Friday, December 30, 2005

A Research Update by Bill Williamson

Hi Carlos:

Just to bring you up to date on what I'm doing, I've found that of the Utah Digital Newspapers on line that the Ogden Standard is a veritable treasure trove of box scores. The 1901 issues have most of the games for the Intermountain League that so far have had no final stats. In fact, I've printed them out and am in the process of putting together the batting and pitching numbers - now being in limbo with the Central California League of 1910 (waiting for some microfilms through interlibrary loan).

Some things about the Ogden paper (good and bad) are:

- first names of many of the players are to be found in write ups on non game days

- the number of games played that have so far been located do not match the won/lost record listed in the Minor League Encyclopedia - particularly in regard to the Park City teams which seems to have folded in mid season and played only about half the number of games that the Encyclopedia suggests.

- stolen bases were not always listed in all of the boxes.

- once during the season(about 25 games in) the paper published a pretty good list of batting stats for the most of the league; and some ten games later put out a table of the Ogden team's batting.

- with a little work, I think a 95% accurate batting table can be arrived at - pitching is another thing - sometimes it's a guess when the starter was relieved and just how many of the totals should be credited to him and how many to the reliever

The compilations should be finished soon and I'll send them on to you then.

Just today in checking the 1900 Ogden paper, found that most of the players of 1901 team had in fact played in Ogden in 1900 in a so called "independent league".

Anyway, that's where I am right now and I'm glad that you put out the links to the papers. Hopefully others will get involved as we inch closer to getting a complete record of ALL the minor leagues.

Bill

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