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Also, didn't Lajoie's monster average come in 1901 in the American League? There's not a hard and fast difference between a major and a minor league, especially not at that moment in baseball history, and it is true that the AL had raided the crap out of NL going into that season, but... to me the AL in 1901 is not really a major league. It's somewhere between the 1884 Union Association and the AL in 1905 (when it had unquestionably gotten to that level). Many of the players in the AL in '01 were guys who had played in... well, the AL in 1900, back when it was called the Western League.
Even if you consider the AL in 1901 a full fledged major league, you're looking at a situation in which the number of major league teams doubled in one year. Increasing from 16 to 18 teams helped make Maris' run at 61 homeruns possible; how diluted would major league baseball have been if the league had even expanded from 16 to 22 teams (in 1900 the NL contracted from 12 teams to 8 but then the "majors" expanded back to 16, so the overall percentages are about the same)? Maybe Norm Cash would have hit .427.
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