home field" is the way I would expect any article on a baseball venue to read. Y2Kcrazyjoker4 (talk &bull; contributions) 00:13, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Ballpark or home ballpark I understand, but making a mass change to "home field" to several parks under the claim "no one has ever said that" is weird. Nemov (talk) 02:24, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "Home field" is sometimes used, but usually in terms of home field advantage instead of describing a team's home ballpark. oknazevad (talk) 03:06, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Of course, but that's not really being discussed in this context. Nemov (talk) 03:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed. It's not wrong, per we, but it's not a specific term. And again, removing the ballpark link is unacceptable. oknazevad (talk) 23:55, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * My first inclination was to suggest that the phrase be written as "the home ballpark for (team X)", as I think that avoids implying an ownership relationship (though that would appropriate for some venues such as Dodger Stadium). But in deference to the possibility of regional variation, I think "ballpark of (team X)" is clear enough for all readers. isaacl (talk) 04:14, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I thought the differences were regional, à la "soda" v. "pop," but an internet search turned up nothing. "Ballpark" is described by most dictionaries and wiktionary as baseball specific whereas home field is generic.  I'd lean to using ballpark in the above context, with "home" being used sparingly dependent on the sentence structure.  Rgrds. --BX (talk) 04:41, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I think "home field" is fine, especially because some stadiums are used for more than one sport, like Yankee Stadium, which is how I just stumbled into this. Really I don't see the problem with "home field". I've always thought of ballparks as smaller venues. Yankee Stadium isn't a "ballpark". JimKaatFan (talk) 23:04, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Except baseball stadiums are rarely described as fields... while ballpark is the pretty much uniform designation for them. Yankee Stadium is absolutely a ballpark. Spanneraol (talk) 00:00, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I mean... it's a stadium. But anyway, why not just say "It is the home of the (whatever team)" and have "home" link to Home (sports), avoiding this kind of silly argument? JimKaatFan (talk) 00:24, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * They don't actually live there.... and they are ballparks. Spanneraol (talk) 03:51, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Home (sports), in this context, is a rather meaningless and unhelpful article. A better descriptive article would be ballpark.  Just sayin'. Rgrds. --BX (talk) 03:54, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I am fine with saying "the home of". Disagree that Home (sports) is unhelpful - it's a perfect definition. But I need to clear up two falsehoods about me that have been repeated multiple times: "it is the ballpark of" MLB "it is the home of" MLB The first result is literally just these Wikipedia articles and mirrors/copy-pastes of these Wikipedia article (check the surrounding verbiage, it's exact). The second result is millions of hits, from all kinds of different sources. It's very clear that "it is the ballpark of" is not a common phrase, and "it is the home of" is. So please, stop using those two fake claims about me in this discussion. It's very misleading. Fred Zepelin (talk) 15:59, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * 1. It has been said that I made unilateral mass changes to these articles, and that was pushed by an IP editor that claimed, while rapidly making mass reversions, that I was "the first person to rapidly edit every Major League Baseball stadium article to home field without reaching a consensus in talk." Not true. I was undoing the actual first mass reversion: these edits, done over a span of 2 days, changing the leads of every single MLB stadium to their preferred wording, unilaterally, without a discussion. I undid those and now this IP is pushing a false claim about me. The stable version, for years, of those articles was the one BEFORE those edits I just pointed out. So please stop saying that I was making some mass change on my own, when the actual mass changes were someone else.
 * 2. It has been said that I claimed no one uses the word "ballpark". That is absolutely not true, and I've pointed this out more that once. What I said was, no one uses the phrase "it is the ballpark of". Take a look at two Google searches:


 * Claiming that your undoing a mass change a year later is a bit much especially when those changes weren't all the same. You installed your preferred version again and again even when they had been challenged. Please stop changing these articles until there's consensus. Nemov (talk) 20:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yea, you should wait and seek a consensus, sometimes can be tyiring wait to get a consensus but is the best for everyone, since it stopps edit wars.
 * That said, i think you people should try use "Home Ballpark of *The Team* ", field is more used for Gridion football, and as far i know, different sports use different terminollogies. For exemple: a field in Soccer/Association football is called a Pitch - Meganinja202 (talk) 03:23, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I support ballpark. It is what virtually every piece of baseball media I have seen refers to these stadiums as. There is even a "MLB Ballpark" app. Seems as though Fred Zepelin has been changing a few articles back to his preferred wording without consensus again. 76.167.122.195 (talk) 04:37, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I also agree with Nemov that it is disingenuous for Fred Zepelin to claim that changing year old edits that went unchallenged until their own is fair. Please wait until we finish our discussion and reach consensus, before reverting "back". 76.167.122.195 (talk) 05:01, 3 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure there's a consensus here for any term, but there's significant enough support to justify using "ballpark." I'm noting this in case someone attempts to make a mass change again. This can be handled locally on each baseball park article. Nemov (talk) 20:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

