Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Baseball/Archive 4

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MLB All-time Managerial wins

I've added MLB All-time Managerial wins which has the top 10 career winners for a manager according to MLB.com. I've added links to the list to all of the listed managers. As there are still 3 managers active on the list, if anyone sees that Bobby Cox (ATL), Tony LaRussa (STL), or Joe Torre (NYY) have a win, please try to remember. Thanks!

If anyone would like to add anything, like loses, win pct., or numbers 11 and beyond, feel free. It's not limited to 10. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mghabmw (talk • contribs).

Succession box glitches

I notice above that there was a big movement to shriink the succession boexes. I have noticed that some of them were done incorrectly. I have noticed that both the Sandy Koufax and Barry Bonds succession boxes were not closed correctly. I do not know how widespread this problem is but I had to make the following edits to correct these problems: [1] and [2].

Since the problem edits [3] [4] were by different individuals, I do not know how widespread the problem is. Please check tht you have closed all your succession boxes properly. --TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I think Tecmobowl went through and removed a lot of the succession boxes for some of the top players as he ran roughshod through a number of article (prior to his ban). I have been trying to replace them and correct some of the edits as well as I have gone through doing other edits. - Masonpatriot 16:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

And his latest sockpuppet, User:Long levi, was blocked today, so it's safe to go back into the wiki-waters again. Baseball Bugs 22:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Mason -- thanks for that. I believe Longlevi (one of his socks) did the same.--Epeefleche 03:45, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

All-Star Final Vote featured list candidate

You may want to visit Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/All-Star Final Vote to participate in the discussion of our latest featured content candidate.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

This article has been promoted.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

New external links template

I created a new template for linking to stats sites. It combines the previous ones into a single template and allows for automated linking to the correct page if the page id is not specified. The template is in my sandbox presently, and I have made examples on Roy Halladay and Chris Young (outfielder). For Halladay, the automatic linking work just fine for espn and baseball-reference and almost perfectly for mlb, but for Young it does not work because of the (outfielder) appendage in the page name. When appendages like that are added (or other name oddities), specifying the page id is necessary like it is in the current templates. The styling is modeled after the external links template used in city articles. I can add other sites to the template if desired. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 05:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

• Hmmm. There is one that comes to mind. What is it. Oh yes. Fangraphs.--Epeefleche 05:47, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Added. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 07:03, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Looking good. And forgot this one: Baseball Cube, per the above discussions. Tx. --Epeefleche 14:10, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Baseballcube isn't integrating as well; as far as I know, I'm not going to be able to get any automatic search routine to work. Do we really have to have it? -- Basar (talk · contribs) 17:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Great job, Basar! Imho, Baseballcube is an important EL because it's the only one I know of that has career college and minor league stats. Sportsline.com also has minor league stats, but no college stats and the Cube has a better user interface for jumping around to other relevant pages on the site. For example, if I'm on Jeremy Sowers' page and I want to know who else played at Kinston with him in 2005, I just click the link and up pops the entire roster with their stats and some information about their season.

Re the MLB.com link, my preference would be for the link to be to the Player File page rather than the current page. But that might be just me. --Sanfranman59 19:11, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not just you, but that is the best that can be done with automatic linking. The ID has to be manually added to directly link to the specific page (I have it to the stats page now since it is being advertised as such). I know baseballcube is a nice site, but the problem is a technical problem. I could turn it off by default and only activate it if the ID is manually specified. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 19:27, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I have "activated" this template at {{Baseballstats}}. I have made it backwards compatible with {{Baseball-reference}} and would like to redirect that template to the new one soon. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 07:49, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed the glitch that I guess is discussed above in short. On 3 of the sites, the link is not as deep as the prior links were -- mlb, baseball cube, and fangraphs. All bring one to a page from which one must double click to pull up the player page one saw before. For that reason, I find them more cumbersome. Can that be fixed? I like the general idea, just not the way that works now for those sites. It works perfectly well with the others.--Epeefleche 04:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It cannot be fixed when using automatic linking because that is just the way their sites work, but it works perfectly when you input the ID manually like the old templates had you do, e.g., |mlb=455759. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 05:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a bug with this when it comes to retired players. ESPN does not have pages for them. So I want you to only do this for current players. Soxrock (talk · contribs) 18:06, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that that would happen when I tested it, so implemented a feature where you can put "no" in the site's ID field and it will not show up. There is an example in the template documentation. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:09, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

FYI: Because of the problem with inactive/retired players, you can't probably shouldn't redirect {{Baseball-reference}} to the new template. Caknuck 08:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Apparently I can :) If you mean we shouldn't, why not? No feature of the past has been broken; only added value has only been added. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 20:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Because if you do redirect {{Baseball-reference}} to {{Baseballstats}}, then you'll be adding a number of dead links to thousands of articles for retired players. Redirecting prevents you from setting any of the parameters for that specific article (for example, putting "no" in the site's ID field as described above). My other concern is linking to ESPN for active players. What info is located there that can't be found at mlb.com? I think having both of them is needlessly redundant. Caknuck 01:18, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that is not true. Using "no" works even with a redirected template. Unfortunately, I can't test that though because I just realized the redirect was taken down. As for ESPN, see the archives for a long discussion on external links. I personally do not care which ones are there, but I believe a consensus was reached. I think the benefit of having more links outweighs having one link that is only partially dead. This way the adoption of the new template is sped up. I'm pretty sure it can be easily removed anyway by any person watching the page. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:45, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I confirmed it in my sandbox; it works fine. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I have two points to make here...

1. I think the thought process behind the template is brilliant, and will be of great use... especially for active players. However, we'll need to implement this manually, and set the id's for each of the sites for this to be of the greatest use. Like Epeefleche, I prefer the mlb.com pages to link directly to the player article. This is much more usable, as a reader will immediately see the player's vitals, current stats, and it will still link to the most current news stories about the player. So if we go willy-nilly pasting this template en masse over the current external links without specifying the site id's, I think it'll cause more problems than it'll solve. Which leads me to...
2. Sure the redirect works in practice, but none of the parameters/id's are specified via the redirect (and yes, I did test this). This means that for inactive players, the redirected template has links to to generic (and mostly irrelevant) search results at mlb.com and a placeholder page with no usable content at ESPN. This provides a net loss in usability to readers, as those are the first two links the reader sees and the two most recognizable EL sites of the five. And if the article name doesn't match the name at baseball-reference, or if more than one player share the same name, the usability diminishes even further. Again, this speaks to the need for us to gradually implement this on an article-by-article basis. For the record, 3538 articles use {{Baseball-reference}}. It would take even a prolific editor like Soxrock months to get around to all of the articles to fix the bad links.

If we're going to do this, we might as well do it right. We're working on an encyclopedia, and we should strive for it to be the best possible reference tool for all readers. I think it's utterly irresponsible to add tens of thousands of "partially dead" links to articles, especially when they will be overwriting perfectly good links. Caknuck 04:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be talking about different technical problems with redirecting in your posts. It's not true that "redirecting prevents you from setting any of the parameters for that specific article", you can add whatever you want, like |mlb=9999, normally. When you say, "none of the parameters/id's are specified via the redirect", it is obviously true that parameters just created wouldn't already be specified and that is the whole point of making code to do automatic links.

It doesn't quite seem like you understand what is going on here, forgive me if you do and I just don't understand what you are trying to say. "Overwriting perfectly good links" is not occurring here. The baseball reference link stays the same. New links are being added. My contention is that those new links are better than no new links at all. A page which brings up search results for a players name is more convenient than no link at all, and I believe it will spur people to manually add id's more quickly than they would without redirecting (better in the short term, better in the long term). I understand your concern about espn not working for retired players, so I would be willing to turn off that link for redirected versions of the template. Adding links that have a chance of being better than nothing at all is the whole point of automatic linking. It allows us to have something there with minimal effort and yet still have the ability to perfect the links in case someone is trying to perfect an article. I added the "view" button to the end of the template so people will be encouraged to improve the links' accuracy if there is a problem. The value of having access to new sites, even if the links are[n't] perfect, is partially due to giving readers a choice about there stats site (like the links at the bottom of city pages do), and so I therefore think even a link to a blank search page of a site is better than no link at all. I hope this doesn't sound like I am attacking your views too much, I respect them. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 05:23, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Case studies

Firstly, you're right about the id from the baseball-reference.com template being transcluded into the new template. My bad there. But now that's been settled, take a look a few things that will happen if and when we redirect the templates:

• For a basic retired Major Leaguer like Joe Azcue (I picked the first guy from Category:Milwaukee Brewers players that used {{Baseball-reference}}), the five external links generated by the template will be:
  1. MLB - Only one of the results on this search page have anything to do with Azcue, and all it is is a list of anybody who played with the Brewers.
  2. ESPN - This is just a placeholder page ESPN has for many former Major Leaguers. There isn't anything of use here that isn't duplicated in the other ELs. (I'm particularly fond of "Joe Azcue has not been involved in any transactions this season" Of course not, he's 68 years old.)
  3. Baseball-reference Good link for subject. Again, the id parameter survived the redirect, about which I was originally mistaken.
  4. Fangraphs Goes to the search page, which returns the result for the subject. OK link.
  5. Baseball Cube Link to the home page of the site. This is of little use to the casual reader looking for information on Azcue.

The end result is one direct link to useful information about the subject which was already contained on the article prior to the redirect), one link to a page that links to useful information about the subject, a link to a placeholder page that contains nothing of use; a link to a page of search terms with marginal relevance to the subject and a link to the front page of a site that likely has information about the subject, but the reader would have to enter it in manually.

• Now let's look at something more complex: Jeff Robinson (starting pitcher) picked because of the complex disambiguation problem)...
  1. MLB - No relevant search terms to either of the Jeff Robinsons who played in the bigs.
  2. ESPN "Search: Jeff Robinson (starting pitcher) No players matched your search criteria." Nothing more needs to be said here.
  3. Baseball-reference Again, the correct link for the subject.
  4. Fangraphs "No Results Found - Please Search Again"
  5. Baseball Cube See above for comment.

Now we're in a situation where only one of the five links has any validity. Assuming that at least a hundred of the 3500+ articles that transclude {{Baseball-reference}} use parenthetical disambiguators or accented letters, that's several hundred bum links we're inserting into articles with no net gain in useful information for the novice user. People will have a problem with this.

• Finally, let's look at a popular current player like Albert Pujols (picked because of the thoroughness of the "External Links" section):
  1. MLB All the search terms are relevant, but the MLB profile page contains more current news links for the player, plus the biographical info and stats.
  2. ESPN Correct link for subject.
  3. Baseball-reference Correct link for subject.
  4. Fangraphs Link goes to search page for subject. A more direct link already exists in the article, which would require two extra clicks from the template link.
  5. Baseball Cube Link to site home page. The correct link to the player's Baseball Cube page already exists in the article.

The danger here is editors who try to clean up the "External Links" section will see the template and may not realize that the links therein may not be as good as the ones already in the article. This may lead to the unnecessary removal of correct links in favor of those that less relevant (MLB) or require extra mouse clicks (MLB, Fangraphs) and/or data entry Baseball Cube) than the extant links on the page. I'm afraid that this could wind up a net minus in useful information in the articles.

In short, I think that there are too many problems with the template in its current form and too little immediate gain to justify a redirect from {{Baseball-reference}}. And considering the unwanted negative light that the previous EL arguments shone on this project, making changes with several glaring flaws would be a very bad idea.

On a more positive note, I still think that the template has tons of inherent value, but to implement with as little friction as possible would require one of two approaches:

a) Add the template to articles manually. If several dedicated editors -- and I'll be the first to volunteer -- set about it, it wouldn't take that long. Besides, the manual correction of all of the bad links will take just as much time, longer if you consider the extra time needed to hunt down which articles needed fixing.

b) Set the default condition of =no to all of the parameters except baseball-reference, then redirect. That way the template could be implemented at once, but without the distraction of a slew of bad links. (Again, this will still require the manual addition of the template to include the correct id's for the other sites. Plus, there's still several hundreds of articles that don't use {{Baseball-reference}}. Regardless of the way we go about it, it'll take a lot of thankless work.)

I hope this makes some sense to people... Caknuck 07:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know what the implications are -- it must have taken you awhile to write that. Well, since at this point our arguments are just based on a subjective feeling of what the added or subtracted value is of varying types of links are, and since we don't have any other community input to form a consensus, I am willing to acquiesce to your position (b) since your arguments are at least reasonable, although I still think mine are stronger. (b) has some positive aspects, and it is what I was planning on proposing if we couldn't reach another agreement. The template becomes relatively simple in this case. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 07:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. Sorry Basar, but I like Caknuk's argument better. I mean, Caknuk's right, if you go through with your proposal, it coild take a long time to cleanup all the articles. And I do have a lot going on for me already, so I couldn't just do it in a week even if I tried. Neither could anyone. So I will revert your redirect as no true consensus is reached. Better to be safe until your given the OK. Soxrock 22:13, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

You obviously haven't followed the discussion. I gave into Caknuck's request; the template was changed. You need to understanding what is going on before reverting other people's edits. And as for accusing me of needing to wait for a consensus, I am the only one who has properly discussed all changes before making them; you have made your changes without participating in any discussion, and I have left ample time for discussion at all stages. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 22:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

500, 600 & 700 HR club?...

These seem somewhat redundant. There's very little different information between the three pages. I have a feeling we could easily merge them all into one page:
500 home run club
600 home run club
700 home run club

What does everyone else think? Bjewiki 00:55, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion--At minimum, I would suggest you leave notes on the discussion pages for those 3, indicating that you are soliciting comments on the suggestion here. Also, whether merged or not, I would think it would be better to have the page or pages be as robust as the most robust of these pages ... I notice that the 700 club has more info (date at which the home run leading to entry into the club was hit, for example) than others, and that not all indicate the number of home runs to date (more or less).--Epeefleche 01:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I support merging them. It's not like the largest of them is particularly large. The baseball list articles tend to get a little redundant. All three of these could probably be merged into List of top 500 Major League Baseball home run hitters since all three above lists are subsets of this fourth. Put all three lists into their own section in List of top 500 Major League Baseball home run hitters with the extreme detail and then leave everyone below 500 in the less-detailed table below. If anyone else likes this idea, I may do it myself. —Wknight94 (talk) 16:26, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. - Masonpatriot 02:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Template:Professional Baseball

I am looking for some feedback on an evergrowing template. Do you think that defunct leagues should be split off from Template:Professional Baseball as a separate template or do you think this is a better navigational aid with a unified template?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 03:24, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Seasonal articles

Jaranda (talk · contribs) has taken it upon himself to redirect the articles 2006 Kansas City Royals season and 1980 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season. I've saved them and put the underconstruction tag on them, but enough has been said, he's going with the non-notable card. Just an FYI that he is trying to redirect them, and your help is needed. Please say yes to these. Soxrock 23:56, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Please say yes to these is called spamming which is not considered good in wikipedia, seriously wikipedia isn't a sports alamac for individual seasons articles. The best thing to do is merge whatever useful content to the history of the individual teams articles. The pages right now is mainly stuff a person will look at baseball-reference.com.Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 00:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, that doesn't mean it can't have seasonal pages. You just don't like the idea, I know of many people that do. Stop the madness Soxrock 00:06, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You admitted that it's only two other users, that isn't a consensus. Let other people decide Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 00:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• Seasonal articles are fine. They are verifiable and can be covered encyclopedically. Unless the article itself is substandard (e.g. no meaningful content) there's no reason to delete these articles except in the misguided notion that Wikipedia has an impending space limitation. We don't. --W.marsh 00:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • At the moment, many of the baseball season articles are literally one sentence and then a statistical dump from baseball-reference.com. If they are improved somehow, like from a reliable source, I could support them. But they are hard to get behind in the state they are in. —Wknight94 (talk) 00:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
    • People will improve an existing article, where they probably wouldn't create one from scratch and work on it. Wikipedia doesn't have a deadline. --W.marsh 00:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
      • At random, see 2006 Kansas City Royals season, 1990 Kansas City Royals season, and 1933 St. Louis Cardinals season. Those have so little content, they could almost be speedied. —Wknight94 (talk) 00:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

And they will be expanded upon. I only have so much time though Soxrock 00:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree here with Wknight, W.marsh, and Soxrock, for the reasons they stated.--Epeefleche 00:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I was just viewing this discussion and I have to agree with Jaranda. Many of the arguments made for keeping these articles seem to be based on WP:ILIKEIT while they violate WP:NOT#INFO Statistics and WP:NOT#DIR. I mean would we really want an individual article for every single team of the statistics for every single season? That seems to me to be the purpose of a sports almanac rather than an encyclopedia. Just my two cents.--Jersey Devil 00:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

What say y'all give it some time, instead of immediately trying to slap it down? Baseball Bugs 00:28, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

User Jaranda decided to delete SoxRock's comments to several of us on the grounds of "canvasing". It might be appropriate to add your own comment complaining about canvasing. I don't think it's appropriate to be deleting other people's comments. We are not sheep, we can think for ourselves. I've got some reservations about the individual season pages, but not necessarily for the reasons you're thinking. That's why I say give it some time. Baseball Bugs 00:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy to give it some time but they do need work from someone. We're not here to be a copy of baseball-reference.com. Let's keep in mind that if the season articles are changed to redirects, the statistics are still available in history. They could all be redirected first and then restored to proper articles as people get to them. There's no hurry to get rid of them but there's also no hurry to get them in place either. —Wknight94 (talk) 00:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

As a compromise, perhaps it would be better to flesh out a given team's set of individual seasons before moving on to the next team? Baseball Bugs 00:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I haven't checked but it appears there are hundreds of articles in question here. It would take a very long time to get them all into what I would call article shape (one of the reasons I never started that momentous task). In the meantime, we have hundreds of subpar baseball-reference.com ripoffs (possibly even copyvios?). I think I'd go the other way and redirect them first and then start fleshing them out one by one, preferably starting with the most notable seasons. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Wknight94, remember I'm not proposing to delete those articles, but they have so little useful content that it's better to redirect until more info comes. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 00:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I plan to enlarge those, but, sorry, but I can't complete 2000 articles in one day, sorry :(. Feel free to help though, I can't do it alone. Thanks for all your support Soxrock 01:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The baseball-reference references are there because that's my primary source. You know, citing sources. Either way, I'll add other sources as I use them Soxrock 01:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what this last piece means but many of those articles include nothing but numbers taken directly from baseball-reference. They may be so closely derived from baseball-reference as to be copyvio (I'm no expert on copyvio so someone please clarify that). If we just took all the numbers in tables from baseball-reference and copied them here and did nothing else with them, I'll bet the baseball-reference guy wouldn't be too happy - and I don't blame him. I'll bet he could send one complaint e-mail to the foundation and we admins would be spending the night hitting the delete button. Anyway, there's not much point copying all of that here when it already exists there. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:59, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

That's not it though. Other info will be included. Remember, Wikipedia has no deadlines. It's not like this has to be done this week. God, if it did I would overwork myself Soxrock 02:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

But copyvio trumps no-deadlines. I'll let up on that point and see if someone else wants to second, but right now, I feel a little icky ripping off baseball-reference so blatantly. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:06, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't think about the copyright status of these lists until now, they should be quickly redirected before a complain is filed. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 04:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I support giving Soxrock some time to work on these. He has been a good and helpful and sufficiently compulsive editor to lead me to believe that he will attend to them appropriately, augmenting them appropriately, in a sufficiently appropriate timespan. If we leave him alone. At the same time, I would appreciate it if Jaranda were to correct his innapropriate deletion of others' comments -- or point me to where he is specifically given that right.--Epeefleche 04:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Most of the times when a editor carvass, it gets reverted as it's not allowed, we can't keep these articles now because of the copyright issue that Wknight94 mentions, I personally doubt alot of you knows about copyrights and how important that is. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 04:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Canvassing is at most controversial. But I see nothing that allows you to RV others' edits on my talk page -- canvassing or not (and here it was not canvassing, IMO). I do see that you are not allowed to do delete other comments here, as indicated above. Will you either show me where you are allowed to do so, or RV your deletions? I would prefer that you address it, rather than that we go down the ANI route. Tx.--Epeefleche 05:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

