This is a direct quote, word for word, from Bill James - yes Bill James - from page 102 of his book, "The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract":

"Gavvy Cravath led the National League in home runs in 1913, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918, and 1919, although he had only 219 at bats in 1919. A lot of people think that Cravath was the first great power hitter, or the Babe Ruth of his era or something. 

But Cravath played in a park, the Baker Bowl, which was by far the easiest place in baseball to hit a home run. In 1914, when Cravath led the National League with 19 home runs, he never homered in any other park; all 19 were hit in the Baker Bowl. In 1918, the same thing; Cravath led the National League in home runs with 8, but all of them were at home. 
Cravath in his career actually hit fewer home runs in road games (26) than Nellie Fox (30)."

Just thought it was worth noting.

 The SIM doubles up on park effect - so playing Cravath in a good HR park makes him the monster we know he is in SIM baseball, but a better simulation would make him closer to what he was: Johnny Pesky in Fenway, even when he plays in the Baker Bowl. 

They named the foul pole for him for hitting 6 HRs there in his whole career ?

http://www.bostonspastime.com/peskypole.html

The huge difference between Cravath and (say) the modern day Rockies, is that Cravath was able to take unique advantage of the situation.  Cravath hit the vast majority of his homers at home, yes, but no one else had anywhere near the same result.  It wasn't like the Phillies of that era had 5 guys each hitting 20 HR a year. 

None of which disputes italyprof's original, and very cogent, point.  WIS does not park-adjust performance, so someone like Cravath ends up hitting a lot of HRs in any park.  He's one of the only guys who can consistently hit 30HR even with Petco as a home park... 

From an older developer chat (http://whatifsports.com/devchat/devchat.asp?chatid=7):

"How much do parks really affect players. (tvenner16 - All-Star - 7:17 PM)

 

 

Posted by contrarian23 on 7/19/2012 4:43:00 PM (view original):
The huge difference between Cravath and (say) the modern day Rockies, is that Cravath was able to take unique advantage of the situation.  Cravath hit the vast majority of his homers at home, yes, but no one else had anywhere near the same result.  It wasn't like the Phillies of that era had 5 guys each hitting 20 HR a year. 

None of which disputes italyprof's original, and very cogent, point.  WIS does not park-adjust performance, so someone like Cravath ends up hitting a lot of HRs in any park.  He's one of the only guys who can consistently hit 30HR even with Petco as a home park... 

Cravath: "That right-field fence was never any farther away than it was when I joined the club."

I can't find it now, but someone posted an interesting link here a while ago where Cravath very intelligently -- one might go so far as to say sabermetrically -- put forward the argument that he and not Jake Daubert should have won the 1913 MVP award.

While I share your thoughts on the sim double bonus, I do agree with contrarian on the fact that no one else was doing it in the baker bowl!  

Thats why I try never to use pitchers like Fergie Jenkins, especially if I'm in a place like wrigley, cause you get his horrible hr/9 doubled!! :)

It wasn't just Cravath. It was also Cy Williams. Maybe. It's tough to say just what the Baker Bowl effect was. I found a fun recent discussion on the topic here:
http://www.baseball-fever.com/archive/index.php/t-108863.html

Writing at first of Ken Williams and his home run proportions at home and on the road, Bill James writes, "Another Wiliams, Cy, was almost as imbalanced - 161 home runs at home, 90 on the road."   The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract p. 129. 

The opposite of the Baker Bowl was Griffith Stadium: "Goose Goslin in 1926 hit 17 home runs - all 17 on the road. Griffith Stadium was by far the toughest home run park in the major leagues from 1920 until the early 1950s. Goslin also hit 11 of 12 on the road in 1924, 8 of 9 on the road (1923 and again in 1935 - note by italyprof: this last date might be a typo, as the rest of the chapter is only about the 1920s, so James may mean 1925 here, not sure), 15 of 18 on the road (1929), and 13 of 17 on the road (1928). His "explosion" to 37 home runs in 1930 was caused just by getting into a fair home run park. Had he played in St. Louis or Detroit or Cleveland, he would have hit 30+ every year."  The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract p.129. 

More interesting still, in this fascinating book (sorry if I am boring the heck out of everyone here rehashing stuff you all know - I have never read this book before and find something startling on every other page), is James' discussion of writing a book on the greatest team ever, which appears on pages 131-2.

