baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...
reference book first published by
Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
in 1969. Nine further editions of the book were released between 1974 and 1996. ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' features statistical summaries for
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
(MLB) players.
Background
Baseball reference books that predate ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' include the ''Baseball Cyclopedia'', which was first released in 1922, and ''The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball'', which was published during the 1950s and 1960s. These books included rudimentary player statistics, but major gaps existed in their coverage.
Games played
Games played (GP) is a statistic used in team sports to indicate the total number of games in which a player has participated (in any capacity); the statistic is generally applied irrespective of whatever portion of the game is contested.
Basebal ...
were tallied for all players, while
batting average
Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic.
Cricket
In cricket, a player's batting average is ...
was provided for hitters and pitchers' win–loss records were listed. Other statistical categories were not provided by these books. Official baseball records and various publications had numerous errors and inconsistencies, which were most apparent with pre-1920 data. One publication by ''
The Sporting News
The ''Sporting News'' is a website and former magazine publication owned by Sporting News Holdings, which is a U.S.-based sports media company formed in December 2020 by a private investor consortium. It was originally established in 1886 as a pr ...
'' listed two different 1899
National League
The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team s ...
batting average leaders within a 16-page span. Statistician
David Neft
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, and worked as chief statisti ...
, who had recently been hired by computer data processing company Information Concepts, Inc. (ICI), first proposed a new baseball encyclopedia in 1965. Two years later, he pitched the idea to Bob Markel,
Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
's executive editor. Markel, a baseball fan, liked the concept and eventually Macmillan bought rights to ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'', despite concerns by company president Jeremiah Kaplan about the proposed $25 price of the book. Neft assumed the role of editor-in-chief.
First edition
Research and development
In 1965, Neft sought out research assistance by putting help wanted ads in ''The Sporting News'', which yielded four assistants. It was eventually determined that, to provide the greatest amount of accuracy possible, daily statistics for all players would have to be recreated. Biographical details for approximately 5,000 players had already been compiled by
Lee Allen Lee Allen may refer to:
*Lee Allen (wrestler) (1934–2012), wrestler and coach
* Lee Allen (baseball) (1915–1969), baseball historian
*Lee Allen (musician) (1927–1994), saxophone player
*Lee Allen (artist)
Lee Allen (1910 – May 5, 2006), bor ...
, a historian at the
Baseball Hall of Fame
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by private interests. It serves as the central point of the history of baseball in the United States and displays baseball-r ...
, and his research provided an early foundation. Another boon to research efforts for the book came from ICI's acquisition of scrapbooks owned by steamship executive John Tattersall. His records included a full collection of box scores dating back to 1876, and a mostly complete daily statistics log that covered the period between 1876 and 1890. The data, however, was not sufficient to calculate stats that had not been tracked contemporaneously, such as
earned run average
In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched (i.e. the traditional length of a game). It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number ...
,
runs batted in
A run batted in (RBI; plural RBIs ) is a statistic in baseball and softball that credits a batter for making a play that allows a run to be scored (except in certain situations such as when an error is made on the play). For example, if the bat ...
, and saves. To permit these categories to be deduced for each season, Neft's research team consulted newspaper accounts of old games, focusing on the 1876–1919 period. The research team ultimately expanded to 21 people, who went to libraries throughout the U.S. to obtain the needed information. This process took two years to complete.
''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' was an early example of computer software being used in the book publication process. Author
Alan Schwarz
Alan Schwarz (born July 3, 1968) is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and author, formerly at ''The New York Times'', best known for writing more than 100 articles that exposed the National Football League's cover-up of concussions and brought the ...
credits it as the first book with computer typesetting (excluding phone books). Every player's data were individually compiled on sheets of paper, with the information coded into
punch cards
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
by a firm in Israel. Once the cards came back from overseas, ICI placed them in
magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magne ...
and data was sorted by an
IBM 360
The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...
computer. The system allowed for teams' season statistics to be totaled, combined, and compared with the numbers kept by the leagues; inconsistencies were flagged by the computer and logged by Neft for investigation.
Among the issues resolved was the existence of a small number of
phantom ballplayer
A phantom ballplayer is either a baseball player who is incorrectly listed in source materials as playing in a Major League Baseball (MLB) game, often the result of typographical or clerical errors, or a player who spent time on an MLB Major Leag ...
s who had been recorded in box scores as appearing in a game despite not existing.Hensler, p. 235. One example was a Cleveland Blues player named Woodruff, who was credited with playing as a
right fielder
A right fielder, abbreviated RF, is the outfielder in baseball or softball who plays defense in right field. Right field is the area of the outfield to the right of a person standing at home plate and facing towards the pitcher's mound. In the ...
in a 1901 game. The player was actually Bob Wood, who was normally a
catcher
Catcher is a Baseball positions, position in baseball and softball. When a Batter (baseball), batter takes their at bat, turn to hit, the catcher crouches behind home plate, in front of the (home plate, home) Umpire (baseball), umpire, and recei ...
but made infrequent appearances as an outfielder; a telegraph operator incorrectly interpreted
Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...
that read "Wood rf", leading to an error in the box score.Schwarz, p. 104. An ad in ''The Sporting News'' claimed that ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' took three-and-a-half years to research and develop, and that it cost $1.5 million to produce. Neft remarked that the book "took seven hours to print ... but a year and a half to tell the computer what to do."Hensler, p. 236.
