In today’s New York Times there is an article on records in sports, and it says that Nap Lajoie’s .426 is the all-time highest. I grew up with one of those Sporting News stat books, and in there and everywhere else I ever encountered the lists, it was always Hornsby’s .424 in 1924 the was considered to be the record. I am curious as to the explanation for the change–musta been some sort of new evidence or a new way of determine batting averages. Anybody have any details to offer on that?
The Wiki article says his average that season was revised a few times.
Baseball-Reference also lists his avg. as .426.
Thank you Joker and coach!
I was curious to see if he ever faced the great Boston pitcher, Babe Ruth. He did!
(read this in old-timey sports-reader voice)
At the end of the 1901 season, Lajoie was credited with hitting .422 with 220 hits in 543 at bats. This stood until somebody actually did the division in 1918 and discovered that that meant he hit .405. So the record books were changed and weren’t revised until 1953 when the Sporting News ran a story on Lajoie and a baseball historian named John Tattersall researched the box scores of 1901 and discovered that Lajoie had 229 hits in 543 at bats. So that put him back to .422.
Sometime in the late 1970’s-early 1980s, researchers checked more sources and proved that Lajoie had 232 hits in 544 at bats. Thus his .426.
From Google books. p.173.
Quite a lot of old numbers have been changed. I grew up being told the highest batting average of all time in a career was .367, by Ty Cobb. It’s still Ty Cobb, but has been changed to .366.
The reason is was downgraded is that it’s been determined he had 4189 hits, not 4191. That means that when they were celebrating Pete Rose’s breaking the hit record, they were doing it a bit late; Rose had broken the record a few hits before.
That source also says Lajoie’s .426 average has not gained universal acceptance. It sounds like all the box scores from 1901 are accessible, so what’s the controversy?
People don’t like it when they revise statistics. They can get weird abut it.
If they can erase a bunch of no-hitters, why get upset over a couple of BA points?
All box scores are mostly available. You’d be amazed at how much they vary in precision. Not as reliable as what we have the last 50+ years.
I’ve proved that reported triple plays from 1890 didn’t occur, although the Boston Globe reported they did.
The Ricketts Family can add a Pete Rose monument to their reconstructed Wrigley Field since he broke Cobb’s record there instead of old Riverfront Stadium. 
Anyone here want to buy a used undershirt? It was only worn for one inning.
Bet no one ever goes back to review Dal Maxvill’s .216. So unfair.
A “record” from 1901 shouldn’t even be counted these days. There is no relevance to the modern game. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they pitched underhand.
No, they pitched overhand. Pitching philosophy was quite a bit different.
Where would you prefer to draw the line?
Not sure. Do you think someone hitting .426 in 1901 has any relevance to the current game?
I’d say the deadball era and earlier has no relevance. The 1920’s through the the 1950’s gets closer, and the modern game is the 1960’s to the present.
Probably not for batting averages. The rule(in the American league) when Lajoie accomplished that feat was that foul balls didn’t count as strikes. So, you fouled off five pitches and you still had three strikes to go. Lajoie might have hit .333 multiple times in the modern era. Certainly home run totals can’t be compared because of the “dead ball.” But a guy who hit ten homers that year might be a 45 homer guy in the modern era.
Though, to be fair, batting average in general has really little relevance to much. It’s been shown that OBP is far closer related to Runs Scored (which really is the point of the offense in baseball).
Regardless any counting or simple division stat is going vary substantially through different eras. Better to use normalized stats like OBP+ (or ERA+) or WAR.