He actually has written a large part of it, but says he will never publish it because : 1) no one cares about another book saying the 1927 Yankees are the best team ever and 2) those who think baseball was better in a different era will think a team from that era was best and anyone who thinks play has improved up to today will say the 1998 Yankees are best - in fact James argues that the 1998 Yankees changed his mind about the 1927 Yankees, which actually means his first objection to publishing the book is out the window. 

None of this, however, is what makes the book really interesting: instead, the idea is that he would follow 8 teams in each league, through an entire season, BUT when the 1975 Reds played the 1911 Athletics in Philly they would have to play in 1911 - deadball, almost no homeruns (except Frank Bakers'), etc. and when the 1906 Cubs played the 1961 Yankees in Yankee Stadium  they would find that their starters could not coast through batters when no one was no base because everyone could hit a HR at any time. 

In other words, James' idea was to base a book on the greatest team ever on ...normalization. So what we are all doing here at WIS is what made James think the book would be fun to write, but the idea that no one would ever change their minds about who the greatest team and era ever were stopped him.

I think he is wrong about that, and would love to read that book (like 20 times): first, I am one of the few people I know that does NOT think play has improved over time once you adjust for technology: give Honus Wagner a decent glove and he will play like Ozzie Smith at SS, give him time to adjust to the cut fastball, the slider etc. and he will hit more or less as of old, with some reduction in average. The de-segregation of baseball remains to me the one really big change  in the game that has meant improvement in overall play, since something like 20% of the best players now play that were excluded in previous years. 

Otherwise, I would still take Babe Ruth over Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa. A lot of the idea that players were on average better came from two phenomena: 

The exercise-working out in the gym craze, and steroids. I am not convinced today's players are better than the 1950s Dodgers, or 1917 White Sox.

Nevertheless, I also DO think the 1998 Yankees were the greatest team ever. So thinking that era A was the best does not necessarily mean you think the greatest team ever came from era A, though there is a logic to this. Besides, James himself finally came to the right opinion about the best team ever , so someone else could be convinced to. And he is a Red Sox fan as far as I can tell. So there is hope for everyone. 

My criteria for thinking the '98 Yankees the greatest team ever: I ask myself, would team A have found a way to win against team B, and vice-versa ? The 1975-6 Reds, the 1969-70 Orioles and the '27 Yankees were very great and formidable teams. On paper they should eat the '98 Yankees' lunch. But '75 Red Sox almost beat the Reds, the '26 Cards did beat an only slightly lesser 1926 Yankees team and the Orioles got beat by a team that looked on paper like it couldn't hit its way out of a paper bag (Al Weiss !). 

I think that the '98 Yankees find a way, their pitching keeps the lesser stars out of the picture all together, Ruth and Gehrig, or Bench and Foster and Morgan etc. hit with no one on base, they wear down the starters, get into bullpens that are not as good as the '98 team has and take the lead late, then shut it down with Mariano. 

At least, that is how the book would go if I wrote it. Let's hope James writes his. 

ps. (boogerlips, am I near getting the "freakin' long post" award yet ?) - I know what you are all thinking: what about the 2004 Red Sox ? They don't make the playoffs, no wildcard, only 8 teams per leg. Deal with it.

I think that in the end it is really hard to make comparisons over different eras in the "best team/player ever" sense. I mean, you could compare hypotheticals (and kinda do) in "how would team A from 1948 or 1984 do against a team from the 2000s if given a lifetime of modern sports science, better bats, streamlined talent identification/development from a young age, etc." but when you do they kinda stop being the team they were that was awesome and become something else entirely.

At least I spose baseball players play similar numbers of games to what they did in the deep dark distant past so records are at least somewhat comparable. I'd claim it is a lot easier to at least pretend to compare Ruth's ~10k PAs with Bonds ~12k PAs than it is to compare Bradman's 80 Innings against a single opponent to Tendulkar's 311 Innings against a plethora of opponents.

So, after this whole polemic, Cravath helps win a game for my 1918 Boston Braves team with....yes, a road game home run. 

http://www.whatifsports.com/slb/Boxscore.aspx?gid=17991998&pid=1&pbp=0&tf=10

Ironically, my Philadelphia colonials in dspalingers otat (we play in Baker bowl) have craveth. so far my 1913 gabby has 12hr --9 on the road--- in 54 games

I've always been of the opinion that WIS should charge extra for non-neutral parks.