He was obviously canvassing, but stopped when i reverted, read the comment. I did nothing wrong, other admins reverted canvassing before. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

In reading the article Wikipedia:Canvassing, I can see where this could qualify as canvassing. What I don't see in that article, is anything that authorizes you or anyone else aside from the original poster to delete the canvas attempts. Better you should tell those who received the message that canvassing is against the rules. Better you should inform than to censor. Baseball Bugs 05:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I should have reverted with an edit summarry instead of rollback. My fault Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Jaranda--pls tell me you will RV your RVs. You still have failed to show me a basis for your RVs. With or without an edit summary. I have shown you that deletions of others' edits on talk pages other than your own is prohibited. If you don't clean up your mess, you will push me towards an ANI to encourage you to do so. Please don't waste all of our time with that.--Epeefleche 05:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to clutter up this pg with this anymore with this issue, so I am moving future discussion about my request that you RV your unwarranted deletions to to [5].--Epeefleche 06:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Again the best thing to do in my opinion is to create the team pages by decade, and convert it into prose, not a bunch of copyrighted, crufty lists. Maybe we could get these decade articles into WP:FAs. I'm down for that. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 04:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You've hit upon a concern I had about the use of stats directly in the articles. The way around that is that they could be linked, and maybe even displayed directly from the link, if that were somehow programmatically possible, although it's not required by any means. What's needed more than pages of stats is descriptive info about the individual seasons. In many of the current baseball team articles, the info is heavy toward "recent" stuff. That kind of information exists for every team in every season. It's just a question of how much to get into it. And that's to be debated and discussed here. If every major league ballplayer is automatically considered to be "notable", then certainly every season of every team is also "notable". Doing things by "decades" seems arbitrary and does not sound like it would flow well. Baseball Bugs 05:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I have no opinion about these articles but as a point of interest, Baseball reference does not "own" these stats. They would have no legal grounds to complain about copyright issues. They do not compile the stats. They have no legal authority to distibute the statistics in question. -- No Guru 04:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Who does own those stats? Is baseball-reference itself violating copyright? If their stats match MLB's, they might be. But if they're different, then they're "private research", which brings up another point of concern, in that baseball-reference's own research does not trump MLB's official stats, although many "figger filberts" (like at SABR) think it should. Baseball Bugs 05:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The stats are not copyrighted as it's common info, but how some of the page are formatted are too close to baseball-reference, and Baseball Bugs see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Someone must own it. It didn't come from thin air, and I wouldn't think posting something on the internet automatically nullifies one's copyright protection... does it? Also, I'm not sure what you're driving at with the link. Baseball Bugs 05:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It's basic stats that anyone could get, not really copyrighted, the way you format it, now it becomes copyrighted, or if extra stats such as Bill James win shares. "If every major league ballplayer is automatically considered to be "notable", then certainly every season of every team is also "notable"." is WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:31, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You can clearly see by looking at the edit histories of such season pages that a lot of users put a lot of their work, time, and dedication into working on these articles. If it weren't notable, then why would so many people be working on it? Jaranda, your case is that not every season is notable. So, for example, and I shared this example with another user in an e-mail (I won't reveal who I talked with), the Anaheim Angels won the World Series in 2002. That's notable, can't you agree? Well, in 2003 they didn't even make the playoffs. So, does that mean that their 2003 season isn't notable because they didn't win a title? In 2004, the Anaheim Angels won the AL West. In 2005, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim won the AL West and advanced to the ALCS. Those seasons are notable, right? But last year, in 2006, they didn't win the AL West. But for Angel fans, such as myself and the bulk of Orange County, there were many bright spots of the season that we would consider important, like Francisco Rodriguez leading the league in Saves, Jered Weaver tying Whitey Ford's AL record for most wins without a loss to begin a career, and Tim Salmon's chase to 300 home runs. All of these events, and more, are widely considered "notable" by Orange County baseball fans... and for the record, I live in Los Angeles County. Every team has events like this that are very important to their franchise and their fans. To say that a season for a team is notable, but their next season isn't makes very little sense. MLB is this country's highest level of professional baseball, making it very notable. We have articles for all 30 teams. We have articles for all the seasons. The articles for the 30 teams are really long and are being shrunk. We can move a lot of that information to their respective season articles, like 2007 New York Yankees season or 1901 Baltimore Orioles season to shrink the amount of text on New York Yankees. I know a lot of the articles are stubs now. But every single article has at least once in its existence been a stub, which has been substantially improved. If you look at articles like 2007 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim season and 2007 Milwaukee Brewers season, you will see that it isn't only statistics. Especially the Angels' season page, one which I have spent a great portion of my own time working on, there is an enormous amount of important information to describe the topic. How can you doubt its notability? Ksy92003(talk) 05:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

They at least have content as is not based on baseball reference. This isn't the place to talk about it though. Wikipedia:Centralized discussion is Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The stats question is a different topic. As far as the notability question, I'll give you an example that's close-to-home for me: the Chicago Cubs of 1969. They did not win their division, so by Jaranda's logic, that season is not "notable". In fact, it's one of the most notable in Cubs history. Books have been written about that season, just as with the Boston Red Sox of 1948 and 1949, even though they didn't "win" anything. And as Ksy92003 notes, there have been complaints about the primary team articles getting too bloated. This is a way of off-loading a lot of that detail, to retain the information but keep the primary article crisp. Baseball Bugs 06:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

If a book is written about those seasons, of course they are notable, again we need to talk about this in a centralized discussion, not here as this involves other sports as well. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:06, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Maybe there needs to be a project covering all of professional sports. But as Casey once said, I'm in the baseball business, I'm not here to talk about any other sport. (Being metaphorical - I'm not actually "in" the baseball business.) In any case, there have been plenty of books written about teams from which facts can be drawn that cover each season. There are the individual team histories that turn up from time to time. There are the Baseball Guides from past years which typically had a lengthy article about each team, no matter if they were the dregs of the league, in addition to the pennant-race summaries. There are several layers to a baseball season, just as there are several layers to the great game itself. Baseball Bugs 06:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It's a baseball guide, that doesn't mean much in my opinion. Also discussing this here is a conflect of inflect in a way for almost all of us, including me. Everyone here specializes in sports articles, we need people that doesn't edit this stuff to decide a notabilty guideline, for both seasons and players. You guys get what I mean. We can't agrue our beliefs to death. We need neutral people. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, the Official Baseball Guide published by The Sporting News, and older official guides such as the Spalding and Reach guides. I don't know what you mean by "conflect of inflect" or "agrue our beliefs", but I gather you're trying to say that we're too close to the subject. Maybe so. Maybe you can find some people who don't care about baseball but who are willing to review these articles for us. Just try to keep it from being soccer fans. :) Baseball Bugs 06:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yea we are too close to the subject. There aren't that many wikipedians who speciallizes in american sports articles, including about 95% of the admins. Finding people is easy. As for the team pages, they should be redirected especially if they are too close to baseball reference until someone is willing to provide some prose content for those articles. I don't mind having them if they have some sourced info. We should concentrate on making as many WP:FAs and WP:GAs as we could get, instead of agruing or revert warning over infoboxes which is tearing this wikiproject apart. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Baseball Bugs, for noticing my point. Look, New York Yankees is such a huge article that it's hard for my computer to open the page successfully. But if I went to 2000 New York Yankees season (the year they last won the World Series) then I would be able to find everything I want to know about that season. I wouldn't have to scramble throughout the main article to try to find stuff about one season. It is buried in the article, hard to find it, and is in much less detail than would be in the season article. The season articles are a great way to remove some information from the bloated primary articles so we can describe the whole season in complete detail, rather than just saying that they made the playoffs and were eliminated in the ALCS. I can't believe you're actually against this. And it's not just baseball. Football, hockey, and basketball have them also. Hundreds and hundreds of users work on these articles. You're gonna have to convince all of them, Jaranda, that these articles aren't notable. So good luck trying to convince about 500 other people. Ksy92003(talk) 06:43, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Hundreds and Hundreds of users editing those pages is so misleading and false, and the article article you gave doesn't have much info, I don't know what are you trying to accoplish, you are not getting it, it's copyright issues and lack of content not notabilty. If a person tries to merge the season articles to the main team page, of course I will revert. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Your argument about copyright violation is important and has to be considered. But the "lack of content" argument is questionable. There are plenty of wikipedia articles that lack content... today. They wait for someone to add content. However, if I understand your argument, you would temporarily redirect the individual pages back to the main article, and once someone edits the article and adds some content, they could remove the redirect. Is that what you've got in mind? Baseball Bugs 06:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 06:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

So who decides the copyright issue? Baseball Bugs 07:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

We're just people. If you expect to wake up one day and see each season article for every team to be up, then I'm afraid you're gonna be disappointed. I will try to do as much as I can. I'm only 16 years old and have a lot on my plate, so I'm not gonna be able to spend all my time working on the articles. You need to give it some time. Again, you're not gonna wake up one day and see that everything is complete. You need to be patient. As far as the example I gave, Soxrock has been working on 107 NY Yankees articles. You need to give him a chance to do what he can. But once he is done, then it will prove as an excellent substitute for the main article.

You just need to give everybody some time before everything can be as perfect as possible. Anyway, you say that "hundreds and hundreds of users... is... misleading and false." How is that false? Why don't you look at the page histories for all the season articles and see how many people are working on all of them, Jaranda, before you say stuff. Ksy92003(talk) 07:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

When it comes to copyright issues, there is no "hey, can you wait" or "we will leave this alone for now." We get emails daily asking us to take stuff down from Wikipedia because of editors, such as yourselves, wishing to copy text and just slap it on Wikipedia. I will also be either deleting or redirecting these articles myself and I have an army will who join me. Like it or not, you're on our site, you need to follow our policy on copyright. Period. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 07:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

"An army who will join you..." once you canvas them, right? Baseball Bugs 07:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Since the issue is on the ANI anyways, there is no need to canvas. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 08:01, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Where are there any issues with copyright violations? Everything is referenced, sourced and cited. How is that copyrighted then, if it is sourced and cited? And you can't just delete or re-direct these articles. There is a huge consensus in favor of keeping the articles. Ksy92003(talk) 07:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Our copyright rules beat your consensus. The stats do not belong to us and are ripped from a website. That is a copyright violation and they need to go. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 07:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not about the stats, the issue is that most of the season pages, with the exception of the 2007 season pages is a derivative work of Baseball Reference. While it's not exactly copied from it, it's a little too similar and we can't take any risks, those articles needs to be in prose. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 07:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The reason rambot was able to make generic articles was simply because it was a derivative of the US census, a free resource. These websites are not free for our use. Both issues raised above are cause for concern. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 07:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

1985 Kansas City Royals season is how the baseball season articles suppose to be like, original info, nothing similar to baseball reference. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 07:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

If you just delete every article for 'copyright concerns' then you are deleting a lot of things that are NOT copyrighted. --Borgarde^talk 08:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't worry I am not deleting anything. Secondly I am only redirecting anything that has like text from a non-free website. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 08:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Please stop. I will be working hard today and for the next week or two. I will get these to look better and lot like their ripped from a site. Jeez, I guess there is no deadline, but this will still take a while, and redirecting them will only make it harder for me to get to the articles. Don't worry, I'll work very hard. I have to. Soxrock 11:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

What is the copyright issue if you are reproducing stats? The goal would be not to mirror their layout, but they do not own the statistics regarding the team. If they hit collectively 28 home runs, and the site says it, and you say it, its not copyright. I would reccomend changing layouts if that is the issue, but you cannot copyright basic facts. --SevenOfDiamonds 12:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

In looking at 1921 New York Yankees season, for example, I am hard-pressed to see where this "mirrors" baseball-reference.com. There are selected stats for selected players, not a copy-and-paste. The game log might be questionable, but I don't see where the stats are. Maybe you could tell me what it is I'm apparently not seeing? Baseball Bugs 12:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

No website, like Baseball-reference, owns the stats. But even so, it is referenced. But the stats don't belong to them. First of all, who uses the stats? Let's see... MLB, ESPN, Yahoo!, Baseball-Reference, the list goes on and on. Stats are just general knowledge. Last night, Alex Rodriguez hit his 34th home run of the season. That's just knowledge. It's not copyrighting to say that he hit his 34th home run... but I don't know why this is even an issue because there is a link to Baseball-reference.com anyway, so B-R and all its stats are sourced. It can't be copyrighting if we source the stats. Sourcing is what we do to avoid copyrights, and you say that we've achieved that by doing just that, so I fail to see your argument.

Now, please look at 2007 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim season. This is definitely a potential model article. It isn't just a collection of stats... in fact, there are barely any stats on the page, but where there are stats, there are references. In fact, 18 references. Everything there is original info; I came up with all the words used to describe the season in the "season summary." I didn't copy-paste from any other site, and the stats I got from other sites I cited them, thus not violating any copyright law.

All of the articles will be built like this in due time. Again, we're humans, not robots. You need to give us all a chance to improve these articles. But don't just delete them or re-direct them. Rather than remove them altogether, why don't you try to help improve the article, Jaranda? Oh that right, because you think 2007 Tampa Bay Devil Rays season is less notable than 2007 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim season. But I really need to ask you this, Jaranda: why are so many people working on all of these articles if they didn't consider it notable? If I really must, later today I will compile a list of all the major contributors to the season articles to prove to you that so many people work on the articles and it is a big part of Wikipedia. Again, to say that they aren't "notable" means that you're gonna have to convince all those at the hockey project, the football project, and the basketball project. It isn't just baseball. With this many people working on the project, you can't deny that if a bunch of people spend a lot of their time on these season article, then it's obviously a huge part of Wikipedia, and it has helped a lot of people. Removing it all will remove a lot of hard work.

Jaranda, I know you're an admin, but if you ask me you're abusing your power. Ksy92003(talk) 13:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

How the I'm abusing my power? Just because you guys don't agree with copyrights. This likely is heading to medication as you guys are so hard headed. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 14:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

"Medication"? Any suggestions? Maybe a little Valium? Or maybe just a good-old-fashioned slug of Jack Daniel's? :) Baseball Bugs 14:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Exactly Ksy. Baseball-reference does not own the stats. They do not own anything other than the site. And we're always said to have to have "verifable sources". Well, their sourced, but somehow they violate copyright? Most of the articles that were redirected did not even have stats and therefore did not violate copyright in some of your opinions. Not being copyvio, you redirected without consensus. I have reverted all the redirects that I have seen, and PLEASE help work on them. Why redirect when you can help them. You're doing the opposite of what you should do. Lets see, what should I do?

• A) Redirect them and piss of a bunch of people
• B) Help build the articles and relieve the work of others (I AM OVERWORKING MYSELF BECAUSE OF THIS! I AM PISSED, FEELING LIKE A ROBOT, AND PRONE TO LEAVE WIKIPEDIA TODAY! I AM UNDER THAT MUCH PRESSURE NOT BEING ABLE TO DO THIS WITHOUT SOME PEOPLE REDIRECTING ARTICLES! STOP IT PLEASE)

So please help us work on them. Soxrock 13:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh please. Relax. If there is an intermediate redirect edit, what is the harm? I haven't heard a good reason why they shouldn't be redirected, if for no other reason than they're all quite subpar quality-wise at this moment. Like I said, there's no deadline to have them all up now. We can redirect them all and then you can take your time making real articles out of them all. The drama is unnecessary. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, you do have a point. I don't like the redirect, but, hell, I won't be working on the Cardinals for some time. I'll be busy with the more recent teams (teams since 1961) and then I'll start going into the deeper histories. But do not redirect any Yankee articles at least, those do have some content. And, besides, I plan to add the construction tag to all the articles. So I still would prefer construction over redirect Soxrock 15:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Look I'm sorry I called them nn, but still copyright trumps policy, and the construction tag won't do anything Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 17:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

There isn't any copyright issue. There are only so many ways you can give stats. If not in a table, then what is another organized way of formatting player statistics?

Anyway, I don't get why this is an issue at all. Baseball-reference is referenced in every single article. So the stats, owned by B-R or not, are sourced.

Also, an article that I've greatly expanded, 2007 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim season, has almost no stats. The only stats that are on the page are the team's league leaders in 12 categories. But even those are linked and referenced at the bottom of the page. Ksy92003(talk) 17:17, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

And thats the way it should be, you are not taking his statistics wholesale, but just using a part of them. Good job. We should avoid using the same formatting as his statistics do. Make different looking tables, put them in a different order, do something different. 17:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't even matter the formatting now, it needs permission to get stats and pictures to wikipedia from MLB. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 17:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

But there are only so many ways that the stats can be shown.

And Jaranda, we never got the stats from MLB. We got them from ESPN and Baseball-reference. And those stats are linked at the bottom of each page. It's sources and referenced. We aren't claiming them all to ourselves; we have ESPN and B-R linked on every single page, so there isn't any copyright being broken. Ksy92003(talk) 17:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

And what pictures are you talking about? Ksy92003(talk) 17:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

But guess where they licenced from? MLB licensed the rights to ESPN and Baseball Reference which didn't licenced it to us. And pictures are non-commerical on many ballparks, but you have to ask for permission from the statiums for that, not MLB what I heard. See the back of a ticket stub. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 17:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Nobody can own mere numbers. Anybody can watch a game and keep track of statistics themselves. It's called "score keeping," something I do. It's when you watch all the games and keep track of what happens yourself. If I watched a game and saw a player hit a home run, his first of the season, would I have to get permission from MLB or anybody to use that? No, because it happened, I saw it happened. Would I own the stats because I saw it happen? No.

And Jaranda, I'm getting ready to send you a comment on your talk page. Please reply there. Ksy92003(talk) 17:38, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Jaranda, keep in mind this. While the stats may be licensed to ESPN and B-R, WE STILL CITE THEM IN THE ARTICLES! That's good enough in my mind. We aren't stealing them if we cite our sources Soxrock 17:40, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with using a small portion of the stats, but you can't take all the stats on their site. Cited or not doing so is a copyright violation. My main concern is the rambotlike generated content below. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I am only using a portion. I'm not using all of them. Case proven Soxrock 17:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

So I probably reverted something somewhere without noticing this. Just don't overwork yourself when you're not sure if it's really going to be worth it in the end. Pilotguy 19:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Nicknames

Recently, an editor zapped most of the documentation from the New York Yankees page that documented how old the nickname "Yankees" is, i.e. it's about as old as "Highlanders", despite historical revisionist attempts to make it seem like "Yankees" appeared overnight in 1913. Presumably the reason the editor did that was to make the article a bit less wordy. In light of that, I'm thinking it might be useful to make a separate article about the origins of the team nicknames, and reduce the minutia on that subject in the individual team articles. Before I start that, I would like to know (1) is there already such an article; and (2) does it make sense to write such an article? I have plenty of citations for the info, FYI. Baseball Bugs 14:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You know, I like the idea. Because I've read the Yankee name was very popular even when they were officially the Highlanders Soxrock 14:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

In a separate discussion with a user over the Hilltop Park page, he scanned some site, presumably a New York Times site, and found that by 1908, "Yankees" was already very prevalent. The intriguing questions are (1) why was it more popular, although I would guess it just sounds more "American"; and (2) when did it become "official", i.e. when did the Yankees start calling themselves by that name? I don't know those answers, but that doesn't stop me from starting the article, assuming one doesn't exist already. Baseball Bugs 15:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

There this already: List of baseball nicknames#Baseball Team Nicknames. The article is already pretty long, so I would probably have a spinoff article from that point that discusses the historical details. But this is good, as I don't have to totally invent the wheel. Baseball Bugs 15:16, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

About seasons

(I originally posted this to KSY's page)

Okay, let's see. Firstly, I'm not involved in this issue, so I think you can accept my opinion as unbiased.

