[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by jsfriedm

I know this runs counter to the prevailing wisdom on this, but I actually think Bill James made a very interesting argument about this. Essentially he said that the point of playing baseball is to win the game. Which team won the most games in a season? The 1906 Chicago Cubs. Two seasons? 06-07 Cubs. Three seasons? 06-08 Cubs. All the way out to ten seasons, it's the 1904-1913 Chicago Cubs (I actually checked this - they won one more regular season game than the 1934-1943 Yankees). So no team in baseball history was better at winning games (in the regular season, at least). If you don't put in Tinker, Evers, and Chance, then the only HOFer from that team is Three Finger Brown. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So who do you put in? Tinker, Evers, and Chance were actually all really good players, both offensively and defensively. Maybe even better than the numbers show, because so much of their value was defensive. Their peak was at a time where the league ERA was about 3 and teams averaged about 1 unearned run per game. So if the Cubs only averaged .5 unearned runs per game, that is an enormous difference - far bigger than the impact defense has as a differentiator in today's game. And yes, they didn't turn an exceptional number of double plays, but with steals, bunts, and hit-and-runs, double plays just weren't as important a part of defense as they became later. So Tinker, Evers, and Chance may not be Tier 1 HOFers, but they are far from the weakest candidates, and they are not just in because of a poem.

Valid viewpoint. They probably aren't in solely because of the poem, but the poem certainly didn't hurt. I've been a Cubs fan for 35+ years - it doesn't bother me in the least that they are in, LOL.