Anyone ever send corrections to Baseball Reference?
 

I do fairly often due to data or info I find on cards, often times missed nicknames. Here's my latest and their response. Thoughts?

>I periodically discover things on vintage baseball cards which have either shed some light on subjects or even contradicted what Baseball Reference lists.
>This is a case of the latter! You have Roy Ellam only listed as playing for Birmingham (and a cup of coffee in the majors with Cincinnati) in the years 1909 - 1915
>However his T206 card, with a production date range of 1909 - 1911 has him listed as Nashville. You even used the image from that card for your picture of Ellam clearly with an"N" on the cap
>However you have his first year of playing for Nashville listed as 1916. This is patently impossible with the very well established production dates of that set of cards!


Thanks for writing. There are many omissions and mistakes in the minor league data, especially before World War II. The images we use come from many sources and are not linked to the data compilation process.

Thanks for writing. I did a quick search of the digitized copies of the 1908, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, and 1913 Reach baseball guides as well as of the copies of the the 1909, 1910, 1911, and 1912 Spalding baseball guides, and all of the mentions for Ellam are with teams we show on his player pages, with one exception. Page 171 of the 1911 Spalding guide lists Roy Ellam on the roster of KC in the American Association. I don't know what to do with that, since we don't have stats showing him with KC that year.

I am not familiar with the T206 card set, but unless it is the only source of baseball information in the world that is infallible, it contains mistakes in its information like every other source. Perhaps the card is in error; I can't say. If you have more information, please send it along, but we can't make any edits based on the card alone.


Gary Gillette

I think they are right. I dont think roy ellam played for nashville early in his career. Isnt that card an error or something with his listed team?

then where did the image with an "N" on his hat come from?

I dont remember the specifics and cannot find it at the moment but he was with Birmingham during theT206 production time frame save for his stint with the Reds. So the card had the wrong team, reason for the wrong team, i am unsure.

I have no problem saying it's the wrong team. what bothers me is an image, which is taken from a photo, of him with an "N" on his hat. Unless they changed the hat to match the erroneous card, but that seems weird.

They get almost all of the older data from SABR. So you would need to get the information to SABR if you actually find evidence. I would love to help them fill out the rosters for a lot of teams where they only have team names listed, but I can't figure out who to talk to. If you contact Baseball Reference, they'll defer to SABR.

If the reference photo listed at T206Resource.com is accurate, then the artist did, infact, change the uniform for the painting of the card. It seems to have been fairly common for the artists to change uniforms. Not sure why he would have changed it to an incorrect uniform, though.

they have made changes I've sent them before, but I'm ohfer on my last two. Also sent them some minor league strikeout data from a guy for whom they had no stats, they said they don't do partial stats (which is untrue) and would need full league stats to include my findings.

Several years ago I informed them of a number of specific errors in the early minor league data, including stats, the teams that players were on and even team names. The response was very tepid and no changes were made. I was a little surprised in the lack of interest but I also understand--that early data is so riddled with systemic errors it would be hard to "fix" the data based on sporadic notes from outside users. Maybe they could develop some system for users to carefully document the errors they find and eventually incorporate it into the dataset.

In the case of Ellam, the original source for the image is a photo with him in his connellsville uniform and in the lithographic process they changed it to be Nashville. He spent most of the years with Birmingham, he likely was signed or something by Nashville during the time they made the SL cards and never made the team or something along those lines.
-Rhett

They do make changes. Years ago when i had more time on my hands, I actually got them to change a few things on Warren Spahn that was wrong and also Rene Gonzalez. Talk about a difference in the caliber of players involved!

BR changes
 

They will make adjustments. For instance they use a picture of Bumpus Jones that I had created from a team photo. Not sure when they put it up, but for years they used something different.
As a researcher of obscure, early ballplayers it is not at all unusual to find a player with a team that's not listed in BR. They work with the SABR minor league committee to try to keep info as up-to-date as possible. However, they won't do just one change when it comes up. They hold off and do them in quantity. How often?? I guess we'd have to ask them.
As for the "wrong" uniform, Rhys could certainly attest that there are loads of photos of players in spring training garb who never played regular season with a team.

Like I said they absolutely do make changes. I provided a newspaper article showing Vern Stephens also carried the nickname "Little Slug" and Lou Brock's 1966 Topps card which stated he was nicknamed "Rocket." among others I have sent them over the years.

That is the one explanation I thought of that made any sense and in a follow-up email I posited the same idea. Cool to know the origin of the image though, that's an impressive bit of information!

Yeah, you would want to use microfiche to look at old Nashville newspapers if you wanted to confirm he played for the team in that timeframe.

I found a real photo postcard of Ellam along with some of his personal effects in an ebay live auction about 10 years ago. (I no longer own it) There was even a news clipping of his death which was an unfortunate accident.

Here is further discussion we have had that references the Connellsville PC Dan had found along with another postcard that I had located...

http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=204979

I have sent in numerous corrections for old Pirates stats. Some have been corrected, some haven't. I actually just sent in one today for a player who was charged for five earned runs while only facing three batters back in 1894

Roy Ellam
 

"Slippery" Ellam did indeed play for Birmingham 1909-1915. He was signed to manage Nashville in 1916 and promptly lead the Vols to their fourth Southern Association championship.

Well-loved for the years he had in Birmingham, on May 8, 1916, “Roy Ellam Day” was held at Rickwood Field. The former Barons player was presented with a Masonic watch charm as he came to bat in the second inning as Nashville lost to Birmingham 4-3.

He stayed with the Volunteers through the 1920 season, when on October 5 he was dismissed, stating from his home in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, "I understand they charge me with not getting results."

Ellam managed Galveston in the Texas League the next season, then returned to Atlanta to manage the Crackers in 1922.

The previous post by rhettyeakley is the most plausible with no evidence of Ellam being with Nashville prior to 1916.

Very cool! I somehow missed that thread.

First thing I thought of is that the card was the mistake. We all know that wrong, old and out of date photos were used through out the production of cards

"out of date" doesn't work when he hadn't played for the team yet. Time travel would be necessary.

From what has been posted here it's pretty obvious that for some reason (mistake, or a short, non-playing tenure with the team) the photo used to make the image was changed to Nashville. We will probably never know why for certain.