history-courtesy-runners-baseball-mlb

If you're reading this, you're probably well-familiar with Baseball-Reference.com, and you've probably gleaned any number of facts from B-R.com's play-by-play database.

What you might not know is where that data comes from: Retrosheet, a non-profit organization devoted to the propagation of baseball statistics and staffed entirely by volunteers. For some years, of the most productive of Retrosheet's volunteers has been Tom Ruane, who also writes the occasional essay about all he's learned. 

Tom's latest is about games that "broke" Retrosheet, and here's just a small bit about one of my favorite baseball obscurities ... the use of courtesy runners in league games ...

Major League Baseball has certainly become more professional and formalized over the years, and on balance this is probably a good thing. But man, you sure could see a lot of strange things back then. For everything we gain, we do lose something.