Quote:
Originally Posted by Hammerhands
Howe is #2 if you include WHA points. #3 is Hull...
You should probably give him his money back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AdamSchwartz
Might as well include his points in peewee too then!
I don't know hockey very well so I can't speak to how the WHA rates up to the NHL. Was it more of a minor league? Or was it an upstart and short-lived competitor to the NHL? If the latter, there would be precedent for including it when it comes to records and all-time leaders.
For baseball, MLB (as the name suggests) considers totals from either the National League and American League. Most people know that part. Fewer people realize that the Federal League's two years also count in totals for record-keeping purposes. So Mordecai Brown ranks 55th in career wins (239), even though 31 of them came in that short-lived upstart circuit.
Of course, the minor leagues don't figure in MLB totals. Neither do the various winter leagues, the Mexican League, Japanese leagues or the Negro leagues. The Mexican League gets treated as a Triple-A minor league, which is about right in terms of its level of play. I would argue the JPPL should probably get similar comparisons as the Mexican League but for now, it is pretty much an entity unto itself. Regardless, the totals don't count, and shouldn't, in my opinion.
Of the all-black leagues prior to baseball's integration, the Negro American League may have compared very favorably with the MLBs, especially in the late 1930s and 1940s, but we'll never know. Of course, stats from that league range from incomplete to nonexistent, and even if they were reliable, you still would have an apples/oranges relationship going on. So how Oscar Charleston would have compared to Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb among the best CFs of the day is only the stuff of thought experiments.
In American football, the NFL includes players' stats from the AFL and the AAFC. So e.g. Len Dawson is listed for 239 career TD passes even though most of that was in the old maverick league. Y.A. Tittle shows up with 33,070 passing yards despite spending the first two in the AAFC.
On the other hand, the CFL and USFL are not counted in the records. So Warren Moon shows up in the books as having thrown for 49,325 yards rather than 70,553. Steve Young does not credit for the 4,102 yards he amassed for the L.A. Express, thus showing up at No. 32 with 33,124 yards. Of course, this all makes sense for one reason: the AFL and the AAFC eventually became a part of the NFL. The CFL and USFL have/did not. It also makes sense that the WLAF and NFL Europe stats are not included, as those are largely considered to be minor leagues.
Basketball is trickier. The NBA's all-time statistical rankings do not include ABA stats, so Julius Erving appears with 18,364 points rather than 30,026, the latter of which would put him sixth all-time. On the other hand, the NBA credits George Mikan for 10,156 points even though a sixth of those took place in the old BAA. When the Association celebrated its 50th anniversary, it clearly included the first three BAA seasons but not the preceding NBL (which merged with the BAA to form the NBA). Yet the NBA includes Schayes' 809 points in the NBL in its records.