Secondly: I'm really, really sorry, but numbers can be owned. It's all about format and context. An mp3 is just numbers, but try telling that to the RIAA. Those numbers, in that format, in that context, do belong to MLB.com, and we would need their permission to reproduce them. And we do not have that permission.

Thirdly, having an article on an individual season for an individual baseball team... that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But they can't just be stat dumps, or the copyright lawyers will have our heads. Do it in prose - example, 1985 Kansas City Royals season. Talk about the season. You can construct the article in your userspace, and move it out into articlespace when it's ready.

Until such time as you have an article about an individual team's individual season, links to that season will have to be redirects to the article about the team itself.

Okay? DS 17:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The thing is this: there are only so many ways you can give stats. If not in a table, then what is another organized way of formatting player statistics?

Anyway, I don't get why this is an issue at all. Baseball-reference is referenced in every single article. So the stats, owned by B-R or not, are sourced.

Also, an article that I've greatly expanded, 2007 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim season, has almost no stats. The only stats that are on the page are the team's league leaders in 12 categories. But even those are linked and referenced at the bottom of the page. Ksy92003(talk) 17:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The presentation style of the numbers, i.e the order in which each stat tends to be presented, tends to follow the implicit guidelines in the Scoring Rules section of the baseball rules. It gives a list of what stats the official scorer is supposed to collect, and there is an implied "order" to those stats. I would say that's why they are often presented in a similar way in different sources. Baseball Bugs 17:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I will say that when I created the tables for the stats, I did it in that format because I have seen that format used on ESPN, MLB.com, Yahoo!, B-R, and every other site. I didn't know of any other way to format it. As of the order in which the stats are presented, that is mere coincidence. I wasn't trying to copy anybody when I created the stats tables. If that's the issue, than they can easily be changed to avoid any problems. But something that I don't think Jaranda understands is that the stats are linked to ESPN.com and Baseball-reference.com. So there isn't any copyright issue at all because it is sourced. Ksy92003(talk) 17:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thing is you can't just copy their formatting. Make your own up. I and the other admins don't seem to be objecting to the articles themselves, just the copyright issues that you all are causing. Go one by one, you can revert the redirects as time goes on, fix one, move on to the next one, no point in having bot generated (really looks like rambot was run, if it was a human I admire their consistancy) (read derivative) content from a non-free site. You are free to make the pages again, but please do so in real prose, and attempt to change the formatting of the statistics. Cite them or not you can't copy their text wholesale. You can copy a small portion, but you can't copy the whole thing. Again please try to reformat the stats in some meaningful way, and use real prose for the articles. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

WE DIDN'T COPY ANYTHING, AND IT'S SOURCED ANYWAY!!! If you are so intent on us changing the format of the stats, then how do you suggest it? When will you understand that there are so many ways to organize statistics, and that there is no way more organized than a table like what we currently have? Every single website has statistics organized in a table. Why should we be different? Ksy92003(talk) 17:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, let me say this. I took only a portion from B-R. I didn't take all the stats. And, still being sourced, I don't see copyright issues. Soxrock 17:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Your right Ksy. It would look terribly sloppy if we didn't do it in a table. Soxrock 17:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

You guys seem to be missing my point, the stats can be improved, but frankly they are not my main problem her, but the bot generated content in other words needs to go until such time the articles are written in real prose. As long as you guys don't take their statistics and dump them on wikipedia, and instead use a small portion of them (as was shown in an example above) it should be fine, at least from my point of view. The major problem I see is the rambotlike generated content. The site that we are generating the information from is not free. So just make sure to do the writing from more then one source, and use prose. The solution here has already been mentioned, but I'll mention it again. Redirect all of the season articles not in prose. This is not deleting them, the content is still in the history for you to go back in your own time and revert it if you like (for the citations). Just go one by one, write one in prose with sources, ect, move on to the next one. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• You still don't understand. Just because you cite your source, that doesn't mean it's not copyvio. All it means is that you're not plagiarizing. Copyvio = using material that belongs to someone else; plagiarism: using material that belongs to someone else but pretending that it's yours. Either way, you're still using material that belongs to someone else. Major League Baseball is a company that is very very possessive of their intellectual property. They have licensed their statistics to B-R; B-R pays them for that license. Clear? DS 17:44, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Re-directing won't do anything. If you re-direct the pages, then you're removing the ability of anybody who would want to edit them. It would be best to just leave them as their own article and wait for somebody to come and expand it. Ksy92003(talk) 17:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Would you prefer redlinks then? I'm not leaving derivitive content from a copyrighted site here on wikipedia, regardless if it is sourced or not. They need rewritten in prose. As explained above merely sourcing them is not "fixing" the copyright problems. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:48, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

And they will be written in prose. The articles have the {{underconstruction}} tag on them, which says that the articles will be expanded. You need to give us some time to improve all the articles. The articles are gonna be improved in due time, and removing them isn't gonna do any good. It won't help at all. Just leave the freakin' articles there and let somebody improve them. Ksy92003(talk) 17:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

No can do as they are derivative content of a copyrighted website at the moment. How long do you propose we leave this copyright infringement on wikipedia again? —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 17:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Let me hand out an ultimatum. If you dare delete those articles, I'll just leave this place. I don't spend 100 hours of creating articles just to have them deleted. I'll be adding the construction tag. Just lay off of these. It's a hard thing to do in a short period of time Soxrock 17:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not deleting them, I merely offered, in any case we cannot leave the copyright violations here on wikipedia. Right now they have been redirected. The "underconstruction" tag does not fix the fact that the text is a derivative work of a copyrighted site. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 18:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• (Edit conflict) Sox, I doubt they really care whether you're here or not. What matters to them is copyright law, or at least there interpretation of it. I'd recommend taking this to the Foundation for a ruling by whatever passes for the legal department there, as I'm assuming no one here represents the Foundation. Meanwhile, it's almost as easy to copy the pages to userspaces as to add construction tags. That would be the best thing to do, and it shows the Baseball Project is willing to abide by the law, even if it's just the interpretation of a minor group of non-legal editors, at least until an official ruling is made by the FOundation. - BillCJ 18:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

First of all, the sites in question don't even have statistics. And for the last time, we aren't violating copyright... We aren't claiming the stats as our own. And one thing I pointed out is that this all started out because Jaranda thought the articles weren't notable. He has moved on to his 4th argument after we countered the first three. He just makes up random arguments because he keeps being proven wrong.

But once again, We aren't claiming the stats as our own. Ksy92003(talk) 18:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Read what I have written, the problem is not the statistics, its the rambotlike generated content from a nonfree site. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 18:07, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

What generated content? In the stubs the prose? Soxrock 18:08, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

In the stubs. The first 3 sentences that are the same on each article. Thats a derivative work from whatever website you took it from. It really looks like someone ran rambot and generated said content. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 18:09, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Uh, that's just looking at my source, B-R, and putting in the simple information. It needs to be remembered that they are underconstruction Soxrock 18:11, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

We didn't take that from any website. Those are all our words, entirely. Ksy92003(talk) 18:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. It's self-prose, not plagarism Soxrock 18:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Ksy92003, I don't understand this argument. What do you mean they can't be edited if they are redirects? —Wknight94 (talk) 18:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

That may be overblown. Just add construction, it's the best idea Soxrock 18:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I meant that if they are re-directs, then somebody who wants to work on one of the articles will click on that and be re-directed to the main page. They might think that there isn't any purpose for that article any more. They might think that they aren't supposed to have that article anymore... I don't know, it made more sense last night. Never mind that argument. Ksy92003(talk) 18:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

LOL. Fair enough. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Eagle101, where did you think those "first 3 sentences that are the same on each article" came from? I think you just accused us of copyrighting just because some words are the same. And again, I was the person to add those sentences originally when I added them to 2007 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim season, 2007 Oakland Athletics season, and 2007 Chicago Cubs season. I added those sentences myself and didn't get them from anybody else. So I am hurt that you accused me of doing something like that. Ksy92003(talk) 18:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I thought they were generated by bot. In any case I still think its a derivative work. You guys should be going article by article rather then make iffy stubs. I wonder how long these will be underconstruction.... :P —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 18:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The first three sentences doesn't violate copyright Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 18:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm still hurt that I was indirectly accused of something, Eagle101. Also, I began creating the articles in December, December 23, 2006, to be exact. Nothing can be said about the season 3+ months before the season even begins. In any event, Eagle, you hurt me by indirectly accusing me of something with absolutely no evidence. Ksy92003(talk) 18:41, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me like each article beginning with the same sentence structure would be a good thing, as it suggests some consistency in construction instead of a haphazard approach. Baseball Bugs 18:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

...which is the reason why I began each article I created with a similar sentence structure. It helped other users create the other 26 articles (I also did 2007 St. Louis Cardinals season because they had some guidelines to follow as far as the intro, and each article is gonna be expanded from there. Ksy92003(talk) 18:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, but I still maintain it is a derivative copyright violation. Sorry if thats not what you want to hear. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 18:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

It's alright. But I don't see how it's a copyright violation if I wrote those sentences myself, using only my brain. I don't see how it's still a violation if I created them all by myself. Ksy92003(talk) 18:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I actually have some experience with copyright issues. Enough to know, for example, that the baseball stats themselves -- without more -- are certainly not copyright violations. Otherwise, when you read in your morning paper that Arod hit a home run, it would be a copyright violation for you to repeat it. Formatting of the information can, under certain circumstances, be a copyright violation. The seminal New York decision had to do with used cars, and their blue book value. If I remember correctly, a report that repeated the same info as a prior report -- but wasn't a xerox of it -- was fine. One that looked just like a xerox was not. So changes in the formatting were enough to erase any copyright issues in that case. And that case did not even involve -- as this one does -- information that has been placed in the public domain, that is provided to the public for free, "fair use" issues, or that contained a citation to the source. My guess is that this long discussion is largely a tempest in a teapot, of people who are not licensed to practice law. I've left a note on the copyright discussion page, asking -- if any copyright attorneys wish to -- if they would enlighten everyone here.--Epeefleche 19:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Issue is resolved below, I think, the website owner was contacted, and discussion has taken place after that. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 03:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

So where is this copyvio?

That would be here. This is the page of the terms of the website you took the data and formatting from. Specifically, I want you to read this. 6. Site Content. You may not frame, capture, harvest, or collect any part of the Site or Content without SRI's advance written consent. SRI may make changes to the Content, this Site, or the products or services made available in connection with this Site at any time, with or without notice, and makes no commitment to update any of these items. Despite any efforts of SRI to provide accurate information in the Content, errors may occur. Before acting on any information appearing on the Site, you should verify its accuracy. That means we cannot copy their content, especially in their format, What yall have done is copied in his format and we have to delete because his terms forbid it. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 19:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok. I have tried to contact them. What is their official e-mail, because I keep getting failure responses. And thanks for clueing us in on that. Soxrock 19:23, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I have gotten through. I am currently awaiting a 3rd response from baseball-reference. I've got a few questions to ask for some of you.

• A) What is white-listing?
• B) The person I'm talking to says there are "nofollow tags"? What are those? He claims to be "galled by them"

Thank you Soxrock 20:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

See nofollow. My understanding is that it means search engines that find our articles will not follow the links on them, i.e., they won't get to baseball-reference.com. That means baseball-ref is not helped search-engine wise by us linking to them. I think that was a calculated decision here fairly recently. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-01-22/Nofollow as well. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

So, basically, the nofollow tag puts us above everyone else and it's highly controversial because of that. Soxrock 20:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

People don't get Google juice from links on our site. It's an anti-spam measure. Otherwise people sneak in little links to their site here and they slowly crawl up the Google rankings. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, for us here, that may actually affect whether we are allowed to have stats up here. I'm involved in a discussion with b-r, and Sean Forman, the person I'm talking to, is said to be "galled" by the nofollow tags. Soxrock 20:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Stats sequence

Rule 10.02 states that the official scorer is to gather certain records for each player in each game. The batting figures, for example: AB, R, H, RBI, 2B, 3B, HR, TB, SB, SH, SF, BBB, IBB, HBP, INT/OBS, SO. Additionally, the following stats are to be calculated from the tabulated records: BA, SA, OBP. Interestingly, CS and GIDP are not required, although they are typically captured at the major league level. The sequence above does not totally square with either MLB or Baseball-Reference, but it's similar. [6] [7] Baseball Bugs 18:56, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Then use that sequence, and not the sequence found on the websites. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 19:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

To further elaborate, for fielders it's: PO, A, E, DP, TP, PB (catchers only) and FA. For pitchers: IP, # batters faced, # batters officially at bat, H, R, ER, HR, SH, SF, BB, IBB, HBP, SO, WP, BK, W, L, GS, GF, Sv, ERA. Also G (games played), which would typically be the very first item in all of these records. I wouldn't necessarily argue that the order given in the rules book is gospel. Some of it comes down to convention. W, L, Sv, ERA could come ahead of most of the other stats for a pitcher. I would use MLB as a guideline along with the rules book. Baseball Bugs 19:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Notice I said guideline, not absolute. Also, in looking at some of the yearly pages, it's only a subset of the possible stats anyway. I don't see where the argument is coming from that they "look like" baseball-reference. Baseball Bugs 19:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

What I'm saying is follow the baseball order as given by MLB for official scoring rather then copying the order of these websites. It does not hurt to be different. —— Eagle101^{Need help?} 19:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

List farms on BB Position articles

Looking at the articles for each of the baseball positions (like Shortstop, First baseman, Right fielder, etc) you see several lists down at the bottom. I can see reason for including the hall of famers at a position but is it really necessary to have the very subjective and POV listing of "notable" current players. Does that really add any value to the article? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 20:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, no and it's certainly POV unless we come up with some objective criteria to define "notable" (e.g., specific award-winners, all-stars?). --Sanfranman59 01:04, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Cutting to HOF players seems reasonable to me, but I do wonder about the MLB-specific perspective of doing that. It may be cleaner to link to separate lists. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

List of Major League Baseball managers in 1992 and all years after

The above article and a similar article for each year up to 2007 exist and I don't see the notability of it. Can someone with a bot tag each article for deletion? DandyDan2007 21:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to speedy it if anyone doesn't object. This is a little too much, and a list of the managers is best suited for the season article Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 23:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Discussion with Baseball-Reference.com

Ok, you wanted this. Here is my conversation with Sean Forman, operator of Baseball-Reference.com

• Soxrock: Hi there. I am someone who edits Wikipedia. Are we allowed to use a portion

of your stats for our seasonal pages? I only ask because I read the Terms and Conditions. Any response will be appreciated

• Forman: To what extent will you be using the stats? Will this be an automated

culling of the stats on all pages, or just a citation of stats from a handful of pages?

• Soxrock: Check out the 1921 New York Yankees season

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921_New_York_Yankees_season). The plan is to use the prominent stats, you know, Games played, At-bats, HR, RBI... but not to use the in-depth stats (like OBP). In the external links, we have you cited for the in-depth stats. As for the usage, we'll have you cited on every page that we have stats from your site on (that's every single individual season page we create, which will be for all 30 teams). If you cannot grant it for us on all those pages (roughly 2500 pages with a portion your stats and citation), then we'll try to find a reduced way to use them, if you allow. Thanks for the response

• Forman: I have to say I have some problems with using this much of my stats on

your pages. Why do you want to take so much time entering that data when there are much better formatted sources for statistical data available? Why not focus on the narrative for the team rather than factual data that is available elsewhere? I'm assuming the gamelogs are also being transcribed from my site or retrosheet's.

Wikipedia takes a lot of traffic from my site and due to the use of the nofollow tag, I get only some benefit from the use of the data and the links to my site. Would it be possible to have my site white-listed and have the nofollow tags taken off of links to my site?

I'm not saying no out of hand, but I feel like Wikipedia does not compensate the content holders for the data they provide. The use of the nofollow really galls me.

Let me explain the nofollow tag. Search engines rank sites on the basis of the sites that link to them. Adding a nofollow tag (do a view source on a page with my site and you'll see a rel="nofollow" in the code for links to any external site) tells the search engine to ignore this link. I have thousands of links from wikipedia and there is some benefit to that, but my standing in the search engines is hampered because Wikipedia is a giant link juice sink. It benefits from everyone's link to it, but does not return the favor to sites it links. It is very selfish behaviour. I would appreciate if you would ask someone in charge that you are going to use data from my site on 1000's of pages and will be linking to it, but would like to remove the nofollow from those links. If this really is such a great project, that should be no problem. I'm not a spammer.

The other issue is that reference.com and answers.com and others can take a dump of wikipedia database strip out the external links and then make money off of my content.

That is all well and good, but what happens when I go out of business? You say you enjoy the site, but your work actively undermines its health. You can say "C'est la vie", but those are the facts.

I can't stop you from using the data and I appreciate the link, but I feel that these actions essentially only benefit Wikipedia, and damage me.

• Soxrock Oh, so your concern is that, by using a portion of your stats on our pages,

we will reduce the number of visitors on your site, which will lead to fewer ads, which in turn will lead to less money, makinf ir harder to keep your site on. I see your concern now.

I'll continue to find white-listing. I mean, I hope that you say yes, but, then again, I would hope that saying that wouldn't hurt your website and your life at the same time. Thanks for your response

• Forman: Yes, that is what I mean. For example, if Wikipedia were to move

ahead of me on searches for ballplayers, it is not outside the realm of possiblity that I would be forced to quit working on the site full-time as I've been doing for a year and go back to my day job. I have a hard time encouraging that to happen.

I know that the data is in the public domain and can't be copyrighted, but I just wish WP was a little better at compensating their sources.

• Soxrock: Yeah, I see now. I try to list all my sources whenever I make pages, but

I'm not trying to hurt people's lives or sites. And seeing how Wikipedia is always ahead of your site on searches (sometimes I don't even see you), I see why you wouldn't be happy about the nofollow tags. I feel sorry that they apply, because it affects what both of us do, because if there were no nofollow tags, you might be able to say yes and not be affected. I feel sorry for that. Eitherway, I'll look into white-listing, it might be fair compensation for you. Of course, there is a dispute over at Wikipedia about how the numbers are copyrighted or not. It appeared we might be able to use stats until I saw your terms of use, which is why I'm talking with you. Thanks for the reply

• Forman: Thank you. You are welcome to use stats in a manner such as hand

entering data, but I would be opposed to machine-aided copying of large numbers of pages.

• Soxrock: Wait, by hand entering, do you mean typing it in, or writing it out on a

paper or something? And, by machine-aided copying, do you mean using something like a robot to do so quicker? Thanks

• Forman: Yes, if you want to go and type in all of that data, that would be ok.

My concern is in you using a robot to grab the data and auto-enter it into wikipedia. You should also keep in mind that occasionally the data does change as corrections are found.

• Soxrock: Oh, why didn't you just say so? Of course it's hand entering, we have to format it and everything, we can't just copy and paste or it would look

too-similar and it would look crappy anyway, so it will be hand entering. It takes at least 20 minutes to add stats to a page, and we do not use robots for adding stats, it would create a huge mess. Thanks for your permission to use the stats and your site will be linked on every page. I'll tell other users. Thank you so much, and, again, they will be hand entered, not machine-aided copying. I don't even know how to use a robot on that site

• Forman: OK, that's fine.

