It’s hard to know when to actually start taking baseball stats seriously and everyone is going to have a different opinion, but it’s definitely not any time before 1903, which is when fouls began counting as strikes. In this vein, everyone should read Crazy '08. There's great stories like how the outfield in Pittsburgh flooded one day, and instead of canceling the game they just said anything hit to the outfield was a ground rule double. Plus, happy ending with the Cubs winning the title. 100% agree. It’s one of my favorite books ever. Gives such a vivid portrayal of how completely insane the baseball world was. There was talk several years ago about it being made into an HBO mini-series. Too bad that didn’t come into fruition.