It is very weird that Wikipedia pages for MLB players are the only pages without a table of season-by-season stats
I'm not sure why the MLB pages are the only major sport on Wikipedia to not include season-by-season statistics for the players. If we can do it for football, soccer, hockey, and basketball, there's no good reason why MLB should be special and excluded. All the data for those sports are pulled from other sources, so "baseballreference.com" has it isn't an explanation. People don't come to an encyclopedia because they want to be directed to other sources. That's what a search engine is for, not an encyclopedia. Angryapathy (talk) 19:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Personally, I find it weird that anyone would spend so much time and effort creating and maintaining stats tables on Wikipedia when sites like the aforementioned baseballreference.com do that already and the strength of Wikipedia is narrative prose. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:02, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Just to point out, there is no such thing as "official" baseball history
Executive Summary: Nobody gets to say that their "official" versions of historical events carry extra weight, baseball games and seasons are historical events, and using the term "official" in any of these discussions is not helpful and instead just muddies the issue. (And if there was a source of baseball history which we would consider "official" it's arguably the Hall of Fame rather than MLB.)

Detailed Exposition:

I'm not saying this about any particular case, I am not against the Negro Leagues being considered major leagues or anything like that (I haven't studied the matter). I just wanted to point out that what MLB says about that doesn't mean much of anything and should be pretty much ignored.

MBL is a business organization, run for profit (or the profit of its members). It makes the schedules, sets the rules, negotiates the labor contracts, and like that. It is not an academic institution, nor is it run by baseball experts, historians, enthusiasts, or, for all I know, people who even care all that much about baseball per se. It can say that its statistics are "official", but so could I or SABR or anybody.

MLB does employ the Elias Sports Bureau, which is also a for-profit company, which provides the statistics used on MLB's website. Elias does employ historians and statisticians, but their methods are entirely secret, and they are generally despised for various reasons including trying to claim ownership of historical facts (i.e., baseball statistics) and insisting that statistics other than their own should be discounted (I don't know if they still do this).

But, there is no such thing as "official" statistics for historical events, that we have to pay any mind to. If the Official History of the Napoleonic Wars published by the French Government says there were 25,000 French Casualties at Waterloo, we are not obligated to say "Welp, that's the official number, so we have to go with that regardless" or even not just blow it off, and so forth. Baseball history is history. We don't have to pay any attention to MLB or Exxon-Mobile or any other organization when reporting history, and in fact often look at information provided by interested parties with some skepticism.

And MLB is an interested party. Their actions are designed to put fannies in seats and in front of TVs. (This can include benign actions of course and actions to make them look good because they are good, and they are interested in the long-term viability of the business of baseball I'm sure. But they are an interested party,)

Case in point, MLB still says that Ty Cobb's lifetime batting average is .367. MLB holds by that number for political reasons (to gruntle the boomers pretty much) and basically said so. Elias is the actual provider of that number, and since their methods are secret, I assume that their method here was "Well, that is the number the client wants, so that is the number the client gets". This does not give me confidence in anything else they say.

I presume that MLB has said the Negro Leagues are major leagues for political reasons: for public relations in being nice and up-to-date and against racism. That doesn't mean their decision was wrong (it quite probably wasn't). It doesn't mean that the people at MLB aren't personally ethical and against racism.

But it was a business decision, not made because Elias studied the matter in great depth using advanced techniques or whatever, reported to MLB that Negro Leagues were of major-league quality, ans MLB said "Welp, whether or not this causes us hassles and controversies and maybe boycotts in the South or whatever, the truth is the truth and that comes before mere business".

