Team Batting Leaders of the Deadball Era

The American Association Almanac

Spring 2026

Vol. 22, No. 1

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Team Batting Leaders of the Deadball Era, Part 1

How this issue came together

Work for the Spring 2026 issue began Oct. 1, 2025.

The original idea was to continue with the theme of verifying published records for principal batting records from last spring when pitcher records were re-examined. That idea morphed into what follows.

At its inception, the idea was to identify and record the team leader for each general batting category including runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, stolen bases, total bases, batting average and slugging pct. The idea was to show how these records evolved, how a record evolved, how its lineage progressed through the years. For example, Kansas City’s Mike Grady was the Association’s original home run leader with 16. Buck Freeman of Minneapolis usurped that role with 18 in 1907. Then Gavvy Cravath of Minneapolis with 29 in 1911 which became the all-time deadball era record.

The original idea was to include the entire American Association through 1962 but it seemed better for now to limit the scope to the deadball era which encompasses a much more manageable time frame, 1902-1920.

In order to lay the groundwork for completing this work, a spreadsheet was constructed for data entry. The resulting database was organized by team, then by year. For Columbus, each player who was the leader in a batting category was listed. The same pattern was preserved throughout for all eight teams, starting with runs, then hits, doubles, etc.

This work took a roughly two months, after which the data were organized so that each team leader could be readily identified along with their peers for the 19-year period from 1902 to 1920.

Doing so gave rise to the idea of including the runner-up for each category. This proved a good idea because the margin between the team leader and his runner-up gives an indication of how marginal or dominant the leader actually was. So for a player who scored 111 runs, knowing their teammate scored 110 is notable.

During November and December I decided a home run log for each off the top five players would be valuable, not just for the sake of doing so but to verify that all their home runs could be documented and accounted for. Using newspapers.com (which is finally fixed after four months of having to repeat each page-search…phew!), those home runs were tracked down: 18 by Buck Freeman in 1907, 18 by Happy Felsch in 1914, 22 by Bubbles Hargrave in 1920, 23 by Bunny Brief in 1920 and of course Cravath’s monumental 29 in 1911.

Documenting the home runs of Oscar "Happy" Felsch posed a real challenge. He is credited with 19 home runs on baseball-reference as well as in Marshall Wright, but I could only find 18 despite exhaustive measures used to find the “missing” home run. Perhaps most illuminating about my search was finding that the newspaper reporters of the time, particularly in the Milwaukee Sentinel, couldn’t seem to keep track of his home runs either, apparently mis-reporting the number in their game accounts, a number that did not correspond with the number listed in the Sunday summaries. I spent way too much time on that! But I'm confident that his 18 home runs is an accurate reflection of what he actually accomplished.

I mentioned that the website newspapers.com was finally fixed. It was an ordeal! The way it usually works is like this: you select the newspaper you want by finding the city and state first. Then you select the year you want if if it’s available. Then you get a list of the months to pick from, and finally the actual day. This always worked like clockwork, but this time there was an extra twist. After selecting the day, the newspaper page would come up as usual. Then you could go to whatever page you wanted and that was fine. But then, when you wanted another day, say the 24th after looking at the 23rd, I’d click on the 24th but it would go back to the 23rd. I’d have to reposition my cursor, click again and wait and then it would work.

Never did I have to repeat this process more than once, but the fact that I had to do it at all was utterly maddening! Add to that how many times I tried to get the company to fix the damn problem and they seemed oblivious as usual. Finally I was able to find an administrator who actually looked into the matter, found the same thing happened to her and then she acted. After that it took another six weeks for the problem to be fixed, but now it is finally working again. What an effing ordeal! But the thing is I rely on that service (I could get it free from SABR, my baseball organization) but I choose to pay for it because I value it so much) and so there was no other option but to put up with that problem.

In the meantime I wanted to move a bit beyond the usual file work of gathering data. So I used the Flip-book program I subscribe to created a flip-book of Cravath’s 29 home runs. I went through Newspapers and located the box score for each game, made a screenshot of each one, then labeled each one accordingly. Then I brought up the flip-book template and inserted each screenshot onto a page until all 29 were put in. There were a few issues I needed to fix early on but it turned out to be a fun project.

So what you get is a computerized image of a booklet (with a cover, etc.) and you click on a page to advance the pages. It simulates paper and there is a sound like a page turning that goes with it, so it’s kinda fun. I enjoyed putting it together but made a mistake at one point so had to remove it from being on my blog, then I got too busy to do anything about it, so now that the Almanac is out I’ll take care of that. Always something. It’s like a Kindle or whatever. I don’t have a Kindle (God forbid!) But I think that’s how they work. I think someday I may use that format for the Almanac rather than printing it twice a year.

By the time January rolled around I had things pretty well set as far as my data and ideas for organizing the Spring issue, so I was able to take a step back from it and work on peripheral things related to the topic. Then I started writing in earnest February 1. By the end of the third week I could tell I was in good shape for meeting my deadline. I looked at my page number and thought the quantity was in line with a usual Almanac.

What I couldn’t predict was how all the lists I’d generated would impact that. So when I printed my “dummy” copy the other day, it turned out that the Almanac would require TWENTY sheets of paper! That’s simply undo-able, esp. including a centerfold and cover. So I cut it in half which meant doing some re-writing and reformatting; considering what I ultimately gained from doing that, it was a small price to pay, setting me back only another day or two from when I’d hoped to be printing.

In the meantime, I’ve had a few ideas for the Fall 2026 issue. Well, that issue was resolved in hurry when I had to adjust my content for Spring. I no longer have to worry about what I’ll be doing because the second-half of what I’ve just finished will take care of it. Unfortunately that means that I could only cover four teams this time, so Milwaukee will come with the Fall issue, along with Minneapolis, St. Paul and Toledo.

No one can process the stats alone without it becoming a brain-numbing exercise; some people can but they quickly land in a nice, safe institution where they can ponder their numbers all day long…And so I’ve buttressed the stats with lots of anecdotal notes about the players. And this is where things get interesting, that is, if you’re interested in reading the stories about other people’s lives. In the case of baseball players, it often proves interesting because they wind up in careers and doing things that are so divergent from one another. And of course there are the dramatic aspects of people at the same time, people who died much too early, people who were imprisoned or institutionalized, people who acted outside the bounds of the law, got in fights, got hurt or sick doing other things. You’ll read about such things in this issue.

People who read baseball history like different things. But I'm convinced with the personal element in my writing most book editors would consider such thing indulgent. That's what makes the Almanac special. I include personal notes on occasion which lends color to the writing. While the pattern of the writing stays fairly strict with respect to the overall language, there are times when a personal note just seems fitting. I don't hold back when it comes to such things if they add to the overall meaning I'm trying to convey. The Almanac is unique in that respect. The publication is primarily a baseball history journal, but it's also a baseball research publication so it's important to my mission to describe the process I go through for getting each issue put together.

The Front Cover and Table of Contents