[rhettyeakley]

Steve, you are actually making his point for him. When Rhys said there were only a fraction of the teams then he was speaking ONLY of the Major Leagues, as the Minor League system during that time period was everywhere, any city with a decent population had a minor league ballclub. In that time period there were only 16 teams in the "majors". The rosters of those 16 teams were also not as large as they are today.

Thus, there were perhaps 10X the number of organized players competing during that time period for only half the number of teams with smaller rosters. I think this is what Rhys was getting at w/ #3. Even taking into consideration the "excluded" players from the Negro Leagues there were more people trying to get to the majors then.

-Rhett