David S. Neft (born January 9, 1937) is an American writer and historian who creates sports encyclopedias.
Early career
Neft was born in New York City, received a BA, MBA, and PhD (Statistics) from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, and worked as chief statistician for the polling company
Louis Harris & Associates
The Harris Poll (legal name: Harris Insights and Analytics) is an American market research and analytics company that has been tracking the sentiment, behaviors and motivations of American adults since 1963. In addition to the traditional consulti ...
from 1963 to 196
Big Mac
In 1965, he was a founder of a company called Information Concepts, Inc. (ICI) and headed the first effort to compile a computerized database of baseball statistics. The task took more than three years, as Neft and a team of researchers travelled across the country to fill the gaping holes in baseball's statistical and biographical records. The resulting work was published in 1969 by the
Macmillan Publishing Company
Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...
. Although the official title was ''
The Baseball Encyclopedia
''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' is a baseball reference book first published by Macmillan in 1969. Nine further editions of the book were released between 1974 and 1996. ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' features statistical summaries for Major League ...
'', the massive book was generally referred to as "Big Mac". It was a quantum leap from early baseball encyclopedias, with a breadth and depth that far exceeded anything that had come before it.
Sports Encyclopedia series
Neft left ICI in 1970, spending the next few years developing dice-based sports games for Sports Illustrated Enterprises. He returned to the sports reference field when he founded Sports Products, Inc. with partner
Richard M. Cohen
Richard Merrill Cohen (born February 14, 1948) is an American journalist, television producer, and author. He is a former senior producer for CBS News and CNN.
Career
Cohen is the recipient of several honors in journalism. He is a three-time ...
. The company produced a new baseball encyclopedia in 1974 called "The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball". That same year, they published groundbreaking new encyclopedias for football (''The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Football'') and basketball (''The Sports Encyclopedia: Pro Basketball'').
The baseball encyclopedia has been updated each spring, with the 27th edition appearing in 2007. Seventeen editions of the football encyclopedia were published (the last in 1998). The basketball encyclopedia was published until 1992, a total of five editions.
Beside this line of encyclopedias, Neft edited more than a dozen other sports books.
Pre-1933 football research
In 1978, Neft & Cohen published ''Pro Football: The Early Years'', a startling new look at professional football before 1933. Because the
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...
hadn't kept official statistics in its first thirteen seasons, knowledge of the period was extremely limited. Neft led a team of researchers that meticulously reconstructed the statistical record using box scores, play-by-play accounts, and game stories from local newspapers. The result was a remarkable new look at the teams and players from the NFL's earliest seasons.
Gannett
Neft returned to Harris, then owned by
Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Schwarz, Alan ''The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics'', 2004