In other words, it is OK to use the stats from baseball-reference. Soxrock 21:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess use them, no objections, but when someone wants to create a properly sourced prose article and remove the stats. Let them, we should be using them when there is no prose to back it up. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 21:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Wow, this makes me want to remove all stats from the site. Never mind the copyvio issues, we're actually hurting Mr. Forman's bottom line for no particular reason! We're just doing this for fun - now we're actually hurting someone's life and livelihood. This is one of the reasons I never make huge copies of stats when I put articles together. Then it just makes Wikipedia like other sites instead of an encyclopedia. Sheesh, now I feel awful... I've had discussions with folks at baseball-ref and Retrosheet and they're all very good people trying to do a good thing. The Retrosheet people aren't even doing it for profit! —Wknight94 (talk) 22:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I wonder how much he wants to compensate us in return for our having added ELs to Wikipedia articles that point people to his site, thus adding a lot of traffic to his site.--Epeefleche 23:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Probably not much since we copied all the stats nullifying any reason to even go to his site. This may start me on a crusade of removing the huge tables of stats anywhere I see them. —Wknight94 (talk) 23:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Not in player bios, certainly. There, we don't reflect 1% of the stats discoverable on the BR link.--Epeefleche 04:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, don't forget this:

We only include a portion of his stats. There is still much more at his site than we will include here. I talked to him and expressed concern for him, but, you really can't forget that he has much more valuable information at his site. It hopefully won't take a hit and it'll still be good on this site. But don't think I wasn't concerned for him. In fact, remember the " Oh, so your concern is that, by using a portion of your stats on our pages, we will reduce the number of visitors on your site, which will lead to fewer ads, which in turn will lead to less money, making it harder to keep your site on. I see your concern now.". So I did address this carefully. Either way, with it still being cited, and the fact that a lot of people check it daily, regardless of whether they see it here or not, I don't expect it to be affected. And, being an EL, a general reader may think that it will include additional info on the subject. Eitherway, thanks for your opinion Wknights. I want stat tables, but not at someone else's expense Soxrock 23:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for posting your discussion, Sox. What really hit home for me was when he said, "Why do you want to take so much time entering that data when there are much better formatted sources for statistical data available? Why not focus on the narrative for the team rather than factual data that is available elsewhere?" I say, amen to that, brother. I can't believe how much time people spend out here on talk pages arguing back and forth about what seem to me to be relatively minor and cosmetic things (colors in infoboxes, how many ELs are too many, which ELs are okay and which are superfluous, team nicknames to name just a few recent examples) while actual article content and quality of narrative (i.e what should be the bread and butter of an encyclopedia) go largely undiscussed. --Sanfranman59 01:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Sanfranman. I like the stats, but not if it is at the expense of someone else. I do agree that prose is not discussed most of the time, tidbits are. You know, to hell with colors and stats. We need to focus on content! So I will currently abandon all stat efforts, but I will not remove stats that are already here. I want to know if Forman suffers from what is already up. Soxrock 01:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Stats are pretty clearly mentioned as #4 of the policy Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Rather than just listing every single pitcher's stats in an article, write which pitcher had the best record and which was disappointing and which had the best ERA in the league, etc., etc. I'm considering going to WP:RFC to ask the community's opinion about removing easily-found-elsewhere statistical tables from all sports-related articles. They're counter to what we're supposed to be doing here IMHO. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I liked the stats, but not at someone else's expense. So go ahead and remove them, I guess. Articles can be built without stats Soxrock 01:59, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that there's not a place for stat tables here. To my mind, baseball is very much a statistical game and I don't think it makes sense to exclude them completely from articles. Tables convey and summarize statistical information much more succinctly and more clearly than prose. I just don't think it's necessary to include the season-by-season and player-by-player details that are the forte of sites like baseball-reference. Nor do I think it's a good idea to try and keep stats up to date with the current season here. In player articles, I've been in the habit of including a table with minor league and major league career totals of the major statistical categories complete through the end of 2006. At the end of 2007, they can be updated. --Sanfranman59 03:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

"Why do you want to take so much time entering that data when there are much better formatted sources for statistical data available? Why not focus on the narrative for the team rather than factual data that is available elsewhere?" - Just thought I'd chime in and say I completely echo Sanfranman59's sentiment on Forman's comment. Lets stick to what Wikipedia is good at: prose, collaboration, and research. Leave the automatable tasks to the already awesome websites out there. Prosey dissection of stats with sourced commentary is far better than just reproducing what already exists. Wickethewok 05:49, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I am also taking to Mr. Forman now; while the information is public domain according to him, he feels that we are undercutting him and others by posting the tables. Plus, as Mr Forman said, his stuff changes a lot and if yall are not here, the information won't be correct here. Don't worry about the "nofollow" stuff, that is a technical issue that cannot be sorted out by us. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 06:19, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

This is better suited for WP:VPT but couldn't a nofollow whitelist be created as Mr. Forman hinted? Nofollow has obvious benefits for us but there are many equally obvious exceptions - major news sources, stats sources, etc., etc. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:26, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to check if I could expand one of those MLB season articles in which we could place every team in detail, and redirect the seasons article to there. That's better than individual seasons and keeps baseball-reference in buisness. We need to be a encyclopedia. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 23:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Stats

Instead of a whole table of all stats, would something like 2007 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim season's stats be better, where we just show the team leaders (or possibly a top-3) in select categories? That way, we aren't showing all the stats and the season articles wouldn't be a substitute for whole websites like Baseball-reference, yet we still show the important starts. Ksy92003(talk) 03:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that's far better, yes. And it gives the most important information, not the indiscriminate information like who finished sixth in triples for that team for that year. No one cares about the latter so why would we present it? That's why WP:NOT#INFO is in place. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I implemented this feature to 1961 Los Angeles Angels season, 1962 Los Angeles Angels season, 1963 Los Angeles Angels season, 1964 Los Angeles Angels season, and 1965 California Angels season, so feel free to check it out and give feedback. Thanks :) Ksy92003(talk) 16:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I like it. Maybe it's because I have a big monitor but it looks like both tables would fit if you put them in a two-column table. —Wknight94 (talk) 16:26, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I wanted to do that, but I didn't know how. When I first started last November, I saw that around a couple times, but I never was interested in how to actually do it. Boy, did that bite me in the ass. If you know how to make a two-column table, then you can tell me or implement it yourself into those articles. I would greatly appreciate it. Ksy92003(talk) 16:41, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Making a two column table is done like this, I believe. You have your basic column (like on the listed pages you have) but then you go to a fourth column and type in the same thing as the first, then type in the category. Something like this:

Stat	Player	Total	Stat	Player	Total

That way, you have two columns. But that's the way I think it's done. I'm not sure. However, the section headings will need to be adjusted to something like simply "statistics" Soxrock 17:00, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking of the templates documented in Template:Col-begin. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:03, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I see what your saying now. I didn't even know of that place. Good idea Soxrock 17:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I tried them in 1965 California Angels season. Of course the infobox at the top screws up spacing in other ways (so feel free to undo) but something along those lines. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to try out my style. Feel free to undo if any of you don't like it. But, sorry Wknight, but your thing is looking pretty bad due to the infobox. Sorry :( Soxrock 17:11, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Once content is added, it will fill in the blank space though. Keep that in mind. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. And, FYI, here is my version for the double-column stats at 1965 California Angels season Soxrock 17:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It's good. I added another heading at the top. We may just need an empty spacer column between the hitting and pitching. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I added another heading at the top for the empty spacer column. But now, is there any way we can somehow shade out the empty column? Right now, it looks kinda weird a bit. Also, I expanded the table so it isn't all scrunched up. Ksy92003(talk) 17:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

How about that? We're almost back to where I started a few messages ago with the {{col-begin}}. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

How, with the seperate columns? I think that, if it is a problem, we just remove the spacing and put them side-by-side Soxrock 17:49, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Do autographed baseball cards qualify as fair use?

I've noticed on many articles that images of regular baseball cards for a player's article are promptly deleted, but baseball cards that have autographs are usually left up on the player's article. Do these cards qualify as fair use, or are people intentionally mislabeling the images as fair use to avoid instant deletion?

If the cards aren't allowed, then what images are allowed as fair use? There are a lot of player articles, especially retired players, completely devoid of images, Any help would be much appreciated. SashaNein 14:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in fair use and rarely tread there. I would guess no to autographed baseball cards as fair use. The only time one might be suitable would be in an article about autographed baseball cards - or maybe about baseball cards in general - but even then you could certainly find a free alternative (e.g. an expired copyright). The only baseball player pictures I've uploaded were ones I took (with one early exception which was eventually deleted). —Wknight94 (talk) 15:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

OK. I won't even bother with baseball player images, then. Thanks.SashaNein 15:36, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Finding an expired card for a player to autograph might be tough, since he would've had to have been born in maybe 1905 at the latest for US copyright to expire on a card made during his playing career. There are a few baseball players that old still kicking around, but not many. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 04:10, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

That's the tact I've taken. If I didn't take the picture (or didn't find it in an obviously free place), then I don't upload it. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:39, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

SashaNein, I think it may depend on what they are using the card for. Wikipedia Fair Use Policy lists several types of bad fair use claims; using a card to show what a player looked like is one of them. However, if the card is significant or shows something rather unusual, then I guess it would be allright to add the image. See Image:Ripkenffcard.jpg, I believe the user who claimed the card under fair use only uses the image because it infamously contains an expletive, and wrote a section in Billy Ripken's article that is specifically devoted to the card.

Given my annoying history with fair use images, it's probably only a good idea to claim important, unrepeatable, and historic images under a fair use assertion. For example, adding a mundane and non-free image of Moisés Alou would be deemed replaceable as long as he is still alive and playing. However, adding an image of Alou attempting to catch the infamous Bartman Ball may actually be allowed on Wikipeida. Some editors have also suggested that we should only claim historically significant and iconic images under fair use policies, such as the Raising of the flags at Iwo Jima or the Kent State Shootings - though that may limit the audiences understanding of a certain topic. --ShadowJester07 ► Talk 15:45, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Baseball cards aren't fair use as they are strongly copyrighted by topps or the other brands. Cards that are pre-1923 are in Public Domain, and I heard that Goudey cards from the 1930s are also in public domain as the copyright wasn't renewed. As for the others, they are only fair use if the article talks about the card in detail. Not the player. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 16:10, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Sporting milestone articles

Should articles about milestones, such as 40-40 club and the like, be merged into one article, perhaps baseball career milestones, with redirects? If nothing else, this will cut down on AfD requests like the current 40-40-40 club action. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:59, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Closer article moved.

Does anyone know why someone Copy/Paste moved the Closer article from Closer (baseball) to Closing pitcher? And then another person moved Talk:Closer (baseball) to Talk:Closing Pitcher instead of Talk:Closing pitcher, so the whole thing is a bit of a mess. I would have tried to get it all set right but I don't know what the consensus on the article title is. --Rabbethan 03:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the cut and paste move. No comment on why the move was done. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:03, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Question about listing MLB teams' HOF-inducted players

Currently, the list of HOF-inducted players within team articles includes mention of almost any HOF-inducted players who happened to have once played for that team, regardless of number of seasons played. For instance, Hank Greenberg is listed as a HOF Pittsburgh Pirate despite having played only one season for the Pirates (his last season, in 1947). He was actually inducted as a Detroit Tiger, and is listed (correctly) in the Tigers' article as a Tigers' HOFer.

Shouldn't a respective team's listed HOF players include mention of only those players who were inducted specifically for that particular team?

-- J.R. Hercules 03:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

No - because in many cases, they were just as representative for other teams. Sparky Anderson was inducted as a Red but managed twice as many years in Detroit. Gary Carter was inducted as an Expo but preferred to be remembered as a Met. Pascack 20:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

That is your opinion that he is best known for his time with the Mets, and you only think that because you are a Mets fan.--Yankees10 21:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

New Project Chat

Hello everyone, #wikipedia-baseball has now launched on IRC. If you would like to join the conversation, please feel free to visit the channel. -- JA10 Talk • Contribs 03:29, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, we should have many people in the channel by now, are you guys stuck, or should I cancel the chat room, if nobody is interested? -- JA10 Talk • Contribs 21:33, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

AfD proposal for Dan Williams (Indians bullpen catcher)

FYI, an AfD has been posted for one of the Indians' bullpen catchers, Dan Williams. I thought it might be of interest to people here. Here's the link in case you'd like to comment. --Sanfranman59 16:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Ugh, I think I'm staying out of that one. I am a bit tired of all the Kinston Indians stuff though. This is like the 10th article I've seen involving someone related to Kinston, but not a major league player, that has been dragged to AFD - and that's just including ones I've particularly seen. It's starting to feel like a spam attack. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:20, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

For me, it's more about whether or not Major League coaches are sufficiently notable to warrant their own WP article. I don't find the Kinston Indians argument particularly compelling in and of itself. --Sanfranman59 17:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Baseball

Portal:Baseball has lots of redlinked features. It is fallen into disrepair. If anyone interested in baseball wants to work with it, it really needs work. It is setup to run everything weekly right now ... that could be changed to monthly if there isn't enough interest to add content every week. --B 22:51, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, from looking at the history, it has NEVER been kept up to date. I am going to change it to work monthly and backfill July. If someone wants to take it over and do August, that would probably be a good thing. --B 22:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Barry Bonds home run watch AfD

You may be interested in the following discussion: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barry Bonds home run watch.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 13:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Head's up

Just so you know, I've enlarged the standings templates to fit all the teams in one line to conform to more computers. I operate off two computers that are completely different in how they have standings load up, and so, for mine and all others who had wide computers, I have modified it to fit better. No harm done in my mind. Soxrock 00:05, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Bob Meusel

I expanded this article significantly with as much useful info that I could find. Maybe we could extend it to a WP:FA. If anyone want to copyedit or add useful info (especially anything on his after-playing days), we should. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I've given it a twice-over and fixed most of the typos. I don't think that there will be any problems with getting it to GA status. Great work on it! Caknuck 04:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Negro league baseball players

Long time baseball fan, first time poster here. I'm inclined to think that players from the Negro League are notable, since a good argument could be made that they reached the highest level available before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. There doesn't seem to be any guideline on that according to this project, though. So, what's the conventional wisdom around here on the topic? Thanks! :-) Sidatio 02:40, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• Given that a number of Negro Leaguers are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, their contribution certainly seems notable. There are a few experts on the subject here and there, but I don't know if they are part of the project or not. Baseball Bugs 02:44, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I apologize - I should have been more clear when asking. Are all Negro League players notable? From what I can tell in the guidelines here, any player who made the MLB is notable. (I'm probably reading that wrong, though.) I ask because of an AfD shown here. Add a little curiousity, and here I am bothering you good folk! :-) Sidatio 02:58, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
• The argument isn't whether they have achieved the highest level for their status, so have little leaguers and members of special olympics teams, the question is whether they are notable by WP:BIO standards. The relevant guideline for athletes is "Competitors who have played in a fully professional league, or a competition of equivalent standing in a non-league sport such as swimming or tennis". Negro Leaguers and Minor League players should be included under these standards. Why has this project decided to ignore the opinion of this much larger and diverse group of Wikipedians? They would allow any Venezuelan, Australian, or Thai player who ever played in their country's pro league, but bar AAA players who have a much better chance of making the majors and are most likely better players than 90% of the players in those national leagues. Where is the logic in that? One can only conclude that the members of this project are prejudiced against American minor leaguers. Minor leaguers are notable to the dozens of kids who line up for their autographs after each game, they're notable to collectors who spend hundreds of dollars on their baseball cards, they're notable to the dozens of newspapers who cover their games, they're notable to many members of SABR who specialize on minor league topics, they're notable to the many authors over many decades who have written books on them, they're notable to the thousands of people who buy those books, they're notable to the millions of people who spend their money to watch them play (many more people attend minor league games than major league games each year), they're notable to the thousands of sponsors they have at the ballpark and over the radio, and they are notable to the members of WP:BIO. They only seem to be non-notable to the members of this project. From what I've read, the competition in the Pacific Coast League rivaled the major league talent for many years. Many PCL players chose to stay out west for better pay and to stay closer to home, and yet they are barred by our guidelines. I would hazard to guess that the talent in my beloved Carolina League is far superior to the talent in the newly formed Israel Baseball League, but guess which players are allowed on Wikipedia? Kinston eagle 03:23, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
  • You guessed it: Daniel Maddy-Weitzman. Kinston eagle 04:02, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I generally sympathize with your arguments, Kingston. IMHO, the notability guidelines for this project need some work. I recently put the baseball-related AfD page on my watchlist and the deletionists are constantly citing the "minor league players are not considered notable" part of the guidelines (conveniently ignoring that it actually says "Most minor league players are not considered notable, but some players are as determined by WP:BIO." (emphasis added)). I don't see why minor league players should not pretty much automatically be notable enough for a WP page, assuming that there are sufficient sources. Does anyone know the history of why the bar was set higher by this project than that established by WP:BIO?

BTW, just for the record, current minor league attendance is nowhere near that of MLB. According to the attendance figures I found for 2006, minor league attendance was just short of 50 million (this includes both affiliated and independent leagues).[8] MLB attendance was just short of 76 million.[9] --Sanfranman59 20:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

And why does minor league attendence matter? Does how many people go to the games determine the notability of the subject now? Spanneraol 22:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

• I already mentioned this on the page for the relevant AFD, but I would consider pre-integration Negro League players to be inherently notable, and post-integration players (from the dying days of segregated ball in the '50s and such) to be potentially notable if they achieved some particularly distinguished accomplishment within the league in question (similar to current minor league players, who can set records and play in All-Star games and such). -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 03:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
• I also agree with some of Kinston Eagle's comments about minor leagues, insofar as the definition of a "minor" league has changed drastically with time, and that there wasn't much to separate a lot of so-called minor leagues from the major ones before the 1930s. You can see a lot of discussion of this nature in the debate over whether the Union Association should qualify as a major league, for example. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 03:41, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I would think part of the problem of notability for minor leaguers would be sheer numbers - as such we can't really cover them all. I would guess there are far more players in the North American minor leaugues than all the players in all theleagues in all other countries combined, bearing in mind that many US minor leaguers are from other countries. Any player playing at the nationl level is his own country will probably be more notable than any minor leaguer here. I agree with the notion of the pre-segregation players being inherently notable. - BillCJ 04:04, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
    • I do have one concern/question? Were there the equivilents of minor leagues among the Negro leagues, or were all the leques considered mostly equal to each other? If there were such "minor" leagues, then we might want to consider withholding inherent notability from those who only played in such leagues - BillCJ 04:06, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
      • Very good question. According to the Wikipedia article: "The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues"." and yet the people on here have been advocating for the inclusion of ALL Negro Leaguers, or at least the ones who played prior to integration. Kinston, North Carolina had its own "Negro League" team which was loose at best. They were professional, but players jumped around from team to team with great regularity and played many barnstorming games in between the "official" ones to make a few extra bucks. Were these players for a small town Negro League team notable? Kinston eagle 04:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
• I am of the opinion that any Negro League player reached the highest level of play that he was capable of due to discrimination and segregation. Thus, they are notable, just as anyone who has reached Major League Baseball is.Ravenmasterq 05:48, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
• Well, it seems like you can just apply the general reliable sources guideline. Is there enough written about the person to justify an article about them (eg. not just stats)? Frankly, I've never understood the need for complicated guidelines when the first one is generally all you need: The person has been the subject of published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. If they meet any of the other criteria in any of the notability lists, this one has certainly been met. And, in short, if there are notability criteria that a person can fulfill and still not meet this one, those criteria should be removed. Also, I hardly think the level of play matters at all. So, in short, if there is enough info on them, go for it. Wickethewok 06:06, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

This does raise an interesting question: Are all major league players notable? Would Moonlight Graham have been notable if not for Shoeless Joe and Field of Dreams? If baseball had been integrated from day one, and if there will still only 16 teams, and rosters were still set at 25, the arithmetic tells you that a lot of both whites and blacks would never have played in the majors. Established players are notable. But what about the fringe players? Baseball Bugs 10:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

That's a fairly fuzzy line, I'd think. What would be viewed as established? Are we talking at least half a season in the bigs? Now, with your "one-and-dones", that's easier. Unless they did or were directly involved in something notable during their one game (like, say, Eddie Gaedel) or did something else notable in their lives probably don't have what it takes to have their own article, I would think. Sidatio 13:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I think a player with one major league game is still a major league player. For a guy to reach that point, he's almost certainly accomplished many other notable things at different levels of minor league and amateur competition (since he wouldn't have been promoted otherwise). Verifiability shouldn't be a real issue for any of them, either; if there's one thing baseball's been good at, it's record-keeping. Basically, I see it as a WP:NOT#PAPER situation, and AFDs on short-career athletes have tended to back that up in the past (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lecomte, etc.) -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 13:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

