Quote:
Originally Posted by SABR Steve
There has been talk that different parties or organizations representing baseball history may get together and iron out differences on statistics as well as other matters, perhaps including the NA's status. So rrhersh may get his wish.
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It may be worth expanding on my take on this, as it isn't precisely my wish that the NA be included among the major leagues. My wish, inasmuch as I have one in this matter, is that the issues be better understood.
By my understanding of the NA, the question of major league status is meaningless. The system of major and minor leagues had not yet developed. To even ask the question is to impose an anachronistic interpretation on the facts. The major/minor system isn't unambiguously present until 1883. There are earlier organizations which can plausibly be considered proto-minor leagues, but not before 1877. The development of the major/minor system is a hugely interesting aspect of baseball history of this period. Worrying about which neat category to stick any given organization is at best irrelevant, and at worst distracting and obfuscatory: I don't care whether we pound this square peg into the round hole or the triangular one.
But that is approaching the question from the standpoint of organizational history. My sense is that much of the impetus for this discussion comes from the stats people. The not-so-hidden subtext is that the real question is whether we pay attention to the NA or ignore it. This is in the same way that any book with the words "encyclopedia" and "baseball" can be assumed to include only major league baseball unless explicitly stated otherwise: as if the minors and semi-pros and amateurs and schools and little leagues aren't playing baseball.
To the extent that I care about how the NA is classified, I prefer it be counted as major because that forces people to consider it at all. Some will notice that the NA differred from 20th century leagues, might wonder why this is, and learn something interesting about the development of early organized baseball.
As for the people interested in historical stats, I honestly don't understand why you care whether the NA is classed as major or minor or not classified at all. If you are interested in looking at the best batter of any given year, what does major/minor matter? For that matter, what does the NA matter? The best batter of any year from 1871 to 1875 will play in the NA, but obviously not the best batter or 1869 or 1870. I find bewildering the idea that we are interested in the best batter of each year, but only beginning with some externally imposed starting year, whether it is 1876 or 1871.