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Is Tigers Legend Hank Greenberg owed an RBI - 1937

Mitchrapp

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Was Tigers great Hank Greenberg cheated out of an RBI in 1937?

Herm Krabbenhoft is convinced he was.

Krabbenhoft, 66, is a Tigers fan who grew up in St. Clair Shores and a retired research chemist who lives in Schenectady, N.Y. He's also a sabermetrician, one of those fans who like to immerse themselves in the minutiae of baseball statistics.

He says baseball's cherished record book is "fraught with errors," maybe thousands, and he and other members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) strive to see them corrected, big and small.

And this might be one of the big ones. Greenberg had 183 RBIs in '37. If he is credited with one more, he would tie Lou Gehrig's 1931 American League record. (Hack Wilson of the Cubs holds the major league record with 191.)

He was joined in the project by fellow SABR member Trent McCotter.

"Five years or so ago, we were talking about this and said, gee whiz, Greenberg is only one RBI less than Gehrig," Krabbenhoft said. "Why don't we check that out?"

So McCotter studied the New York Yankees' 1931 season to verify Gehrig's RBI total, game by game, while Krabbenhoft did the 1937 Tigers, poring over game accounts and box scores in old issues of the Free Press, the Detroit News, the Detroit Times and out-of-town newspapers.

Krabbenhoft said McCotter found several errors in Gehrig's RBI count, but they canceled each other out and didn't affect his 184 total.

The key error Krabbenhoft found occurred in Game 2 of a Tigers-Athletics doubleheader on June 20, 1937, in Philadelphia. The official box score credited Greenberg with no RBIs, but Krabbenhoft is convinced he had one when pinch-runner Flea Clifton scored on Greenberg's grounder and wild throw to second by the shortstop.

The question is this: Was Clifton on second or third, because none of the accounts specify that. If he was on third, it should have been an RBI.

"There is no question he was on third," Krabbenhoft said. "There was nobody out when Clifton entered the game (at first) as a pinch-runner for Billy Rogell. On second base was Pete Fox. The next batter was Charlie Gehringer, a left-handed batter. He singled, and his single knocked in Fox.

"So Pete Fox advanced two bases on the single. There is no question in my mind that Clifton also advanced two bases on Gehringer's single, going from first to third."

One reason Krabbenhoft is so sure of that, he said, is because Clifton was known as a fast and aggressive runner, but that's still circumstantial evidence. He makes two more points to support his argument:

While the official box score has Greenberg with no RBIs, Krabbenhoft said "there are two independent box scores showing Greenberg has one RBI that game," by the Associated Press and Philadelphia Inquirer.

He said those box scores also have something else right that the official one has wrong.

"I think the most compelling support for Greenberg actually batting in the run is the fact that they are correct for Rudy York having only one RBI whereas the official records show York with three RBIs," Krabbenhoft said. "It is absolutely impossible for York to have three RBI. Impossible. He cannot. So the official records are wrong."

Krabbenhoft said that also gives him a theory about how the mistake was made: three RBIs for York and none for Greenberg are the correct figures -- for Game 1 of the doubleheader. Somehow, he said, that's what the official scorer transferred to Game 2.

"And that's what got transferred to the Howe News Bureau, then the official statistician for the American League," Krabbenhoft said.

Krabbenhoft spoke about his findings at the recent SABR convention in Long Beach, Calif., but now they're in the hands of the Elias Sports Bureau -- baseball's current records keeper.

"Where we are now is in the process of reviewing that material and trying to determine whether any other evidence exists that could be gathered and evaluated before we make a judgment," said Elias executive vice president Steve Hirdt.

And while Elias has made such changes, it doesn't make such decisions lightly. It wants evidence "almost behind a shadow of a doubt," Hirdt said.

"What's the phrase, measure twice and cut once?" he said. "Well, we might add a zero. We might measure 20 times and cut once."
 
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