The Pacific Coast League had great players. It didn't have the same baseline talent level at any point in its existence as the Major Leagues. To include players and stats from a league that was at best AAAA on average and act like we can normalize them intelligently against players who played exclusively against Major League opposition feels fairly specious.

Of course, one could make the same argument for MLB during the war years. This is the major reason I've always felt Musial to be massively overrated by serious baseball fans.

Musial played 22 seasons, 18 of them after WWII ended. If you're counting the Korean War as well, that's 3 more years. Outside of those 7 years, he had some pretty great seasons, from 46-50 and 54-58.

Yeah, I think Hal Newhouser might be a better example if you're looking for a Hall of Famer whose reputation benefited enormously from his war seasons.

DiMaggio should take a hit too, if we're going down that road. His three best seasons were from '39-'41, before he left to join the military. He only had 8 non-war time seasons, as opposed to 15 for Musial.

DiMaggio should take a hit because he was really good right before he missed three seasons due to the war?

For MLB purposes I don't think anyone counts 1939-41 as "war years."

I'm not penalizing DiMaggio. I'm saying if one penalizes Musial, they'd have to also penalize players like DiMaggio, who played at all during those years.

And fair. I was just thinking of the length of the war in total, not US involvement.

Posted by Jtpsops on 4/11/2019 3:51:00 PM (view original):
I'm not penalizing DiMaggio. I'm saying if one penalizes Musial, they'd have to also penalize players like DiMaggio, who played at all during those years.

And fair. I was just thinking of the length of the war in total, not US involvement.

The point is that from '43 to '46, a massive proportion of the best players in the league weren't... in the league. Musial missed only '45. And the same goes for the early '50s, although to a lesser extent.

My point is not that Musial wasn't a great player. But if you knock him down a bit for the seasons much of his strongest competition was overseas, I think he looks more like Pujols or Ott than Gehrig or Foxx. Still a clear HOF guy, not inner circle.

why wasnt he in the war.

Didn't get drafted until '45... Luck of the draw.

Posted by dino27 on 4/11/2019 6:49:00 PM (view original):
why wasnt he in the war.

Background here
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/in-war-or-peace-he-s-still-the-man/article_85e49aef-0867-51f5-b396-575f243afc59.html

The Accused by bandi

north korea today by an insider. is it possible. you gotta doubt any time something purports to be smuggled out. can it be one brave whistleblower. more likely its someone from outside burnishin sales with western drama. not bad not good very plain bout as ok average as a collection can be

but i do know bandi's foreign cause he wrote this: "Though he had buried the placenta of his own son here in this mining town"

Posted by bagchucker on 4/12/2019 10:34:00 PM (view original):
The Accused by bandi

north korea today by an insider. is it possible. you gotta doubt any time something purports to be smuggled out. can it be one brave whistleblower. more likely its someone from outside burnishin sales with western drama. not bad not good very plain bout as ok average as a collection can be

but i do know bandi's foreign cause he wrote this: "Though he had buried the placenta of his own son here in this mining town"

Yes. An American would have sold it on Ebay.

An article pertaining to the Boeing 737 Max, written by a pilot who is also a software engineer...worth a look...

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer.amp.html