That's certainly true now. I wonder if it's as true of someone from the 1870s. Maybe it is, as it's still an achievement. As the manager said in A League of Their Own, "Of course [baseball] is hard! If it were easy, everyone would do it!" The larger question seems to be whether it's appropriate or even possible to potentially have an article about every one of the thousands of major leaguers that have ever appeared, let alone black leagues and minor leagues. In many cases, other than stats and minimal biographical data (sometimes not even that), what do we have to pad, er, fill an article with, without engaging in a lot of "original" research? Baseball Bugs 14:29, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the selection pressures being different in the early days of the game (especially since baseball wasn't a "respectable" occupation). That said, for players where the data is sketchy or incomplete, I still think we serve the public interest by writing up what's known and taking note of the gaps. The scope of the whole thing may seem daunting, but given that Wikipedia as a whole is already on the hook for articles on several million different insect species (among other things), a couple thousand baseball players won't make an appreciable difference on the workload, IMO. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 16:36, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

An article on every known insect species? For real? Suddenly 20,000+ ballplayers seems like a walk in the (ball)park by comparison. Baseball Bugs 17:06, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, no kidding. And then they have to find or generate rights-free photos for all of 'em... -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 19:16, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I also think that if MLB had been integrated from the get-go, there would still have been approximately the same number of MLB players. There just would have been more "major" leagues. Society's level of demand for baseball-type entertainment is the constant, so if there hadn't been negro leagues, some other league would've filled that void. Maybe the PL or the AA or the UA would've survived, or the PCL would've established itself as a co-major, or something along those lines. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 13:53, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

You're on to something there. The Pacific Coast League, to its fans, was effectively a "major league", because the big leagues were so far away geographically. The majors encouraged this thought by cooking up the "open" classification. However, reality came home when the eastern teams invaded these "almost-major-league" cities without a whimper... because they were all controlled by organized baseball. We can "what if" to death, of course. What if Cap Anson had chosen to play against Toledo instead of refusing? Maybe baseball would have been fully integrated by the turn of the century. What if the American League had chosen to integrate? With more players around, maybe baseball would have expanded sooner than 1961 (which it did even then only due to the threat of a third major league). There are some who considere the black leagues to be "major" leagues, and they certainly have a better claim on that than did the "Onion" Association, for example. But it's not up to us to decide whether the black leagues were "major" leagues, it's up to us to decide the rules for notability. That takes it back to the question of why the majors are notable and why the Negro leagues are or are not "equally" notable. Just because they didn't keep all their stats together, does that detract from their notability? The fact that they have players in the Hall of Fame who never set foot on a big-league diamond says that the Hall considers the black leagues to be at least nearly major league level. In contrast, I don't think there are any career minor leaguers in the Hall at all. Baseball Bugs 14:15, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

And I'd be willing to bet if a career minor leaguer did make it into the HOF, there'd be plenty of reliable secondary sources on him. :) --Fabrictramp 20:47, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, election to the Hall of Fame is the very definition of "notability". But the Hall of Fame consists of major league players, Negro league players, managers, umpires, and "founding fathers"... none of which, if you'll notice, is Abner Doubleday. And no career minor-leaguers in sight. Baseball Bugs 20:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm 100% with Wick on this. Why should the criteria for baseball biographies be more restrictive than those for other biographies? The fly I see in the ointment is that so many editors don't take the trouble to include sources for their writing. If we relax the criteria, we may end up with more unsourced articles about relatively unknown players. But I much prefer inadequate sourcing as an AfD criterion over "he hasn't played in a major league game". --Sanfranman59 23:17, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Minor League Ballplayers

• Separating this discussion from the equally valid Negro Leagues arguments. I would like to push to change the WP:BASEBALL notability standards. The current rules that "Most minor leaguers are not notable" is confusing (define what is meant by "most"?) does contradict the WP:BIO rules that state that you are notable if you played in a "fully professional league." I've heard the argument that "we can't possibly cover all the minor league players"... Why? Too much work for you? Will it crash the servers? If someone with loads of time on their hands wants to research them all and write up articles, then what is the harm in that? Or at the very least, we should include Minor League players who are on the 40 man rosters or who have been selected to appear in Minor League All-Star games, which in itself should make them notable.. the guy is an All-Star! Spanneraol 22:26, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Good idea to separate out this discussion, Span. I'm with you, except I don't know why we should restrict it at all beyond what WP:BIO says. As long as the article is properly sourced, I see no reason to exclude anyone. If they've achieved a level of notability that there's sufficient secondary source information to write an encyclopedic article, why should they be excluded? As you say, it's not like we're being told that WP's servers are getting too full. I really don't get the motivation of the deletionists out here.

Actually, proper sourcing seems to be a pretty big hurdle for many of the baseball bios since a ridiculous number of them are almost completely unsourced. This could become a pretty big problem given that I seem to remember reading somewhere recently that there's a move to start deleting articles tagged as unsourced if no one adds sources after some amount of time. --Sanfranman59 22:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm certainly in favor of including minor league players. After-all, they do meet the WP:BIO standards. I don't feel the need to repeat all my arguments from the Negro League discussion above, but suffice it to say, it really seems unfair that not one current Kinston Indian is deemed worthy enough for the mighty Wikipedia Baseball overlords while every member of the London Mets National League team and every member of the Amsterdam Pirates is entitled to their own page due to the fact that they play for the highest league in their country. It really galls me that minor league teams are not even allowed to be listed in players' infoboxes under former teams (now just "teams"). Since major league baseball players' bios usually skim over or ignore completely minor league careers, this would seem to actually be useful information for an infobox. Kinston eagle 01:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I didn't see no notabilty with the London Mets article, so I deleted it. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 01:55, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

You know, you're probably right: the Baseball Project does not grant inherent notability soley to keep the players of the Kinston Indians out, despite the fact that if they meet other notability requierments, they can be included. Uh, please! Notable implies "one of a select few". If a player for a London or Amsterdam team is inherently notable, it's because he is one of very few people in his country who play at that level. A US minor league player is one of many such players - it's not just about the sheer numbers, but the fact that the numbers themselves limit notability. I do agree that we might ought to consider players from the PCL's AAAA era as being inherently notable, and perhaps look at allowing AAA or AA players, but still many of those players may not be truly notable either. There have been so many minor league teams and leagues in the last 150 years, there is no way their players are all notable. Do we want to include all the players of the D-Leagues of the 40s and 50s? I really don't think so. Unless, of course, on of those D-Leagues was in Kinston. - BillCJ 01:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to have to agree with BillCJ here. Kinston, I think you're a bit guilty of WP:BIAS, but that's all right, we all are at some point or another. There are simply too many minor league players to list all of them, to find everyone who has ever played in the minors, to notate every minor league team every player played for and to make it encyclopedic. Remember, wikipedia isn't an indiscriminate collection of information. (WP:NOT#INFO}. Those players in highest international leagues are far more notable than most players on AAA, AA, A, and Rookie league teams, simply because they've reached the highest level. Whenever someone from the Kinston Indians makes the bigs, put him in wikipedia, he deserves it.Ravenmasterq 04:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Bill and Raven ... why do you think the bar should be set higher for baseball bios than it is for bios in general? If there are sufficient reliable, authoritative and independent secondary sources available about a player, why shouldn't he have a WP article, regardless of what level he happens to be playing at today? The argument that "there are simply too many minor league players" seems arbitrary to me. Too many for what? Is WP running out of disk space? Bill ... is the "one of a select few" definition of notable in a WP guideline somewhere? I don't recall seeing it. But even by that definition, any minor league player would still have to be considered one of a select few given that there are probably no more than about 7,000 currently on minor league rosters ... and this includes affiliated as well as independent leagues. --Sanfranman59 07:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• This may have already been addressed, but... what about minor league record-setters? I mean, what if we get a guy who, say, sets the single-season AAA home run record, but fails to make the bigs for whatever reason (retires, drugs, injury, pulls a Ricky Williams and bolts for the Outback)? Same for the other leagues. On one hand, I see the potential for slippery slope because someone could come along and add their buddy, who just crushed a bunch in the local beerball league. On the other hand, even A ballers are paid, professional athletes. If they set a record amongst their peers, shouldn't that be notable? Sidatio 05:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

It has been partially addressed, but not directly. This is where the other criteria from WP:BIO would come in. With proper sourcing to prove the player is notable for the record, then he would notable. It is possible a beer-league player might also be notable, but probably for some other reason, not for what he did in the beer league. I'm sure someone else will have some more specifics on this issue. - BillCJ 06:07, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

So Bill, does this mean you agree that as long as a minor league player article is properly sourced, it passes notability muster with you? --Sanfranman59 07:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Joe Bauman holds the all-time minor league record with 72 homers, in 1954, in the low minors. Joe Hauser might still hold the high-minors record at 69. Bauman never made the majors; Hauser did. The writeup about Bauman is a lot more extensive. The Hauser article doesn't even mention it. In any case, Bauman's record was the professional record until Barry Bonds hit his 73 in 2001. Baseball Bugs 11:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Guys, the "beer league" comparion does not fly.. they dont pay those guys, they arent professionals, and only their buddies watch the games.. AAA teams draw thousands of spectators, they are far more notable. Making a Minor League All-Star game is certainly an accomplish that is notable. We have pages on here for college basketball and football players who have never played professional ball.. We have players from the NBA Development Leagues that have their own pages also.. Minor League Ballplayers have people that are interested in them, hence this debate. Again, the only argument I hear against including them is that their are too many and its too hard to add them all... or that you dont think they are notable.. Come on.. it's not like your or I could go down and sign up for the local AA team... players have to be very good to even make a minor league team... they are notable.. ESPECIALY the ones that make the all-star teams.. It makes no sense to arbitrarily exclude them simply because of "no at bats in major league ball".. Spanneraol 17:41, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

What it comes down to is a difference of opinion on what was meant by a "fully professional league". I've never felt that was clear, and much preferred the old wording of "the highest professional level", which also wasn't as clear as it could be. Personally, I'm fine with including minor league players who have quality published secondary sources. It seems to me that a number of AAA and even AA players would meet that standard, regardless of whether MiLB is considered a fully professional league. (Certainly in Sacramento there is plenty of press coverage on the AAA RiverCats players, and probably 90% of the team would have quality published secondary sources that could easily be found in an afternoon in the newspaper archives.) If a Wikipedia article on a MiLB player or prospect has good sources, I'll vote to keep it every time. If it doesn't, then I lean towards axing it, probably because I'm so uncomfortable with the "fully professional league" wording. (And frankly, I'd rather not see articles on MLB coaches and personnel that don't have quality secondary sources, but I know I'm in the minority on that one.) --Fabrictramp 19:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• To address the question above: does this mean you agree that as long as a minor league player article is properly sourced, it passes notability muster with you? Only if the player meets the other notability requirements. Wtihout sources, there is nothing to attest to the notability. As given in the example above, Joe Bauman meets those other requirements. It doesn't mean they have to have broken or held a record, but there needs to be something that sets them above the rest, ie. makes them "notable". I agree the "beer league" analogy was a stretch, but it was just for arguments sake, and that is how I treated it. On the whole, I think Fabric sums up the issue quite well. If we could put some form of his statements into the guidelines, I thnk it would be the clarification of the issue we need there. - BillCJ 19:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• Remeber, saying a player is not "inherently" notable doesn't mean he's not notable. It just means he doesn't have "automatic notability" becasuase he plays in the minor league. It would NOT be fair if the guidelines stanted that minor leaguers could not be notable, but that's not what is says. I imagine there are plenty of major league players who would NOT meet any other notability reqeirements except for the fact that they played in the major leagues. There is no restriction on how long they played there (right?), so this could even be a A-baller called up in September who only got one at-bat, and nver played in the majors again. - BillCJ 20:08, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

If we decide to open up a whole new can of worms by allowing minor league players into wikipedia, the repercussions will be felt across the other minor league sports pages as well. Say we allow minor league baseball players in wikipedia. Then, you have to go put every NBA D-League guy in. Then every CHL, AHL and all the other plethora of hockey players in. Every player in a minor football and cricket league goes in too. Just because wikipedia has the server space doesn't mean we have to fill it up, and the argument that we should fill it up seems illogical. Remember the first pillar of wikipedia: Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. It isn't appropriate to have an article about every man and woman who has ever played any sport at a near profession level. While the Kinston Indians may have a better level of talent than the Netanya Tigers, they aren't as well known in their respective countries. Remember also, that wikipedia isn't American. It's the English wikipedia. Lots of countries around the world speak the language, and thus, we can't be USA-centric. I may be making an assumption about everyone's nationality, but I do know that we Americans are quite passionate about our sports teams. And that passion my confict with wikipedia policy on occasion. WP:ILIKEIT is never a proper reason for an article. It isn't encyclopedic. It isn't wikipedia.Ravenmasterq 21:49, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• I think that at a minimum, any minor league player who has managed some notable achievement (an All-Star game, a league/career record, a perfect game, etc.) is deserving of his own article, as long as the sourcing is there. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 22:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
• Raven, most NBA D-league players are already in wiki, as are many college basketball players and college football players, who havent played a single professional game.. The Wiki Project Basketball has no notability requirements on their page.. why are baseball players held to a higher standard? If you are worried about a bunch of criket players getting into here... that should be an issue for wikiproject cricket (if there is such a thing).. The Wiki notability requirements are just that the league be professional.. and yes, minor league ball is definitely fully professional. Not every player would go in right away either, someone would have to take the time to research and write articles on these players. You could argue that someone in the Rookie leagues isnt notable.. but maybe they played college ball and hit a homerun to win the College World Series.. does that make them notable? I would say yes.. Again, I think we can say that people in the minors are notable if they have 1) Played in an all-star game, 2) set a record, 3) are on a major league teams 40 man roster, 4)Were a top draft pick... or 5) Had some other notable achievement.. i.e. pitched a perfect game.. That doesnt let every rookie ball guy in but at least lets in the top players who are notable even if they have "never had a major league at bat." Spanneraol 23:41, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Spanneraol, did you do any research on D-league teams before you said that? I did. Only 3 teams (the Colorado 14ers, the Albuquerque Thunderbirds, and the Los Angeles D-Fenders) have roster lists, and of those, only 12 of the total 28 players are listed. Some of them aren't even directed to the right page, and I will fix and delete some of those pages as I find the time. I wonder why your definition of 'most' is less than half of one fifth. Exhibiting ignorance towards WP:CRICKET won't help your cause either. In fact, Baseball could learn a few things from them. They have [10] featured articles to our [11]. Also, they have much clearer notability guidelines to our vagueness:

"Any player who plays in the top professional league in their country is notable. This includes Major League Baseball in North America and Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, among others. Most minor league players are not considered notable, but some players are as determined by WP:BIO. Baseball executives, coaches, and managers are also notable."

Go to the WP:CRICKET page, read their notability guidlines, and let us strive to become better overall. Let us clear up our guidelines and in turn, better wiki project baseball.Ravenmasterq 20:00, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Spanneraol, do you really think there are players who meet 1, 2, 4 or 5 who don't have quality secondary sources about them? (I'm leaving out #3 in an effort to agree to disagree with you on that one.)--Fabrictramp 00:04, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Span asks a question that I don't think anyone on the "exclude minor leaguers" side of this discussion has answered: Why should baseball biographies be held to a higher standard than other biographies? I'm not saying that every minor league player is automatically notable, but any that have adequate secondary sources certainly should be. OTOH, I would be reluctant to support specifying discrete criteria as suggested in Span's comment. Why can't we just abide by the criteria in WP:BIO and WP:NOT? --Sanfranman59 02:11, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone really advocated excluding any minor league player that meets the criteria in WP:BIO? I have a suspicion that what started this discussion is a couple of AfD discussions for minor league players. The articles I saw did not have sources listed which demonstrated notability, and the first several pages of ghits had nothing more that passing mentions of the players. Just about any bio like that would get votes to delete in an AfD discussion -- hardly holding the MiLB players to a higher standard.--Fabrictramp 16:15, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm copying my comment from the Negro League player discussion above: I recently put the baseball-related AfD page on my watchlist and the deletionists are constantly citing the "minor league players are not considered notable" part of the guidelines (conveniently ignoring that it actually says "Most minor league players are not considered notable, but some players are as determined by WP:BIO." (emphasis added)). If the real reason is that the articles are not properly sourced, then that should be the argument supporting the AfD. But as it stands, people are using this project's notability guideline as a blunt instrument to exclude any player who has never made an appearance a major league game. I think this language should be removed from the project page. --Sanfranman59 18:25, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like it's more of a case of an unfortunate shorthand in the AfD, which I myself have been guilty of, I'm sure. Perhaps the real issue is unclear language? --Fabrictramp 19:45, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't really want to read the entire discussion... it's too long. But here are my two cents: I think that a player is notable either once he plays a minimum of one (1) official game with an official Major League Baseball club or once he wins a National Award for Baseball-related activity (ie. Triple-A MVP, Finals MVP Award). The "one official game" standard can be determined by going to Baseball-reference, and by searching the player's name, you can see if the player played a game for an MLB club, as Baseball-reference's database doesn't include statistics from when players played in the minor leagues and doesn't have any information on any player who never played a minimum of one official MLB game. Ksy92003(talk) 18:52, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Including all major leaguers will automatically bring in many notable minor-leaguers... Joe Hauser, for example. And some minor leaguers who never make it to the majors do something very notable... Joe Bauman, for example. But what do you do with some guy who had 1 at bat in 1 game with Pumpkin Center, Iowa, of the little-known Four-Eye League in 1913, and spent the rest of his professional career working as a gas-station attendant? Baseball Bugs 19:14, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

In a case like that, he'd probably be deleted for failing WP:V. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 20:20, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Ditto, I don't agree that all Major League Players who played one game is notable, especially if their only sources are Baseball-reference, who knows if he was just a replacement player for one game and who knows what the hell happened to him after, if that's the only source, thus WP:V is a factor for those articles. None of the 1987 NFL Strike Replacement are notable in their own right, we need tougher policy on players, not a less tough one. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 02:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, I'd say the NFL Strike replacement players are notable as are all the players that have played in the majors... My whole point was that we should let more successful minor leaguers in and there seemed to be at least somewhat of an agreement that minor league all-stars are notable. Really, what makes someone notable? Other people having an interest in them and wanting to know more about them makes them notable. Spanneraol 14:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Request for comment: Baseball jersey numbers, other baseball numbers

From Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics and Wikipedia:WikiProject Numbers, we request your input on the following guidelines for sports facts included in articles about numbers (quoted below). For example, should the article about the number 42 include Jackie Robinson's jersey number? How about the jersey number of a famous hockey player for whom the number was never retired? How about the #42 draft pick for the Boston Red Sox? I've also included the guidelines for NASCAR as an example of how the guidelines for a specific sport might look like. Knotslip12 20:05, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numbers

Transcribed from WP:NUM#Numbers_in_sports

Numbers in sports

Numbers that appear in the official rules of the game, such as the total number of players per team, number of game partitions (e.g., 9 innings in baseball) are worth mentioning in the number articles.

A record is worth mentioning if it is from a Major League player, or if it appears in the Guinness Book of World Records. Be sure to indicate the year the record was set in order to facilitate removal when a new record is set.

In sports where the number on a player's shirt is not determined by the position he plays, only numbers that have been retired by a Major League team are worth noting. But if a player's number is determined by the position he plays, this probably falls under the rules of the game consideration above.

NASCAR numbers

Car numbers of teams that have won the Daytona 500 or the NEXTEL Cup Series championship are worth noting in the articles on the corresponding numbers.

