Luke Appling, leadoff hitter (NOT)

A new article of mine appeared recently at the Hardball Times:

The Philosophy of Batting Leadoff

I got the idea for the piece, like so many in the past, from Bill James, this time from his Historical Baseball Abstract, the old one that came out in the mid-80s.  That book contains an essay on two types of leadoff hitters, typified by Luke Appling and Luis Aparacio.    James wonders if a new type of leadoff hitter might emerge going forward, one that is a sort of hybrid of the fast, no-walk Aparicio type and the patient, good on-base guy like Appling.  James wrote that 25 years ago and I decided to check, using Retrosheet data, if this new hybrid leadoff man was taking hold in baseball.

So, after making the lists of leadoff batters with their stats and a nice (if I may be immodest) graphic showing the historical trends of leadoff OBP, I was pretty happy with the finished piece.   It was also gratifying that the article generated quite a few comments (around 15, which is a lot for a THT article).  Until a reader named "stevebogus" pointed out in the comments that Luke Appling was not actually a leadoff hitter.  WTF?  Bill James wrote a 1000-word essay about Luke Appling the leadoff hitter, of course he batted leadoff.  But, no, I checked, too, at Retrosheet, and Luke Appling really only batted leadoff a handful of games.  He actually batted up and down the order, but most often in the 5th spot.

Let me say this again: WTF?  How could James make that mistake?  Of course, Retrosheet did not exist in 1985, so it wasn't so easy to get the info, but presumably he had some source that told him that Appling batted leadoff.  Otherwise, he wouldn't have written a whole freakin' essay about Appling leading off.  I'm guessing he confused Appling with somebody else.  Maybe Aparicio.

Sheesh.*

*I'm just kidding — Bill James, for me, is the greatest thing since sliced bread.