Friday, June 24, 2022

Where did you come from?

Baseball Reference and Stats Crew both have a "Grimm" listed as having played for the Beavers in 1926 and 1930, but as far as I can tell, no "Grimm" saw any action with the Beavers during that time, or any other for that matter (there was Bob Grim, but he came along much later).


I have gone through every single available (which is almost all of them) Beavers box score for '26 and '30, and not once is there a "Grimm" mentioned. In fact, the only other baseball "Grimm" that is even mentioned on the same newspaper pages during those two years is, Charlie Grimm, then of the Chicago Cubs.

I briefly thought that somebody might've gotten confused while reading the recaps of the two Beavers-Cubs exhibition games that took place in 1930, and added Charlie to the Beavers for these sites by mistake, as he did appear in those two games. But the teams didn't play in '26, so that possible explanation doesn't hold much water.

It's a tad frustrating to know that I haven't gotten a response to either of the emails I've sent to Baseball Reference in recent months regarding other corrections, both of which were backed by solid research (and links to blog posts), nor have any changes been made; and yet somebody else was apparently just able to add a random name willy-nilly to the site, with seemingly no additional information needed to justify the addition.

I spent a couple of hours, and clicked on hundreds of pages in search of this "Grimm", and found absolutely nothing. So, unless proven otherwise, I'm just going to go ahead and say with near certainty that at no point was there a "Grimm" playing for the Portland Beavers in 1926 or 1930.

8 comments:

  1. It's a frustrating process to try to get some of those pages updated. I feel your pain. If you have any luck, let me know your secret. Still a bunch wrong on the 1897 league I wrote about. Some of that data came from a guy in the mid 80s that did some research. Wouldn't be surprised if Grimm came from some guys typewriter from 40 years ago.

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    1. Geez, if you, a published author, can't get changes made to their pages on a league that you wrote a book about (the only book about it), what chance does some nobody like me stand in getting their attention?

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    2. I don't suppose I've tried as hard as I should. Probably only sent one email. After I finished the book, I thought it would be good to get some of those pages updated on baseball reference, but kind of lost enthusiasm for the project.

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    3. I probably won't bother sending anymore either. If they can't respond to even one of the two I already sent, I don't feel like I should have to waste anymore time sending more. I don't expect very many people to care about these kind of posts/information anyway. I guess if anyone ever does, and they do a Google search, maybe my post(s) will show up for them.

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  2. I just searched on Newspapers.com and found neither either. Maybe this is one of them "easter eggs" programmers include to mess with people?

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    1. I appreciate the confirmation, Peter! I suppose it's possible, but I haven't ever heard of such a thing happening on sites like these.

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  3. Bummer about Baseball Reference and not being able to find more info on Grimm. Sure hope BR gets back to you and updates their site.

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    1. I tried to help them fix their site, if they don't care about doing so then that's on them. And as far as old "Grimm" goes, I'm about 99.9% certain that he didn't exist, so there's no need to be bummed out about the lack of information. Besides, I've already identified two more previously unknown Beavers since publishing this post, and am hot on the trail of a third :)

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