Chris Young FAC

You may want to come by and comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chris Young (pitcher).--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I also have a FAC on my own with Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bob Meusel. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 01:52, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

List of Barry Bonds home runs

First off, my apologies if this has been discussed in the past. 99% of my contributions are in the ice hockey project, so I am just here because I have one interest. I was wondering if you feel it would be worth my time and effort (which I am willing to offer) to create a List of Barry Bonds home runs. As the man is about to become the most profilic home run hitter of all-time, I think it would certainly be wiki-worthy to have an extensive list of all his home runs (date, opponent, pitcher, stadium). In fact, I think it would be a slam dunk featured list. I am willing to create the list (I've just started it in my sandbox; but then I thought I should come here and ask if it's been discussed before). What do you think? Skudrafan1 03:25, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

For my work-in-progress, to see what I'm sort of envisioning, check this out: User:Skudrafan1/List of Barry Bonds home runs Skudrafan1 03:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion it belongs in a baseball wiki, not here, per WP:NOT. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 04:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jaranda . Plus, it's one thing for us to provide general statitstics and league leaders (which are pretty clearly encyclopedic), but isn't this something that is directly provided by Baseball Reference and other baseball sites? Seems like if we do stuff like this we're just poaching the efforts of those sites. - Masonpatriot 04:52, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Baseball-reference does have a link so you can see all the home runs hit by not only Barry Bonds, but every single ML player. It's one thing to have an external link to that site ([12]), but in my opinion it's too excessive to copy all that information when it's much easier to just provide a link. Additionally, Baseball-reference spends a lot of time to provide this much in-depth info, and I don't think it's fair to replicate all their hard work.

But that aside, I agree with Jaranda that this would be WP:NOT; Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. A list of all of Bonds' 755 home runs (and more, if/when he hits them) is too indiscriminate, in my opinion. Ksy92003(talk) 06:02, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

You probably want to take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Barry Bonds home run watch. While this page only dealt with the runs directly leading up to 755, the subject of listing all Bond's home runs did come up there. I think the whole discussion will give you a good idea of the overall issues involved in this. - BillCJ 06:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

There is probably already such a list elsewhere (and for Aaron, Ruth, etc.) which could be linked to. Baseball Bugs 12:03, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, cool. I guess it's a good thing I decided to come and ask before I continued working on it. Thanks for the input. Skudrafan1 14:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:African American baseball players - up for deletion

A very important discussion is taking place regarding the possible deletion of Category:African American baseball players.

The discussion opened on August 3, and will probably close in the next day or two. If you wish to add your comments, don't delay. Cgingold 14:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Pitching repertoire

Is there an online site that list the pitches a pitcher uses.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Baseball America usually discusses pitchers' repertoires in their scouting reports. But I think these pages are often only available to subscribers. --Sanfranman59 06:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Assessments Anyone?

The requested baseball articles assessments list is now months old, and double digit, if anyone would like to address it ... [13]. Tx. --Epeefleche 18:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

2008 seasons?

Should we begin to add articles for individual team seasons for 2008? jj137 21:16, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Not yet; there isn't anything we can add to the articles, and thus there really isn't any purpose for the articles at this time. I think we should at least wait until the 2007 World Series ends before we begin adding anything for the 2008 seasons. Ksy92003(talk) 19:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I say no, at least not until the end of the World Series. Once the offseason starts, and player transactions begin, you can begin an article with that info. Otherwise, you have a two sentence stub for the next three months. Caknuck 00:21, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Requested articles control pitcher, power pitcher

I am trying to add a new section to Chris Young (pitcher) and am wondering why there are no articles for control pitcher & power pitcher. Neither appears at List of baseball jargon (C) or List of baseball jargon (P) although control artist does. I could write these, but I imagine another writer would do at least as well. --TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 14:15, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

As these are terms with no firm definition, I'd suggest adding them to

List of baseball jargon (C) instead of creating new articles (which would probably never get past the "stub + an arbitrary list of players" stage.) Caknuck 20:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

What to do about Barry Bonds?

PrimeFan meant to post the following here yesterday. Anton Mravcek 20:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello again from WP:NUM. We are wondering about Barry Bonds. Do you think the article about the number 700 should mention Barry Bonds's record? PrimeFan 18:59, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd say no at this point.. Each home run he hits will change his number... maybe after he retires the final number can be included. Spanneraol 20:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

• Ugh - "Barry Bonds' record". I still don't know what to make of it, but I digress. I agree with the above - it's likely to climb since he's said repeatedly that he wants to play next season. Sidatio 20:49, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I sure hope he quits or is proven guilty of steroid use before he gets to 800. Well, that's my POV. As for NPOV, I'm leaning towards taking Spanneraol's advice and waiting until Bonds stops playing professionally. Anton Mravcek 21:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Why not? I mean you mention Hank Aaron's 755 HR on that article. Bonds currently has 757, which is now the most historic number in all of baseball, now even more so than 755. If 755 should be mentioned in its correlation to baseball, then so should 757. Ksy92003(talk) 21:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

If you want to maintain that daily, feel free. Otherwise, it's probably better to just wait it out and get the final tally. Sidatio 21:22, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I would gladly maintain that daily... if there wasn't such a big (though unofficial) asterisk on Bonds' record. Anton Mravcek 23:44, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Archive date

Since this page is so large, could we move to 7 days for the archive bot? Basar 20:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the only reason it's so large right now is all the hoo-ha about external links. With any luck, that storm has now passed and things will get back to whatever passes for normalcy here. --Sanfranman59 22:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Finally, some of it archived. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:33, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems like a high amount of conversation is continuing; would it really be that bad if we moved it to 7 or 10 days? It is 236kb right now. -- Basar (talk · contribs) 01:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I changed it to 10 days until the page is reduced a bit, it's nearly 200kb right now. Next archive should reduce greatly.--Borgarde^talk 10:38, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Professional baseball template

The template Professional Baseball is massive. Is there anyway to reduce this? Split it? Hide sections? Somehow to make it smaller?--Borgarde^talk 10:39, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I question whether the template is needed at all—readers who wish to navigate between articles about leagues can easily do so using the relevant categories. But, if the consensus is that the template is needed, I'd start by dropping all of the defunct minor leagues. BRMo 13:57, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Template Change

At {{Infobox MLB player}}, I'm automating the "team color" process - it will autofill the boxes when i'm done. It's a multi step process so if you guys see something funky going on with the team affiliations and such... don't be shocked. Juan Miguel Fangio| ►Chat  10:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

• I tested the implementation and it worked (i used Brandon Webb). However, the coding for the box is somewhat outdated, and i didn't want to open up a debate regarding how many colors a box should use) - i stopped.I move the "edited version" to the sandbox there. The two templates that it relies upon are {{MLBPrimaryColor}} and {{MLBSecondaryColor}}. You can see I implemented this at {{Infobox NFLactive}}. You guys will have to go in and set colors for everyone except the Diamondbacks. I inserted them in the templates as an example. If someone wants to finish up my work - go right ahead. I'll be glad to help create subtemplates for multiple colors that need to be used. Juan Miguel Fangio| ►Chat  11:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

List of Los Angeles Dodgers Opening Day Starting Lineups - up for deletion

A discussion is taking place regarding the possible deletion of List of Los Angeles Dodgers Opening Day Starting Lineups.

Reasons for nomination include WP:NOT#INFO, WP:LISTCRUFT, WP:N, and WP:CP. Ksy92003(talk) 00:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

This wound up being kept and that is not a good precedent at all IMHO. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:21, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

The actual outcome was no consensus. Debate on this particular article could be raised again in order to arrive to a conclusive consensus. Hopefully, though, the new WP:LIST proposals being considered would clarify the guidelines to the point that another debate wouldn't be necessary. Chime in on the discussion here:

• User:Sidatio/Conversations/On list guidelines

I'll warn you now - it's a sizable discussion with 25 or so participants. Sidatio 13:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It's likely going to be overturned it's in WP:DRV. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 13:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Minor League Players

Hi, I am an admin who was cleaning out the Candidates for Speedy Deletion Backlog and ran across an article for Desmond Jennings tagged for deletion under criteria A7, no assertion of notability. The most relevent portion of the article reads (or read) "Desmond Jennings (b. October 30, 1986 in Birmingham, Alabama) is a baseball outfielder in the minor league program of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. He bats and throws right-handed. He was drafted in the 10th round of the 2006 MLB Draft." I have defered on making a decsion on this article, as I am uncertain on whether or not a claim of playing minor league baseball counts as an assertion of notability. (I am sure that another admin will delete it shortly.) For my future reference, what is the fate of articles on minor league baseball players? Are they uncontroversial deletes, are some kept and some deleted, or are they all kept? Dsmdgold 03:57, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

My observation has been that minor leaguers who have a good chance of making the majors sooner than later are kept. This includes high first-round draft picks and current AAA players who are being mentioned as likely current-season call-ups. Neither of these seem to apply to Mr. Jennings so the article was rightly deleted. —Wknight94 (talk) 11:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Ditto, high prosepect = keep, common minor leaguer = delete Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 13:56, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for answers. My concern isn't so much as for whether or not an article should be deleted, but whether it should be speedy deleted. If some minor league players are kept on the basis of high prospects and others are deleted then none, in my opinion, should be speedied. Deletion through PROD or AfD allows more people to evaluate the individual merits of the subject. Dsmdgold 14:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That would open the door for people to clog up AFD with no-name minor leaguers - and there are a lot of no-name minor leaguers and a lot of editors who would like to see a lot of them on Wikipedia. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:16, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Deletion sorting

I have taken the liberty of adding a line item to the Departments section of your WikiProject navigational template entitled 'Deletion sorting'. This link leads to Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Baseball, a page created by the Deletion Sorting WikiProject to assist in topical notifications of articles nominated for deletion to any of the several deletion forums, with emphasis on WP:AFD. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:02, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Members Needed

The Red Sox project needs more members. We're just getting started, and any interested users may join. New England ^{Review Me!} 20:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think wikiprojects on indidviual teams are needed, best thing is to merge with here and make it a subpage. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 20:45, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Template roster change

So I'm looking through the mlb.com rosters, and I notice that MLB.com uses the term "restricted list" when referring to players that are suspended. There is currently only one team that has a player in this situation, the Tigers and Neifi Perez (see {{Detroit Tigers roster}} and [14]). Therefore, I am proposing that the label "Suspended List" is replaced with "Restricted List" as that is the term that MLB.com uses. X96lee15 02:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Seems official enough to me. Go for it. MLB.com is the official source of all that is the MLB, so what they say should dictate what we say. Seems logical enough for this change. Ksy92003(talk) 03:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Trivial or worth a mention?

As a wine editor and baseball fan I got a chuckle out of an article in the Sept 30, 2007 Wine Spectator about a special wine set being produced by VinLozano Imports with Tim Wakefield, Curt Schilling and Manny Ramírez for children's charity. I'm looking to buy a set myself so that I can hopefully take a picture but I'm wondering if these would be a worthwhile mention in the players articles. I love the wine names Manny Being Merlot, Schilling Schardonnay and CaberKnuckle. Here is an online article for more info Red Sox Wine for Charity'. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 10:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not a member of this project (I'm a member of WP:BOSOX) but I would say go ahead and add it. I also saw an article on these wines in Sports Illustrated. New England ^{Review Me!} 16:07, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Manual of Style Discussion

I would like to call people to join in an imortant discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates ranges in infoboxes/templates. This project has a number of infoboxes where this discussion is applicable. Juan Miguel Fangio| ►Chat  02:43, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup for article on main page

Carl Zamloch (first half of 20th century pitcher) is currently on the main page, and desperately needs some cleanup. Anybody up to it? Circeus 03:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:Summer baseball leagues

I noticed this category today. I'm not sure if Summer Baseball leagues warrant inclusion or not, is this part of some organized effort? FrozenPurpleCube 04:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Infobox colors.

Firstly, Hall of Famers should get the colors of the team they were inducted in. There seems to be a general consensus for that.
Now, that being said. What about coaches? If they sit in the dugout, they should wear the color of the team they are coaching, regardless of what team they gained notoriety as a player, i.e., Rickey Henderson. Though I agree he's most noted as an A, he currently works for the Mets and sits on the bench - wearing a Mets uniform. There seems to be an argument on that.

Opinions, please. Mghabmw 23:03, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the colors are absolutely irrelevant. As for Rickey, he is famous because of his playing days in Oakland. Further, the infobox photo (which is excellent, by the way) matches the A's colors. I think this page should show the A's colors. When people think of Rickey, their first thought isn't "Met's coach." That's not what makes him notable.

I don't know that there can be a standard that applies to all players, and I think some "generic" colors should be applied in most cases. I just wish Rickey's page would stop changing its colors. (Note that I don't think I've changed the colors — I usually focus on the article's content.) Timneu22 16:11, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I've said this before, and I'll try again: The question that needs to be asked is, What is the purpose of the colors? It appears to be strictly a decoration. Theoretically, everything in wikipedia should be "verifiable". For current players, the decorative colors are presumably tolerable, because it is obviously "verifiable" which team a current player is working for. But for retirees, it is not possible to "verify" what the colors should be, because this feature is the invention of wikipedia editors. The best way to handle this is to possibly have the colors of a Hall of Famer match his plaque (which is verifiable) and to omit the colors on anyone who is not in the Hall of Fame and is not currently working for any major league team. That argument says Henderson's colors should be Mets blue-and-orange for now, and should be removed if he stops working for a baseball team. If the purpose of the colors is to define their active player status, then it doesn't work... because it comes down to debates among wikipedia editors as to which team he is "most notable" for playing for. Try finding citations for that. Baseball Bugs 16:32, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree he is most notable as an A's player and will go to the HoF as one, but he is currently in the Mets roster and we should go by what is current, whether player or manager. Mghabmw 17:32, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

On that note, I didn't know Rickey was a Mets coach until I read it on Wikipedia. Represent Mets colors would help identifying that, as Wikipedia is a learning source. Mghabmw 17:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I also think that a move to standardized colors for all players would make the most sense. There's a lot of attention being sucked into this that would be better devoted to other issues. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 18:36, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we should move to standard colors. The Rickey Henderson infobox color wars are just stupid. Timneu22 12:11, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

It would be in the best interests of Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball to establish a policy on the subject of retired players' infoboxes. It seems least controversial to have no colors at all or maybe red, white and blue since those are the colors of MLB. The only arguments I have heard against this are that it doesn't look good. Well, encyclopedias don't need to be pretty, they need to impart information. If half the people who have been fighting over Reggie Jackson, had only spent half their energy on improving the article instead of fighting over the stupid infobox, it might actually have more than four references. Pretty pathetic for a hall of fame player who has probably had more written about him than everybody but Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. Can you people redirect your energies to something that actually improves the content of the article? Kinston eagle 22:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that in general, the colors cause a lot more trouble than they're worth. I'm OK with using them for active players/managers, but in all other cases, I think we should default to the uncolored versions. This is an issue that really needs to be resolved one way or the other; there's a lot of pointless revert-warring going on. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 18:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Expert review: Jordan Brown (baseball player)

As part of the Notability wikiproject, I am trying to sort out whether Jordan Brown (baseball player) is notable enough for an own article. I would appreciate an expert opinion. For details, see the article's talk page. If you can spare some time, please add your comments there. Thanks! --B. Wolterding 08:44, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

World Series Champ Templates

Do you know if there has been discussion at regarding Championship team templates like they use for National Basketball Association teams?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 01:07, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I see Template:1995WorldSeriesBraves, Template:1983 Chicago White Sox in Category:Baseball templates. I think the latter should be cleaned up and all years should be made. I noticed this while working on Hector Lopez.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 01:21, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I have created Category:World Series championship templates. I have created Template:1955 Brooklyn Dodgers, Template:1981 Los Angeles Dodgers, and Template:1988 Los Angeles Dodgers and User:Ksy92003 has created Template:1961 New York Yankees, Template:1962 New York Yankees, and Template:2002 Anaheim Angels to get the category going. We modeled these after Template:1995WorldSeriesBraves. Help is welcome. In several places, it will be necessary to hide these in a compressed box. See New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Mike Scioscia for examples. We have been using composite box scores, which only show players who played in the games and not the entire 25-man rosters. Help filling out the rosters, of course, would be appreciated. --TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Terminology

In baseball, there are certain qualifying numbers that are significant. There are the number of at bats or innings one needs to accumulate to qualify for Rookie of the Year. There is another set of numbers (I believe 162 innings and 510 plate appearances) needed to qualify for annual statistical leadership. What is the number of career games, at bats, plate appearances, innings necessary to qualify for career statistical leadership? I am trying to clean up the WP:LEAD at Hector Lopez and need to correctly state the fact.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 02:40, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I just ran all-time career lists at mlb.com. They use 5000 ABs for hitters and 2000 IP for pitchers. --Sanfranman59 05:02, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Is that ABs or PAs?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

It says ABs. These cut-offs are used for historical players. They use 3000 ABs and 1000 IP for career leaders among active players. --Sanfranman59 20:12, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notabilty (sports)

Seeing as no-one has mentioned this here yet, there is a proposal being written about the notability for sports. Wikipedia:Notabilty (sports). --Borgarde^talk 12:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

SABR as a source?

We've been running into endless sockpuppets of the banned User:Ron liebman. Some of those socks are now citing SABR as a source. Unfortunately, this puts SABR references in a compromised spot, because Liebman himself is a contributor to SABR. In short, any references to SABR as a source could be "circular" references and have to be considered suspect or invalid until or if they can be independently verified... which defeats the purpose of even using SABR as a source. Therefore, sadly, SABR has to be ruled out as a valid source. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 18:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Uniform Images

We have a problem here. The image for the Baltimore Orioles uniform was listed for deletion, and the claim was that a non-free equivalent could be used. I worried about this, as if this was deleted, it could set precedent to delete all uniform images on this project. I considered reporting this to the project, but decided against it when the discussion overwhelmingly proved that the claim held no water. Last night, I was shocked to find that the user Nv8200p had disregarded the proof and reason, and deleted the page, citing that a free equivalent should be used instead. The discussion is enclosed.

Image:ALE-Uniform-BAL.PNG (delete | talk | history | logs) - uploaded by Silent_Wind_of_Doom (notify | contribs).

