Quote:
Originally Posted by Chickazoola
So for the Jay Clarke debate, his nickname is clearly derived from a racial slur. His wife hated the nickname and wanted the papers to use his given name. I think it's ok to move on from it and the bbref handles it tastefully by including a note about its usage.
Standards evolve and change over time and what was acceptable and "normal" can change. Acknowledging that things change is good and worthwhile, but also giving context is equally important. There is difference between whitewashing history and contextualizing history and I think bbref handles it about as well as you can.
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I noticed baseball reference changed a lot of players with nicknames to their actual names such as Cannonball Titcomb to Ledell Titcomb and Queenie O'Rourke to Jimmy O'Rourke. They even changed Bub McAtee to Michael McAtee too for whatever reason. While they definitely did say they were specifically going through to remove the offensive nicknames, remember most of these guys were still widely known by their actual names and the nicknames were mostly just used occasionally in papers. Such as Buttercup Dickerson who was mostly listed as Lew Dickerson in most papers (yet his b ref page still has him listed as Buttercup).