What SABR and Baseball Reference and similar entities and the Hall of Fame (which is not an arm of MLB) and individual baseball experts and historians say, that is what matters. I think they are on the bandwagon for allowing the Negro Leagues as major leagues, and that is fine. We should go with what they say, yes, if there's a clear consensus among them. Herostratus (talk) 06:55, 6 June 2024 (UTC)


 * ok  Agent Vodello OK, Let's Party, Darling! 15:03, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I've decided that what I say is what matters... to heck with all those people. lol. Spanneraol (talk) 15:18, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Dude, there's no need to laugh at me, sheesh. You could have said nothing. Herostratus (talk) 03:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The WP:BESTSOURCES policy says: —Bagumba (talk) 00:31, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Right, and MLB is not independent, right? Technically, that would put into question whether we should use anything they say at all, at least without tagging. I'm not advocating that for practical reasons, but I don't think we should necessarily take everything they say at face value. Herostratus (talk) 03:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * We should go with what they say, yes, if there's a clear consensus among them: Even if they don't come to a consensus, their views should be reflected based on WP:WEIGHT. —Bagumba (talk) 00:36, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Before MLB.com was updated to include Negro Leagues stats, some people used the argument "why would we consider the Negro Leagues stats as part of MLB history when MLB.com itself doesn't even do that?" That argument is now gone. Taking it a step further, is there any major sources, primary or secondary (something that is continually updated, not a reference book from before 2020) that doesn't include the 7 major Negro Leaguers alongside the American, National, and other major leagues. Jhn31 (talk) 16:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
 * "MLB.com itself". That is argument from authority. We don't do that, and no Wikiproject is supposed to do that. We do not use "the Pope himself said so" when deciding whether or not to state as a fact that St Bernadette's body remains incorrrupt. Tho at least the Pope cares about the matter. So ideally we would just blow off people who use the argument from authority.


 * Of course many of the Negro Leagues were major-league quality. Why do I believe that? One strong reason is because SABR says so, on the basis of extensive research of pretty much academic quality. here, here etc.


 * Of course we are going to include them as major leagues now. The question is, what about the stats? The stats aren't complete. Baseball Register is including them it seems, and Baseball Register is a good source and that is an important data point. There is a good argument for not including them tho: they're incomplete. That matters. I want to see what SABR and the Hall of Fame have to say about that. Tetelo Vargas is reported to have hit .471 in 1943 which would be the new record. It's not so much that that is in only 30 games, 121 at bats. It's more that he didn't actually hit .471 because we don't have a complete record. Maybe in the missing games he hit better than .471, or maybe worse. Who knows? Nobody. Since he didn't actually hit .471, we should not state "he hit .471" to the reader. We could hedge that ("incomplete stats") and I guess we will, but really the Negro League stats -- not the Negro League teams and players themselves -- are just not in the same category as when we have complete stats.


 * It's a terrible shame. Of course the way America has treated African-American people from the slave trade forward is a world-historical crime, a terrible one and one of the worst in all history maybe. Of course we want to make up for that as much as we can. But we can't say things that aren't true. I would like to see what SABR has to say about all this. Not what Commissioner Rob Manfred, a businessman and lawyer whose remit is running an profitable enterprise and probably doesn't care all that much about baseball on the field or its history and certainly isn't going to study the matter. I don't care what he says about anything, and people just shouldn't. Herostratus (talk) 04:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Ty Cobb -- change back to .367?
Yeah OK.WP:WEIGHT, "what I say is what matters", I hear you. So...

Right now, we give Ty Cobb's batting average as .366. At time editors have written that it is .367. but we don't go with that.

But MLB gives Ty Cobb's batting average as .367. It's discussed at length -- essentially by me; that's me all over, oh well -- at Talk:Ty Cobb and Talk:Ty Cobb. I'm not asking anyone to read all that. It's there if you like. So, if MBL has some WP:WEIGHT, or maybe a lot if you consider them official, should we revisit this? There's a number of ways we could present the info, like say:


 * 1) Ty Cobb's batting average was .366.
 * 2) Ty Cobb's batting average was .367.
 * 3) Some sources give give Ty Cobb's batting average as .366, some as .367.
 * 4) According to Major League Baseball, Ty Cobb's batting average was .367. Many non-official sources claim that it is .366. [N.B. I say "many" but not "all" because some books say .367. -ed]

If you say #1, that'd be an exception to giving any WP:WEIGHT to MLB. Is it impossible that there could be other exceptions to giving them any weight? Just saying. Herostratus (talk) 03:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm fairly certain that the horse is dead, and a third bite at the apple will be fruitless. Feel free to reply with your own maxims/puns as you desire, but I doubt the community has any appetite for revisiting this matter yet again. L EPRICAVARK ( talk ) 04:54, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes I agree, as long as we are not going to be like "We give weight to MLB.com on historical matters, except when we don't want to" (like here). That's not excellent. Herostratus (talk) 04:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)