• non-free image used to illustra a team's unniform's colors. We don't use non-free material to convey this kind of information. Abu badali ^(talk) 01:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
  • This is used to display the uniform of the team, and is used prominantly in the infobox of the team. This is true of all MLB articles, and it is a major part of most articles, as there are sections describing the current uniform, and the evolution of the uniform through the years. These are key to understanding and identifying the teams, and a graphic that is uniform for each team leads to much more unity in the articles, and is by far much more pleasing.--Silent Wind of Doom 04:42, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. Team uniform schemes are easily replaceable by free images. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Football/Clubs and their articles for ways to handle this situation. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 02:10, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep As Silent Wind of Doom correctly explains, the claim made by nominator that "We don't use non-free material to convey this kind of information" is demonstrably incorrect. The proper thing to do here is not to create a mess by deleting essential and consistent content of MLB articles on an ad hoc basis, but to work with Wikipedia:WikiProject Baseball to encourage a transition as practical to free images in a way that maintains the integrity and quality of the encyclopedia.—DCGeist 02:20, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Take a look at the soccer images, and take a look at the baseball images. We pride ourselves on the accuracy and detail, and the soccer images are very light on the detail and look absolutely horrible. On the other hand, non-free use images used in this capacity are prevalent. Look at the football articles, which use non-free helmet images. The use of non-free images is not causing any problem, and there is no free substitute that will be able to convey the information as accurately.--Silent Wind of Doom 05:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
  • The helmet logos are copyrightable and can't be replaced by free equivalents. Unless I'm seriously mistaken, uniform color schemes do not contain enough creative elements to be copyrightable. The fact that you believe the football uniform depitctions don't look good really isn't relevent - the advantage is that they're free. If they don't look good, maybe someone will be motivated to create better ones. But when it comes down to policy, the team uniform schemes are replaceable non-free images per the very first item of our non-free content policy, WP:NFCC#1. Videmus Omnia ^Talk 05:24, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
    • That may be, but it would be a serious misstep to apply that policy on an ad hoc basis to an article that is part of a project that has a consistent style across more than a couple dozen related, important articles. To do so precipitously, as is proposed here, would undermine the integrity and quality of our encyclopedia in a rather obvious way. The nomination--whose central claim was baldly erroneous to begin with--should be withdrawn and those who have raised these concerns should work directly with the project to achieve a resolution that's win-win.—DCGeist 06:37, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
      • I'm sorry, but have you ever looked at the soccer images. We will absolutely not change to such a system. Those images are horribly innacurate, and are an insult to this encyclopedia. Go ahead, and compare the Chicago Fire jersey to the jersey the players wear here: http://chicago.fire.mlsnet.com/t100/index.jsp. The information that is conveyed by the current uniform system is INCORRECT. This is an encyclopedia, and it should contain FACTS not the closest things because it's free and easier, when we can have a TRUE depiction. We can have these images. That's not the issue. We're able to have them on this encyclopedia. What, do you want us to sacrifice integrity and truth just to swap one template on the image page for another? No. That is wrong. This is an encyclopedia, and it should contain information. True information. The first poster mentioned team colors. This isn't team colors. This is a team uniform. It contains logos, insignias, and print names which are inherently copyrighted. Therefore, the claim is false. There is no free replacement possible. This is exactly the same as the football helmets, which no one here seems to have a problem with. If the football helmets stay, this stays. The uniforms are important information, and therefore should be depicted prominantly, as we have done. If anything, the soccer images should be changed. They are incorrect, and false information does not belong in an encyclopedia. --Silent Wind of Doom 17:12, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
• Delete, as this can be replaced by a free image. – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 14:51, 27 August 2007 (UTC)
• Follow-up Thanks for the references, Silent Wind (I hope you don't mind, I piped the Chicago Fire link so it goes straight to the article). I've looked at a couple other such cases now and this seems determinitive to me: the baseball articles are of markedly superior encyclopedic quality to the soccer articles in this regard. Compare: Baseball: Baltimore Orioles / what uniforms actually look like; Soccer: D.C. United / what uniforms actually look like. Claims that the image presently in question can be replaced by a free one ignore what should be the obvious fact: the image proposed for deletion here cannot be replaced by a free image of comparable quality and accuracy while maintaining encyclopedic consistency across this important series of articles. The nomination should be withdrawn forthwith and the nominator, if he wishes to pursue this matter, should do so in good faith by entering into direct dialogue with the project.—DCGeist 18:58, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
• KeepThe baseball images really do look much better than the soccer ones--more importantly they're much more accurate. Just as importantly, their use seems to be in the best spirit of fair use. And keeping a consistent look for related entries is a theme brought up time and again around Wikipedia--I don't understand how Mr. Badali singled out this one image and how anyone thinks that deleting it improves the encyclopedia.DocKino 21:02, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
• I hope you all realize..." that "the unfree image looks incredibly better" is not a valid argument to use non-free material. --Abu badali ^(talk) 03:47, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Yup, we sure do That's why we emphasize and demonstrate the far superior accuracy of the images used by the baseball project.—DCGeist 04:15, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Not to mention the fact that the logos and print names visible on the uniforms are copyrighted, and therefore the images are NOT REPLACABLE. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Silent Wind of Doom (talk • contribs) 04:42, August 29, 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Drawings created by editors, which is what the deletionists are advocating, are blatant original research and thus they are a violation of wikipedia policy. And as noted directly above, inclusion of the logos would be problematic, and thus the copyrighted images are not replaceable. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 08:37, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Also, the often-amateurish appearance of home-grown drawings does nothing to enhance wikipedia's credibility. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 08:43, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
    • The cute little home-grown illustration of soccer uniforms cited by someone above (including their cute little shorts) contains no citation, that I can see, of the source of those colors/colours. Thus, it appears to be original research based on what somebody "thinks" those colors/colours are. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 08:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

---

Image deleted. Image use fails WP:NFCC #1. Also, the copyright holder is not known for sure. -Nv8200p talk 03:14, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the file's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

This is an outrage. This image was deleted on false premises, and the fact that Nv8200p seems to have an extensive past relationship with Abu badali, Videmus Omnia, and Quadell seems dubious. They seem to have formed for themselves a small team that are fighting to have every non-free image stricken from the encyclopedia. Jeez, the word "seem" was used a lot there.

Anyway, this whole affair is a huge misuse of power, and Nv8200p has completely push aside the voices, opinions, and, most of all, proof set forth by the people, just so he could push his own agenda. We need to do something about this, and, most of all, get this image restored, and keep our other non-free images safe. I was told to take this up somewhere else, but I unfortunately do not have the knowledge of the Wikipedia beurocracy (or a memory of how to spell beurocracy), so I ask for help on how to take this where it needs to be taken, and, of course, as depiction of the uniforms is important to the project, I ask for your support. If this stands, all our uniform images will disappear.--Silent Wind of Doom 18:27, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The image was deleted unilaterally, with no consensus, by the fanatical deletionists whose sworn task (and they admit this, BTW) is to make wikipedia look as amateurish as possible (i.e. as cheap, stupid, and ugly as possible) regardless of its negative impact on the already-shaky credibility of this site. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 18:54, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The decision by Nv8200p is a clear violation of our deletion policy, which requires the closing administrator to abide by the consensus of reasonable, image policy–driven contributions to the deletion discussion. There must be a consensus to delete for proper deletion to take place, and there was clearly no such consensus here. If there was a consensus at all, it was to retain the image per our image policy. If the admin found that no consensus was reached, our deletion policy and guidelines direct that the image be kept. So...we do have the option to take this to deletion review. Note, however, that the same cabal that has taken over the image deletion process is well-organized at deletion review as well. For us to have a decent chance of succeeding at review, we would need, I'd say, a minimum of eight people willing to educate themselves on our relevant image policy and deletion policy and then participate in the review discussion, referencing the language and the purpose of those policies.

SWD, I have additional thoughts on the matter that it would be more appropriate to communicate directly. I can be reached at dancharlesgeist@hotmail.com. Best, Dan—DCGeist 19:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The discussion on this topic in the last week has been very discouraging. In the past, the fair use argument was used, and fears of copyright violation seemed to be the main concern... a concern I am very sensitive to. Now we have this new argument that it's not really about copyrights, it's about "free content", and the notion that home-grown illustrations are "good enough" (at least for wikipedia), and therefore that nearly any external-source content is taboo (except for pre-1923, which the deletionists can't touch, which I'm sure vexes them no end). This is an abuse of the policy guidelines by the deletionists, who have taken it upon themselves as their agenda to delete as much "professional-looking" illustration as possible from this site, in order to render it as much as possible like a website run by junior-high-school art class dropouts. The deletionists' behavior almost seems like a conspiracy to purposely damage wikipedia's credibility. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 19:21, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

To answer SWOD's question, the proper venue to raise this would be at Wikipedia:Deletion review. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:09, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I have brought the image to review. Please, anyone out there on the project, help us protect this vital part of our work.--Silent Wind of Doom 03:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The discussion on the deletion review doesn't seem to be going well. Have you thought of contacting the Hall of Fame to request permission? Spanneraol 13:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Josh Gibson's home runs

If anyone is interested, there is a very long discussion going on over at Talk:Josh Gibson about the best way to explain the home run total of Negro League Hall of Famer Josh Gibson. —Wknight94 (talk) 10:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Another BB stub-split required

Just the baseball seasons are oversized by themselves, now; I've proposed re-splitting either by team, or by decade: please comment there. Alai 06:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Flag icons on roster pages?

Anyone besides me suddenly having trouble with the flag icons displaying on the team roster pages? --Sanfranman59 07:30, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It's just the job-queue on wikipedia is currently really big (over 3,000,000) because of this Wikipedia:Template standardisation thing. It should all work normally again soonish... --Borgarde^talk 08:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Rivals canceling games over tragedy

An editor has brought up concerns at Talk:Cardinals-Cubs_rivalry#Another_break_in_the_action about the encyclopedic relevance of rivals canceling game after a tragedy. To my knowledge, nothing like the deaths of two players in the middle of a rivalry series has ever happened to two teams before. However I would like to get a broader input from other baseball folks for the sake of perspective. Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Colorized stats

User:StormXor and I worked together to come up with a pretty good colorization scheme in the presence of heavy editorial activity in the weeks immediately after 756 at Barry Bonds. Now, there is a move afoot to uncolorize Bonds. Opinions are needed at Talk:Barry_Bonds#stats_section_use_of_color. We are debating the use of colors in stats tables with respect to WP:WAI section 4 and the current Barry Bonds page versus the former color scheme. The debate will probably shape color scheme usage throughout baseball bio article stat sections so be thoughtful. You may want to look at other pages that have colorized stat sections such as Roger Clemens, Hector Lopez, and Chris Young (pitcher). Keep in mind what Bonds before colorization looked like. If you know any other editors who you think may have strong opinions one way or another please ask them to comment as well.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:03, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Add current season payroll to MLB infobox template

the teams' current season's payroll should be a part of Template:MLB infobox, with a link provided to List of Major League Baseball teams by payroll for further reference. payroll is extremely significant, as well as a potential indicator of so many things such as revenue, fan support, ability to acquire/keep players/coaches, and possibly potential to win. here's what i'm proposing, followed by an example.... Riphamilton 18:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

{{{name}}} Established [[{{{established}}} in baseball|{{{established}}}]] {{{misc}}}
[[Image:{{{logo}}}|100px]] Team Logo [[Image:{{{uniformlogo}}}|100px]] Cap Insignia
Major league affiliations
[[{{{current league}}}]] ([[{{{y1}}} in baseball|{{{y1}}}]]–present) {{{division}}} ([[{{{y2}}} in baseball|{{{y2}}}]]–present)
Current uniform
[[Image:{{{Uniform}}}|center|250px]]
Name
{{{name}}} ([[{{{y3}}} in baseball|{{{y3}}}]]–present)
Other nicknames
{{{nicknames}}}
Ballpark
{{{ballpark}}}
Major league titles
World Series titles {{{WS}}}	{{{WORLD CHAMPIONS}}}
{{{LEAGUE}}} Pennants {{{P}}}	{{{PENNANTS}}}
{{{misc1}}}	{{{OTHER PENNANTS}}}
{{{DIV}}} Division titles {{{DV}}}	{{{Division Champs}}}
{{{misc5}}}	{{{OTHER DIV CHAMPS}}}
Wild card berths {{{WC}}}	{{{Wild Card}}}
{{{misc6}}}
2007 Payroll: ${{{payroll}}}M ({{{MLB payroll rank}}}MLB, {{{League payroll rank}}}{{{league}}}
Owner(s): {{{owner}}}
Manager: {{{manager}}}
General Manager: {{{gm}}}

Tampa Bay Devil Rays
2024 Tampa Bay Devil Rays season
Established in 1998
Major league affiliations
American League (1998–present) East Division (1998–present)
Retired numbers	12, 42
Name
Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1998–present)
Other nicknames
The D-Rays, The Rays
Ballpark
Tropicana Field (1998–present)
Major league titles
World Series titles (0)	none
AL Pennants (0)	none
Division titles (0)	none
Wild card berths (0)	None
Front office
Principal owner(s)	2007 Payroll: $24.1M (30th MLB, 14th AL)
General manager	Andrew Friedman
Manager	Joe Maddon

(i just replaced the owner with payroll for the example. it will fit on one line.)

I can't say I'm at all enthusiastic about adding payroll to the infobox. Despite the arguments that it's important, other bits of trivia could be equally important -- last year's attendance comes to mind. Payroll and its effects certainly belong in an article about the team's season, but not the infobox.--Fabrictramp 19:07, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see the importance of team payroll. After all, all that it is is an indicator as to how much the team pays their players. It doesn't have anything to do with the team, and it also gets all complicated with players being traded, waivers, free agents, designated for assignments, and the "A-Rod/Texas paying 1/2 of contract" crud. It gets far too confusing and doesn't really have anything to do with the season itself as far as the team's actual play. Ksy92003(talk) 05:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Truest blue

This user, who had nominated numerous baseball-related articles for deletion over the last several months, was just indefblocked for abusive sockpuppetry. As such, it may be appropriate to revisit some of these deletions. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 19:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Wow, looks like quite a few need to be reviewed. Any idea how many of his AFDs were tainted by his own socks? —Wknight94 (talk) 20:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Not sure, but my guess is a bunch. Fortunately, at least two (Craig Stansberry and Armando Galarraga) have made their ML debuts since their articles were deleted, making them eligible for history-undeletion, regardless of the AFDs. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 01:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to substitute game logs into articles

I want to substitute all the game logs into the articles, instead as using them as a transcluded templates into the article. This way the game logs can be edited without going into a template, and you can simply click edit on the section entitled game log, and you will edit the game log. I think this is better, it's going to take the same amount of time for the page to load. And also, if you are watching the page, when someone makes an edit to the game log it will show up on your watchlist, and in the history of the page being edited. I can't really see any disagreement with this, but I posted this to see if anyone else had any other opinions? --Borgarde^talk 07:02, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I would oppose this. Unrelated to my opposition, if we were to do something like this, I think it would be best to wait until after the 2007 regular season has ended. Simply too confusing considering the number of editors to change up the system in the middle of the season, IMHO. — Steven Andrew Miller (talk) 20:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand the advantage to subst'ing them. You can watch a template just as easily, right? —Wknight94 (talk) 20:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Right, part of my rational for placing them in templates when we set these up this season was to cut down on vandalism by making the templates, which contain so much data, slightly less accessible for would-be vandals. — Steven Andrew Miller (talk) 20:55, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

My first reaction was to wonder if the game logs are used in any other articles other than the 2007 team articles. Having to update the same data in multiple locations is a bad thing. Upon an initial inspection, it looks like the game logs are only used on the article pages (but I only looked at a few). Even so, it's my opinion to keep them separate...the more modular the better, I say. X96lee15 21:02, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I oppose for four five reasons:

1. There's no real benefit to changing the format now. I don't see anything that would merit the extra work involved.
2. Vandalism involving subtly changing stats (like scores, attendances, etc...) is often hard to detect. Worse yet, vandals who delete portions of the templates often leave behind a huge visual mess. Anything to dissuade would-be vandals in these cases is OK by me.
3. These logs are time consuming to create, often taking me a week or more. I'd rather work on one to completion in templatespace then edit the team's season page when done rather than having a half-done log available for all to see.
4. Changing these now would require dozens of C&P moves, which would violate the GFDL.
5. In the event that a persistent vandal does target the game logs, having a separate transcluded template would allow protection to be placed there only, as opposed to locking down the whole article.

I hope that's clear enough of an argument. Caknuck 18:20, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I oppose. I simply think it's easier to keep them separate. Besides, I've made plenty of edits to game log templates, and that would almost be like hundreds of edits gone to waste. Oh, and yes, vandals often may not know how to access templates. -jj137^{Talk • Contribs} 21:14, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

(Outdent) Actually, and JJ can attest to this, we had a discussion this past weekend. I'm changing my opinion slightly, but here are my two proposals toward game logs:

1) Transclude them in the articles until you complete them, and then move them to the template namespace. It's a perhaps personal thought, but I fear either A; some admin would wonder "why do we need this category flooded?" and perhaps do subsequent deletions and thousands of edits would be out the door or (erroniously) call them "copyvios." Erroniously (sic)? WTF mate? I say this because last month I talked with Baseball-Reference.com, and game logs are perfectly allowable and content contained within them cannot be copyrighted, meaning we are in the clear here.

However, my other idea is:

2) Work on them on a Word document or something (whichever works for you) and complete them there, then just cut-and-paste them into a template. I'd probably still transclude at first then put them in a template, though. If the template got deleted (wrongfully so, I'd hope they'd go through TfD first), then we'd, once again, unless you saved your document, we'd have hours of lost work.

Now, if this is sticking to the 2007 articles or any game logs that have already been completed, there is no change that should be made. But for upcoming game logs, I'd just thought I'd throw out my take on this. Soxrock 01:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Soxrock basically covered everything I was about to say =). I agree with #1, I think for upcoming game logs we should have them in the article, and once they are finished, we can move them into a template. -jj137^{Talk • Contribs} 01:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Heck, just to get a quick point and to test my new sig, for you Caknuk, if you really want to (for your preferences when your creating them), you can just give the "" tags to hide them from the view of vandals. And besides, like vandals have discovered the 1911 New York Highlanders have an article yet? But for those "just in case" opinions, I just thought I'd quickly add this Soxrock^{Edit list}/_Talk 02:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Great new signature Soxrock! -jj137^{Talk • Contribs} 02:06, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks JJ, all that needs to be done is unbolding the time. And again, I hope my views will help out the progression of game logs. I'll see if I can help (I can, obviously. But will I have the time?) Soxrock^{Edit list}/_Talk 02:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not sure how much time is a factor, as they shouldn't get deleted (they would just be recreated anyway, right?). They do seem to get a little boring after inserting game after game after game... but we can always take a break from it. -jj137 ^{Talk • Contribs} 21:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

All Time Rosters

I was editing the New York Yankees all-time roster but took a few days off, when I returned a user named Fabrictramp had edited the page about 30 times in a row, adding a hundreds of red links for non-notable players who never played a game for the team, do we really need to name a bunch of useless players and links when all it does is make the article look like sh... crap? TheNextOne 21:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

You can say "shit" - we're not censored!  :) Why would there be players listed who never even played a game for them? That sounds absurd. —Wknight94 (talk) 21:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

It's an all-time roster not just a roster of people who have Wikipedia articles. It doesn't matter what it looks like. The encyclopedia isn't made to make pretty pages, it's made to impart information. Kinston eagle 23:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to get the facts straight here, after I was done with the page it only contained players who had played at least one game for the team, as per the standards that were discussed here several months ago. Since those people had played at least one game for a fully professional team, they are, according to the current draft at Wikipedia:Notability (sports), notable, and are definitely qualified to have articles. --Fabrictramp 23:31, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Clarification -- I haven't checked every single red-linked player yet. The info came from the New York Yankees all-time player roster pages at MLB.com, which does occasionally contain the odd person who made the 40 man roster but didn't play a game. In working on other all-time roster pages, I generally find one or two of these per team, and remove them when I find them, with appropriate edit summaries.--Fabrictramp 23:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Notability comes in many varieties. Charles Victory Faust was better known as a good-luck charm than anything. There was a mediocre Orioles pitcher during their Weaver dynasty (I think it was Eddie Watt) who was supposedly kept around mainly because he was good at throwing batting practice. But regardless of whether you're Casey Stengel or Casey Wise, just playing in a major league game is a notable achievement that separates them from (most of) us. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 23:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

If you dont like the red linked names on the page, go ahead and create articles for those players. Spanneraol 23:51, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Pretty much. I'm unclear on what the original complaint is here but if an all-time roster includes red-links, so be it. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:47, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess I could create articles for some of those players but it would take me a long time to create pages for all of them, perhaps a little help would help TheNextOne 02:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

2008 Individual season articles

Should we start creating them yet? The season's just about over and I think it's time we get a move on that. -jj137^{Talk • Contribs} 21:15, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure. And why not 2009 while we're at it? (Sorry, but I'm not a big fan of the empty season articles we already have, let alone creating new ones we can't possibly have content for). —Wknight94 (talk) 21:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry. Were you being sarcastic there? Honestly, I couldn't figure out. -jj137^{Talk • Contribs} 02:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

A bit, yes. But I know people like creating placeholder articles so I don't pry. Enjoy. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

All right, I've begun creating some of the 2008 articles. -jj137 ^{Talk • Contribs} 21:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Anybody wants to help, feel free. Thanks -jj137 ^{Talk • Contribs} 13:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Seattle Mariners up for peer review

I've put Seattle Mariners up for peer review here, as I've made substantial improvements to it and think it's nearing GA-quality. Any input from project members would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -Elmer Clark 05:16, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Prodect guidelines - Template:Minor league team / Template:MiLB infobox

I propose that on the main project page, the suggested infobox template for a minor league team be changed from Template:Minor league team to Template:MiLB infobox. The first one (currently suggested as the temp to use for minor league teams) is only used on a handfull of articles. The second one is used on the majority of articles.

