Baseball has been a game of numbers and keeping stats from the start. The New York Morning News printed the first baseball box score in 1845. Other newspapers followed suit with printed tables of statistics after each game.
One of the earliest baseball outcomes measured was the defensive error. Philadelphia shortstop Billy Shindle made 122 of them in 1890. That remains the single-season record. Herman Long holds the major league career record with 1096 errors committed between 1889 and 1904. Those records appear safe unless players start using gloves from the 19th century.
“An error is a mistake by a fielder that allows a batter to reach base, or a runner to advance an extra base, or allows an at bat to continue after the batter should have been put out.