Duration Weighted Records (corrected)

The Washington Post today focused on the manager of the new home town team--Frank Robinson. The issue being whether his players, 40 years younger than he, realize how great he was. Here's a quote:

"'The farther you slip down [the list], the less you're going to be mentioned. People will forget all about you, period,' he says. 'Tell me how many people beyond the top 10 get mentioned? I remember when it was always the top four -- Aaron, Ruth, Mays and me [the order that existed, unchanged, for 30 years]. So, yeah, it does bother me. But there's nothing I can do about it. It's going to happen. I've joked that by the time I leave this earth, I may be 99th.'"

Maybe we should have duration-weighted stats, that is figures that combine how good a player was and how long he was that good. For example, a duration-weighted table for most home runs in a season might take all the people who ever held the record (Home Run Baker*, Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds), count the years each held the record and list them in that order. (Maris 37 years, Ruth 42 years (34 for the 60 homers, 8 based on his earlier years) , Bonds 2 years and counting, McGuire 3 years, Home Run Baker 5 years (maybe, my stat search was cursory)) For a more complete approach, take a table of the top 10 (or top 100 in the category (i.e., season homers) for each year 1900 on, assign 10 pts for first, 9 for second, etc., and multiply times the number of years at that point, then divide by the number of years x time.

The effect would be to give recognition to early greats and to those performances that really broke the bounds of probability. (Stephen Jay Gould might have liked to discuss this.) It should give more prominence to those who stood out from their peers and successors for a long time, someone like Robinson, who was 4th on the all time homer list for 30 years. It would also mean that supporters of Ruth and Maris would be rooting for someone to break Bonds record within the next 30 years.

*Correction: Found the sort of table I needed. Turns out Home Run Baker never held the season record. Before Ruth, Ned Williamson in 1884 hit 27 in a season and Roger Conner by 1895 had the career record. The true season figures would be Williamson 35 years, Ruth 42 years, Maris 37 years, McGuire 3, Bonds 4 and counting; for career, Connor, 26 years, Ruth 52 years, Aaron 30 years and counting.