You can listen to an excerpt from First Person, Plural, Episode 6, entitled "The Social Context of Baseball" by clicking on the title of this post.
This segment was based upon articles, written by Carl in late 1990s, discussing how the breaking of the color line in Major League Baseball by Jackie Robinson is an excellent point of which to divide modern from pre-modern baseball because before the color line was broken managers were systematically excluding better players for arbitrary reasons, making baseball essentially exhibition ball rather than a good game based upon management that was doing everything in its power to win. This means that comparing stats before 1947 to stats after 1947 is problematic.
If you prefer to read it, click here
