Changes

::As for the stolen bases numbers, they are a little problematic. Stolen bases weren't recorded until 1887, and even then there wasn't an immediate consensus on the criteria for what constituted a steal. Sunday's best number in a season (1890) was 84; the all-time record for stolen bases in a single season is 138. His standing all-time is insignificant, That having been said, however, it's really not all that useful to compare players from different eras with just the numbers, since conditions in the 1880s were vastly different from, say, post WWII. For 19th century players, it seems to me to be most useful to compare players to their peers. In his own era,  Sunday never ranked higher than 3rd in the National League. For the record, once SBs began being recorded, Sunday stole 34 bases in 1887, 71 in 1888 (3rd in NL), 47 in 1888 (8th in NL), and 84 in 1890 (3rd in NL). He lost parts of some seasons due to injuries, and I have no doubt that he could have been the league leader in one of those seasons if he hadn't gotten hurt. But that's the way it goes. As an aside, the early Sunday biographies are generally inaccurate about his baseball career. You'd be better off using baseball sources if you want to be accurate here.--[[User:Leansleft|Leansleft]] 10:19, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

::As for the stolen bases numbers, they are a little problematic. Stolen bases weren't recorded until 1887, and even then there wasn't an immediate consensus on the criteria for what constituted a steal. Sunday's best number in a season (1890) was 84; the all-time record for stolen bases in a single season is 138. His standing all-time is insignificant, That having been said, however, it's really not all that useful to compare players from different eras with just the numbers, since conditions in the 1880s were vastly different from, say, post WWII. For 19th century players, it seems to me to be most useful to compare players to their peers. In his own era,  Sunday never ranked higher than 3rd in the National League. For the record, once SBs began being recorded, Sunday stole 34 bases in 1887, 71 in 1888 (3rd in NL), 47 in 1888 (8th in NL), and 84 in 1890 (3rd in NL). He lost parts of some seasons due to injuries, and I have no doubt that he could have been the league leader in one of those seasons if he hadn't gotten hurt. But that's the way it goes. As an aside, the early Sunday biographies are generally inaccurate about his baseball career. You'd be better off using baseball sources if you want to be accurate here.--[[User:Leansleft|Leansleft]] 10:19, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

:OK, I confess. Most of that previous comment was copied from the discussion of Billy Sunday over on Wikipedia, so I guess I should have put it in quotes. I took it because it it gave the numbers, which you can find in any of the baseball encyclopedias. I'm old-fashioned, meaning I like printed stuff, so I'll refer you to the Baseball Encyclopedia, or Total Baseball, or Bill James's stat books, or the Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball. Point is, the numbers are out there. In the 1920s someone compared Sunday to Ty Cobb when Sunday was a star preacher and Cobb was a star player, and somehow that stuck, but it wasn't a good comparison then and it's a worse one now. (Plus, Ty Cobb was a jerk.) If you're REALLY interested, there is a book on Sunday's baseball career ("Sunday at the Ballpark") that has lots of quotes from the newspapers of the time, and you can find out more than you want to know about his baseball career.--[[User:Leansleft|Leansleft]] 17:55, 29 June 2007 (EDT)

:OK, I confess. Most of that previous comment was copied from the discussion of Billy Sunday over on Wikipedia, so I guess I should have put it in quotes. I took it because it it gave the numbers, which you can find in any of the baseball encyclopedias. I'm old-fashioned, meaning I like printed stuff, so I'll refer you to the Baseball Encyclopedia, or Total Baseball, or Bill James's stat books, or the Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball. Point is, the numbers are out there. In the 1920s someone compared Sunday to Ty Cobb when Sunday was a star preacher and Cobb was a star player, and somehow that stuck, but it wasn't a good comparison then and it's a worse one now. (Plus, Ty Cobb was a jerk.) If you're REALLY interested, there is a book on Sunday's baseball career ("Sunday at the Ballpark") that has lots of quotes from the newspapers of the time, and you can find out more than you want to know about his baseball career.--[[User:Leansleft|Leansleft]] 17:55, 29 June 2007 (EDT)