Tigers’ Hank Greenberg should share RBI mark with Gehrig, statistician says

Sorry. Steve Hirdt says you didn’t produce enough RBI evidence. Nothing we can do about it. Tough (%$^!).

Herm Krabbenhoft presented his findings to the Elias Sports Bureau, the official statistician for Major League Baseball, but thinks Elias hasn’t amended the record because Gehrig is an icon.

“They do not want changes, especially in significant records involving icons,” Krabbenhoft said. “Getting things changed by Elias is difficult.”

But Steve Hirdt, executive vice president of Elias, says this particular case isn’t about protecting an icon. It’s about getting all the facts to make a decision with historical ramifications.

“As part of its duties for Major League Baseball, Elias reviews credible evidence that might involve bookkeeping errors,” he said. ” We hope to have a determination on it as soon as we can, but we want to determine if any other evidence exists, notably a play-by-play of the game.

“Herm’s evidence by some of the newspapers, while it suggests an error might have been made, and it looks like something may be fishy there, the key play involves a case where there was a runner on base and Greenberg hit a ground ball and at the end of the play someone had made an error and the run scored. However, I’ve not seen a play-by-play that indicates if the runner started the play on third base or second base.”