Wrong. I'm sure that most of the people he played with and against were very good baseball players (for what baseball was back then). Baseball was MUCH MUCH more widely played by the common person back then than it is today. There were thousands upon thousands of city teams, and only the cream of the crop would get to play in the National League. It wasn't like people just walked off the street and said "gee, yuck yuck, I think I'll play that there baseball game for the Chicago White Stockings...hey Cap, look'e here at me!!" So I wouldn't dismiss his stats because the guys he played with were "very bad at baseball". How they would stack up against today's players, I'm sure the vast majority are less talented than modern players, no doubt. However, I will dismiss his stats not because of his competition but because of the different rules back then. For the majority of his career, the pitching mound was 45 feet away, fouls weren't strikes, it took 9 balls to walk you, etc. My mental "respect that stat" comes in around the turn of the 20th century with the introduction of the American League and formalization of the modern rules that we still use today.