The 1908 Challenge

What makes 1908 such a difficult season to replicate

The 1908 Challenge

While it’s not a “proper” replay, I was able to recently finish a 1908 project of some sorts:

Yeah, I know, it’s RBI Baseball. We probably shouldn’t expect it to reach any of the standards of realism we tend to expect from serious baseball sims.

However, when I played through the 1908 RBI baseball mod, I was reminded of a few things that make 1908 difficult to simulate regardless of the game.

1908, of course, likely had the greatest pennant race in the history of Major League Baseball. Both the American and National Leagues had fascinating pennant races that year. The combination of the excitement of not knowing which team might wind up in first place, and the fun of digging through really old newspapers and understanding what the world was like before World War I, makes 1908 a project that is extremely attractive.

But, like I said, there are a few problems you need to keep in mind:

Power hitting was different. You probably already know that the batting average across both leagues was .239, the second lowest of all time (second only to 1968, when it was .237; for the sake of comparison, 2026 is currently at .244 as of the writing of this). However, what you might not realize is that hitting for power in 1908 consisted mostly of doubles and triples. The season featured around 1.01 doubles per team per game and 0.40 triples per team per game, as opposed to only 0.11 home runs per team per game. These aren’t record numbers by any means, but they are a good example of deadball era rate stats, and are shocking if you’re used to the ebbs and flows of modern baseball.

Everybody bunted. You’re not going to see this happen in RBI Baseball, of course. But the truth is that players bunted in 1908 at a rate much higher than in any other season in baseball history. There were 1.3 successful sacrifice hits per team per game in 1908 - and, of course, that doesn’t count the unsuccessful attempts at sacrificing. This is extremely difficult to replicate, as you have to completely change your offensive approach to replicate what was happening in real life.

Good and bad defense. 1908 is famous for pitching, of course. But there’s more going on than just good spitballers. On the one hand you had 1.71 errors per team per game - not the higheset of the era, but an unbelievably high number when you look at it from a modern perspective. There were also only 0.51 double plays per team per game, which is the lowest rate in the “modern era” (i.e. 1901 and after). And yet, at the same time, it’s clear that base running was stifled in 1908 in a way that is difficult to replicate. There were 13.36 assists per team per game, the second highest post-1901 total (behind 1918, which was a partial season). And so you’ve got the difficulty of crafting together a season with both poor fielding and good fielding at the same time.