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Posted By: runscott

I have been collecting 1900-1914 baseball articles and one I read recently points out that fielders were usually given errors if they touched the ball and didn't make the play. Because of this, a lot of the better fielders (and team players) had WORSE fielding pct's, since they could dive and touch balls to slow them down or stop them, limiting runner advancement, whereas the weaker fielders (or non-team players) avoided such blotches on their fielding percentages, or simply couldn't reach as many balls. Of course, it was also tougher to dive and make a play with poorer field conditions and smaller gloves.

I have loads of these articles - I'm planning to go through them at some point and create a paper that highlites these differences and some of the "inside baseball" that was prevalent back then and which today's players don't give a hoot about.