I thought that I could just make this change myself, but I didn't want to be to BOLD. -NatureBoyMD 00:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Minor league team

Template:Minor league team has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — NatureBoyMD 22:43, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Postseason

I have found it to be extremely annoying that Wikipedia does not have an article (and yearly series of articles) on the postseason as a whole, as we do with the other major sports. Has anyone considered creating such, or has a consensus been reached against it? The way, the truth, and the light 07:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Notability Guidelines

Since it looks like the Wikipedia:Notabilty (sports) guidelines are not going to be adopted by the masses, does anyone have any interest in adopting the baseball guidelines from that proposal to replace the WP:Baseball notability guidelines? I think the newer ones are somewhat more clear than the vague wording on the current project guidelines. Spanneraol 14:33, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• I feel that the non-adoption of those guidelines goes to show that there's a consensus opposed to adopting guidelines above and beyond Wikipedia:Notability (people). Why adopt more stringent guidelines when there does not seem to be a groundswell of interest to do so? The proposed guidelines as they are written now would retroactively remove notablility from people who have had notability based on Wikipedia:Notability (people). All those articles would need to be deleted based on the new guidelines creating red links in all the places where they were cited based on their current notability. There's no need (or apparently support) for imposing stricter notability guidelines on baseball articles than on Wikipedia articles in general. It should be noted that the many (almost daily) requests for baseball related AfD's have shriveled to practically none since all the socks have left. Kinston eagle 15:16, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Kinston, the reason for the new guidelines originally was all the afd debates over the minor league players.. the new guidelines are much more inclusive than the current WP:Baseball guidelines. Granted the people who were constantly nominating stuff for deletion are gone.. but I feel the guidelines on here should definitely be changed and the ones in the proposal are certainly an improvement. Spanneraol 16:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

If you think that the new guidelines are more inclusive, than you've failed to examine the lines about minor league baseball executives, coaches, and managers. Under the current baseball guidelines, these people are notable. Under the proposed guidelines, they are not. Kinston eagle 16:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

They aren't even mentioned in the new guidelines I think.. so we add a line on them.. the new guidelines allow for minor league all-stars and all AAA players which is certainly an improvement and gets us over the old "never played a game in the bigs, delete" criteria. Spanneraol 17:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Executives, coaches, and managers are mentioned but only for the enumerated leagues. I have added lines on them, and they are repeatedly removed. I see no reason why baseball has to have any restrictions above and beyond WP:BIO. Kinston eagle 17:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Well the guys that kept removing those lines are gone now so you could probably get them in.. In any event, we should change the WP:BASEBALL notability guidelines to something close to the proposal or get rid of it entirely to say something along the lines of "players are notable if they pass WP:BIO.. The current guidelines on the project page are bad. Spanneraol 19:23, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The main person objecting and reverting was User:Hit bull, win steak who is still alive and well. I have no problem with WP:BIO being the standard. In my mind, it already is. Kinston eagle 19:42, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

• I support the new guidelines, as long as it's made clear that they do not keep out anyone who otherwise meets the guidelines of WP:BIO. If the new guidelines are used to say "we are 99% sure these people will meet WP:BIO once the sources are tracked down" (which I think will be the case for anyone who does meet those guidelines), they can be quite useful.--Fabrictramp 15:37, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Baseball team

Template:Baseball team has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — NatureBoyMD 23:48, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Reopening the discussion on All-time Rosters

Now that the Chicago Cubs all-time roster has survived an AfD debate, it seems time to revisit the standards for the all time rosters.

It seems to me that the goals for having standards are two-fold. One is that it's nice to have each of the all-time rosters looking a bit uniform. The other is that it's nice to know what information should be included (to make the rosters both useful and more than a duplication of the categories), and nice to know what information is just clutter.

The current standard is to include every player who played in at least one regular season game. Also listed are the years the player played, main position (P, C, IF, OF, DH, PH, PR) played for that team, and whether the player is in the Hall of Fame. (Hall of Fame info has not yet been added to most of the rosters). So far most of the rosters have been formatted in 3 columns (using <div style="-moz-column-count:3; column-count:3;"> to make the column breaks automatic), but I can't honestly recall if this is standard. Also, links to the other MLB all-time rosters (using the {{MLB All-Time rosters}} template) and the team link template (in this case {{Chicago Cubs}}) have been added to most, if not all, of the all-time rosters.

A couple of editors have suggested that flags to show the country of origin of each player would be a welcome addition to the rosters (such as on Boston Red Sox all-time roster). Other editors have expressed a dissatisfaction with the information included, but haven't offered suggestions for improvement. I think a more complete, standard wording for the introduction would also be useful.

So I'm proposing a two-fold discussion. Part 1 is what information should and should not be included in the all-time rosters. Part 2 is how best to format that information. Thoughts?--Fabrictramp 21:59, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I initiated New York Mets all-time roster which I'm pretty pleased with. I don't think I'd like the flags everywhere as in Toronto Blue Jays all-time roster. I'm also not a fan of the ones with just names like Chicago White Sox all-time roster. I like the single-column ones with just names even less, e.g. Arizona Diamondbacks all-time roster. Maybe someone can categorize all the existing examples. —Wknight94 (talk) 00:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I like the way you did the Mets roster, my only comment is that it might look nicer if it was in two collumns instead of one to better utilize screen space. Not a big fan of the flags myself. Most of the players, especially the early ones were American anyways. Spanneraol 00:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I have to say I'm not fond of the Mets roster, if only because there are no breaks between the letters. When I'm trying to disambiguate links, it's a pain to scroll and scroll and scroll in the edit screen to find the right player. And one concern I have with the flags is I can't think of an automated way to get them in there -- looking up the info for a team with 1500 all-time players is pretty daunting. Then multiply that by the 30 existing MLB teams. Then add in the defunct teams. I doubt I'll be volunteering for that task. --Fabrictramp 13:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Yea, it probably works ok for the Mets cause the team started in 62.. but teams that have been around since the 19th century like the Cardinals or the Reds have a lot more players so scrolling through a single column list would be really tedious. Spanneraol 14:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I can understand about the letter breaks and agree about two columns, but my current goal (esp. since someone has revived my interest in it) is to get it sortable (I need to get my regex on). To my knowledge, that's not possible if it's broken into two columns or broken along letter lines. My pause in responding to Spanneraol was that I wanted to get it sortable first but my short attention span didn't allow for that. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:39, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Which fields would you be sorting on? Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 16:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

All of them. Including any columns people wanted to add. The year column would be a bit odd because it's usually a range but it would still give a good flavor of who played when. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I can see pros and cons to sorting. It might be nice to see all the catchers for a particular team (as Wknight94 said, the years would be funky). The downside is it's harder for readers and editors to go to a particular letter of the alphabet. Since I haven't seen a sortable list in any wiki article, I also wonder if it works well in all browsers. Does someone have a link to an article which has a sortable list?--Fabrictramp 18:43, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Ask and ye shall receive. Check out New York Mets all-time roster for an example of sorting with a letter-link table of contents at the top. Only down-side I see so far is that the sorting is a bit slow. I don't know about browser-compatibility. It works in IE and Firefox. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:27, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't work in Safari. No matter what column I click on for the sort, it sorts by the first name. It does work fine on Firefox on the Mac, though. --Fabrictramp 20:40, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

One problem with the sorting though is people with multiple positions. If you want to get all the outfielders and some guy played both second base and outfield it will put him with the second basemen. Spanneraol 20:54, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

But it's better than not sorting at all, eh? You could add more columns into the table and get some pretty neat spreadsheet-type activity going. —Wknight94 (talk) 21:20, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm still not convinced it's better than no sorting. (Sorry!). Several problems still exist: editing would still be a major pain for the larger rosters (it's a pain even for a roster the size of the Mets), it's not working in all browsers, and WP:Lists says that the use of tables to display lists is discouraged. The sortability is very slick, but I think it's causing more problems than it solves.--Fabrictramp 14:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

• After checking some of the all-time rosters, I must admit that in my humble opinion Wknight94's New York Mets all-time roster is the best that I have seen and should the example for others to follow. I would like to see something added which would indicate who are the HoF'ers. Maybe something simple, like adding an "asterik" at the end of the name and then adding a notation at the bottom of table which could read something like this Note: an "*" at the end of a name indicates that the person is a member of the Hall of Fame. This is just a suggestion. Tony the Marine 03:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Suspended game?

While looking through the requested articles, I came across "Suspended game" and decided to give it a go. However, I'm not at all sure that what I came up with cuts it. The article I wrote can be found here. Is this good enough to start the article? Basically all I did was give what the rule book says, and since one of the links (both, actually) are just to the rule book, I wonder if there's even a point to it. If it is good enough, is there anything more that needs to be done to stress that what is written is taken verbatim from the rule book? After the article is created, then it can be improved with the history of the suspended game or notable suspended games, all I'm looking to do is get the ball rolling. I'm just not sure if this is good enough, and I don't want to bother if it's just going to be deleted. Thanks, faithless (^speak) 07:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't have the book in front of me but simply copying the text is likely a copyright violation. (In fact, unless someone disagrees, I'd remove it from your user space ASAP. Copyvios in user space are no better than copyvios in main space). Instead, I'd look for info about well-known suspended games (the 25-inning White Sox/Brewers game in 1984 or 1985 comes to mind), rules change info, etc. Determining Barry Bonds' debut is confusing because many logs show it as April 20, 1986[15] but he actually didn't get into that game until August! The April 20 game was suspended in the 13th inning and I don't know if Bonds was even on the roster then. The game was resumed on August 11 and Bonds pinch-hit in the 17th but the game shows as an April 20 game. His real debut didn't occur until May 30, 1986. There are probably other similar suspended game oddities... —Wknight94 (talk) 11:16, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I think I'll scrap it and let someone with more knowledge on the subject write the article. That being said, I'll blank that page, but if anyone sees anything there that's salvageable, you're welcome to it. As a matter of interest, is it really a copyvio? Granted I lifted most of it, but I said where it came from and even included a link to it. Oh well, I'll just find something else to work on. faithless (^speak) 12:08, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with Wknight94. It should be sufficient to explain in general terms what a suspended game is, and then flesh the article out with what the consequences can be and have been. The fine details of the rule book could be linked-to somewhere. The interesting thing about suspended games, and what's worth writing more than a definition about, are the oddities, and Wknight94 has implicitly started with such a list. In theory, a pitcher could be both the winning and losing pitcher in the same game. I don't know that that's ever happened, but the possibility exists. And the oddity of when a player debuts, as discussed above. One factor is that once a game has been resumed, it tends to end quickly since everyone is rested and ready. Wknight94, the game you're thinking about is one I remember because Harold Baines ended it with a homer. It was on May 8 and May 9 of 1984. Then there was the game that Cal Ripken played in during his minor league days, that was played over parts of three days. There is thus typically (though not always) a close connection between suspended games and very-long games. An article on one could be tied in with (if not be the same as) an article on the other. I once listened to a 25-inning game on the radio, between the Cardinals and the Mets. That was on September 11, 1974. [16] Actually, I was out doing something that evening until late, and was astonished to hear that the game was still going when I got back. So I stayed up and listened to it in the wee hours. The one thing I recall is Jack Buck ending it with an amusing, abbreviated version of the usual disclaimer: "This game was brought to you under rights granted by major league baseball - and is prohibited!" Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 12:11, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

There's actually a decent article about the Ripken game under the odd title Longest professional baseball game. (WP:RM anyone?) —Wknight94 (talk) 13:01, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. Now I'm trying to find an article about the 26-inning game of 1920. It seems like there isn't one. Maybe there's a list of the longest games, somewhere. In looking at 1920 in baseball, it crossed my mind that there is a possible connection between the 26-inning game and the death of Ray Chapman, in that they probably both involved a dark baseball against a dark background. That problem went away once they started substituting new baseballs frequently - which, along with the livelier ball, helped lead to the radical change from the "defensive" approach to batting (the "inside game") to the "offensive" approach (the "power game"). None of that explains how a game in 1981 could drag out 33 innings. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:27, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I decided to take up the torch on this Suspended game idea. This does not preclude it being interwoven with another article, or even being deleted if someone thinks it's unworthy. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 14:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a pretty good start to me, better than what I had. faithless (^speak) 01:50, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Danke. My thought on the original was not so much about copyrights as about too much detail for the reader to follow. Hence the overview, and a link to the rules if someone wants to read that megillah. Then some anecdotal examples to illustrate the concepts. That part could probably be organized better. There could also be more emphasis (and more concrete information) on when the rules were added and changed, along with the why that's already in there. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 02:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx

Why was this article moved from West Tenn Diamond Jaxx? Minorleaguebaseball.com, the Seattle Mariners' website, and the Diamond Jaxx' own official website all list the team name as "West Tenn." Wikipedia is intentionally being wrong...why exactly? 69.7.37.69 03:26, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Please, throttle back the anti-Wikipedia vitriol - it's the action of one user who thinks he's doing the right thing. It can be moved back, just propose it, and give sources why this name is incorrect. - BillCJ 03:49, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

There's no throttling, no anti-wikipedia, and no vitriol. Jesus Christ, I try to help and this is the response I get. And you removing my comments, when yours were the first to assume bad faith, is really endearing. 69.7.37.69 12:40, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, yet another user mad the move as a cut and paste, which is the wrong way to do it. You'll have a chance to propose it be moved the correct way to your choice now. - BillCJ 03:53, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Profanity and overreaction aside, that IP address is right. The formal name of the club is "West Tenn", not "West Tennessee". It's listed that way on their own website [17] and in various other references such as Baseball America's Directory. "West Tennessee" should redirect to "West Tenn", not the other way around. However, there is a mistake on the page. It should say "are" rather than "is". And now it does. I was also amused that the article said they "hosed" the All-Star Game. Hopefully NOT. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 12:47, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Silly me, I thought a move was a "move". It's actually a "copy". It must have been defined by an old Cobol student. Anyway, I've asked my favorite admin for help with this. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It's fixed now. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 13:33, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

THanks for finding an admin to fix this. I did what I could as a non-admin to clean it up. I agree (and always did) that West Tenn was the proper name, per the team's website. I just objected to the confusion of one or two users with Wikipedia as a whole. It seems my strongly-worded statement was taken even more strongly than intended, and for that I apologize. Clean-up of extreme profanity and PAs (also spam, trolling, and the like) is permitted on article talk pages, but that's usually the extent allowed. We try to let everything else stand. In my opinion, his first response crossed that line, but his self-edited rewrite is allowable. - BillCJ 16:21, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no excuse here, ever, for vulgarity and/or blasphemy. It reflects poorly on the one who says it, and deserves to be deleted as it is the epitome of incivility. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 01:44, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

It occurred to me later, that it's necessary to leave a redirect in place, otherwise a vandal could "move" the article to some obscure title and finding it would be a problem. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} 01:45, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Baseball Coach

Template:Baseball Coach has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — NatureBoyMD 21:53, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Aus Baseball Club infobox

Template:Aus Baseball Club infobox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — NatureBoyMD 21:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Mlbretiredtest

Template:Mlbretiredtest has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — NatureBoyMD 22:11, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Baseball Links

Template:Baseball Links has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — NatureBoyMD 17:37, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Johnson City Cardinals

The Johnson City Cardinals page has recently been rescued from an ill-timed deletion. THere were some WP:BLP issuies, but those have been removed. The remaining portion is just a stub now, and could use some attention from editors with experience in improving minor league team articles. Thanks. - BillCJ 18:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to move seasonal articles

I am making a proposal to move all baseball seasonal articles (for example, 2006 Cincinnati Reds season) to not include the word "season" (it would then read simply "2006 Cincinnati Reds"). I feel it is very self-explanatory and redundant. If you think this would take too long to move all of these, I would like to comment that at the B-R Bullpen they have a seasonal article for every season (where as here we only have maybe ⅔) and Soxrock was able to move all of them to their appropriate name there within only a few days. (I'm not saying he should have to move them all again, but I'm just making a point that it wouldn't take that long if we do it efficiently.) Thanks.   jj137 (Talk) 18:15, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

• Currently the football and basketball season articles also use the "2006 [team name] season" type format. So changing it on the baseball articles only might be confusing. It's best to keep them all consistent. In my opinion anyways. Spanneraol 18:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the "2006 [team name] season" format is the least ambiguous name. However, you might approach the NFL and NBA (mayber even NHL) projects to see if there is any interest in those projects in going along with the moves. We could then set up a single discussion page for the issue. I support keeping the names as is, but am not oppoesed to further discussion. - BillCJ 19:09, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

In addition to Spanneraol's comment, NHL uses "2006-07 [team name] season" as well. Right now, I say leave the name as they are. --Michael Greiner 19:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Anyone know the general reasoning behind the other sports including "season"? —Wknight94 (talk) 19:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I think all sports articles including "season" could be moved. I still think it would be easier.   jj137 (Talk) 22:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I actually prefer the "season" cause it's a bit more specific.. its an article about the season.. not just the team... don't really see the point of making the change. So if this is a vote, i'd vote to keep the "season" in the name for convience sake.. not a really pressing need to change all the sports articles over all the different projects. Spanneraol 22:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a pressing need for the change. "Season" might be a bit clearer to the average reader.--Fabrictramp 22:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

OK... I see your point now. It is more specific; thanks everyone for your opinion on this.   jj137 (Talk) 23:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:NLE-NYM-Logo.png (FYI COPY)

Image:NLE-NYM-Logo.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 10:34, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_with_numbers_retired_from_two_or_more_teams"

ßcommand, Your bot tagged an image on a baseball list that I authored, however the images that I used were "borrowed" from the pages of the various baseball teams that the players I wrote about were playing for. In looking, the image, as with litereally dozens of other baseball images has the following written in it's comments: "It's a logo. That's why we have the logo template. Logos are fair use under Wikipedia's policy, and anyone can tell that this is, in fact, a logo of a sports team, as already stated on this page. That being said, the logo is of fairly small resolution, and, while copyrighted by the team, is being used for educational purposes, with no personal or monetary gain. As logos are inherently copyrighted, there is no free equivalent, and it is not replacable."

All of the images in question were uploaded by a user calling himself: Silent Wind of Doom and from looking at his comments, there are a lot of warnings such as the one above on his talk page. Given the scope of his comtributions to many different baseball articles, I would like to have your suggestions as what is acceptible to your bot as many of these images relate to some significant and high profile baseball articles. I would also like to get folks from the baseball WikiProject involved so that all of these images are made to be compliant if possible.

If you would be so kind to leave comments on my talk page at your leisure I would most appreciate whatever support you can offer. I will also make a copy of this on the Baseball WikiProject page so that editors will be aware of the issue and can seek to remedy it. Thank you in advance for your assistance. RobHoitt 22:44, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I wanted to bring the WP up to speed on this as I saw many images that were loaded in simmilarly to the Mets logo that was tagged. I know the Phillies Logo, Braves Logo and many more are vulnerable to this tagging. I wanted to let the community know to see what we could do to ensure that we don't lose team logos and images for many of our great baseball teams. RobHoitt 22:44, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Most of the nonsense tagging that stupid betacomand bot does can be fixed by tweaking the summary on the image pages. That bot is just pure evil. Spanneraol 23:05, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Right, well I did the good faith thing and contacted the owner of the bot as you've seen above... Only to have ßcommand not only ignore my request, but to archive it off his main talk page without any response. If ßcommand's bot is running willy-nilly and he is apathetic to it's behavior then I would think that a concerted effort needs to be made to impress the need to care for this monstrosity. Do we have any admin's in the group who can offer specific guidance on this? This bot seems to be really too agressive, but that is only my opinion... RobHoitt 13:49, 10 November 2007 (UTC)