Would love if the NHL did this.
It's ridiculous that the NHA records aren't integrated. The PCHA/WHL records should be integrated. I would prefer WHA records are integrated, but I understand why they won't.
But excluding the NHA is really stupid.
I'm not a good hockey historian, so I can't really speak to the ridiculousness" of it. The thing is that baseball -- by it's organizational structure -- is just different.
The National Hockey League is a league. NHL records are NHL records. WHA teams were in a different league than the NHL teams, so the NHL doesn't include them. That's not how baseball works.
"Major League Baseball" is NOT a league. Well, it "Kind of Is" now, but not really -- there's two sets of awards still! Saying NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB are the Big Four Sports Leagues is a a ret-con myth that Peter Ueberoth pulled off in the 1980s.
There were dozens and dozens of pro baseball leagues; and fighting among them for players, territory, etc. So a governing organization was set up to classify all the leagues for the purposes of respecting contracts and territory. That organization has changed names a lot.
The AL and NL became the only two Major Leagues by "winning" the league wars (with a handshake agreement that created the World Series)
- that agreement ALSO said they'd respect each other's records
- By winning an anti-trust lawsuit vs the Federal League
After the Black Sox scandal, "baseball" hired a commissioner. He was the leader of that governing organization. Over time, the affiliate system made everyone else accept "minor league" status. And the PCL was last league to attempt to be a major league in the early 1950s (they were reclassified to "Open League" above Triple A, below Major. But the Dodgers/Giants moving crushed that).
"Major League Baseball" was a company created to sell TV rights in the late 50s. It's owned by the owners of the AL and NL.
Then baseball needed a new commissioner in the 1980s and asked Peter Ueberoth. He had conditions: The AL and NL headquarters should be in the same office as the commissioner; and that building needs to be in New York City. And he ordered his secretary to stop answering the phone "Office of the Commissioner of Baseball" and START answering it "Major League Baseball."
He also mandated that every TV broadcast say you can't rebroadcast games without the expressed written consent of "Major League Baseball and the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball" -- forcibly merging the legal body and media company in the minds of everyone.
As for the record book, the CLASSIFICATION of major means their records are equal to one another, as per the agreements they've been working under since 1901.
The AL and NL are different leagues. Never played each other until 1997. So separate doesn't matter. That's why Babe Ruth has 714 home runs, and not 706 AL home runs. And why Pujols is 4th all time with 703 and not 4th in the NL with 585.
It's not adding "outside leagues" to the record books of ONE LEAGUE.
It's adding 7 more to the list of six. There's been SIX Major Leagues from 1968-2023.
That's when the governing body -- "The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball" -- did a study that determined that four other leagues should be categorized as major retroactively. At the time, the commission on old stats said (paraphrasing) "We know there are multiple Negro Leagues that deserve major league classification, we just don't have the records/data at this time." So now they're finishing the job and we have 13 major leagues now.
(and BTW, The Negro Leagues weren't won league, they were 26+ leagues. Seven got selected as major, the other 19+ are still categorized as minor).
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