Quote:
Originally Posted by RUKen
I think that the names indicated now on BR better reflect how the hometown newspapers of the time referred to the teams, at least from about 1901 onwards. Sometimes, different papers used different names for the teams (such as Highlanders vs. Invaders for AL New York in 1903 and Browns vs. Ravens for AL St. Louis in 1906), but at least they eliminated the names that are not supported by the contemporary papers, such as dropping Beaneaters in favor of Nationals for NL Boston prior to 1907.
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Most of the new problems are 19th century ones, but they changed the Senators to Nationals from 1905 on. I did a look at the 1925 season in the middle section of that run and the usage of Senators is substantially higher by newspapers dot com results (over 700% higher). In fact, most of the "Nationals" usage that year was referring to the 19th century team, not the Senators.
They changed the Cubs franchise name to just Chicago in 1902-03. Who said that was right? They were often called the Colts. Call them the Colts. Why just leave it blank? No one was referring to the team as the Chicago, simply because there was another Chicago team. Worst case, call them Chicago Nationals. That was used often too, though mostly just to differentiate between the AL team.
The 19th century names are butchered now and it just causes confusion because they did the changes on their own. I run a Pirates history page with daily posts, which I've been doing in various places since 2002. I now have random people just telling me names are wrong and sending me clips of the BR page as their "proof", so each time I have to explain how the biggest baseball site made a huge blunder with their updates. Who do you think most people believe? I'll give you a hint, it's not the guy who breathes Pirates history every single day. The changes were poorly researched at best. Just an awful job.