Adjustments to historical stats
Before the book's release, a five-person Special Baseball Records Committee was formed by MLB. This group had multiple meetings and discussed proposed corrections to players' stats, in addition to deciding how old rules would be interpreted. One issue the committee dealt with was the treatment of walks in the 1876 and 1887 seasons. In the former year they had been officially recorded as outs, and they had been ruled as base hits in 1887. The group opted against the original interpretations, electing to use modern rules, under which walks did not count as hits or outs.
Cap Anson
Adrian Constantine Anson (April 17, 1852 – April 14, 1922), nicknamed "Cap" (for "Captain") and "Pop", was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) first baseman. Including his time in the National Association (NA), he played a record 27 c ...
was one player whose statistical record was affected by this change. Having previously been listed with nearly 3,500 lifetime hits, he lost 60 hits from walks during the 1887 season and 423 pre-1876 hits, which were not counted by ''The Baseball Encyclopedia''. These changes left Anson five hits short of the
3,000 hit club
The 3,000 hit club is the group of 33 Batter (baseball), batters who have collected 3,000 or more regular-season Hit (baseball), hits in their careers in Major League Baseball (MLB), achieving a milestone "long considered the greatest measure of s ...
, according to the book.
Ty Cobb
Tyrus Raymond Cobb (December 18, 1886 – July 17, 1961), nicknamed "the Georgia Peach", was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) center fielder. He was born in rural Narrows, Georgia. Cobb spent 22 seasons with the Detroit Tigers, the las ...
, who held MLB's career record for base hits at the time, had his total adjusted upward from 4,191 hits to 4,192. Among pitchers whose records were changed,
Christy Mathewson
Christopher Mathewson (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1925), nicknamed "Big Six", "the Christian Gentleman", "Matty", and "the Gentleman's Hurler", was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher, who played 17 seasons with the New York Giant ...
, who had been tied for the most career wins by an NL pitcher, had a reduction of six wins;
Walter Johnson
Walter Perry Johnson (November 6, 1887 – December 10, 1946), nicknamed "Barney" and "The Big Train", was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 21-year baseball career in Major League Baseball as a right-ha ...
also had his win total lowered.
Attracting more attention than those changes was a rule interpretation that would have altered a well-known record:
Babe Ruth
George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Su ...
's total of 714 career home runs. In a 1918 game, Ruth had a game-ending hit which would have been scored as a home run under modern rules, as the ball went over the outfield wall. Because there was a runner on base who had advanced three bases, Ruth was given a triple. Thirty-seven hits that would have counted as home runs under modern scoring guidelines, including Ruth's, were discovered by the researchers for ''The Baseball Encyclopedia''. The record committee initially voted to credit the batters with home runs, which would have increased Ruth's career tally to 715.
The decision brought a negative fan reaction and controversy in the press. Journalist
Robert Lipsyte
Robert Michael Lipsyte (born January 16, 1938) is an American sports journalist and author and former Ombudsman for ESPN. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for ''USA Todays Forum Page, part of the newspaper's Opinion section. He re ...
cited the change as an example of "
historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) views held by professional scholars about a historical event or times ...
" and nicknamed the researchers the "Revisionist Police". Another critic was MLB public relations director
Joe Reichler Joseph Lawrence Reichler (January 1, 1915 – December 12, 1988) was an American sports writer who worked for the Associated Press from 1943 to 1966. He mostly covered the New York City based baseball teams. Reichler also wrote many baseball books, ...
, a member of the committee who had been absent from the meeting where the home run ruling was voted upon. Reichler said that changing historical regulations was not meant to be within the committee's remit. He successfully pushed for a second vote on the topic and persuaded two other committee members to oppose the measure. By a 3–2 vote, the change was overturned, leaving Ruth with 714 home runs.
Contents
Close to 75% of the first edition was devoted to statistical records of MLB players. Over 10,000 players had their stats included in ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'', with coverage dating to 1876. Pitchers had 19 different categories of statistics, while batters had 17. Seven of the pitchers' categories specifically covered relievers, and position players received a summary of games played by defensive position.Schwarz, p. 106.
National Association of Professional Base Ball Players
The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), often known simply as the National Association (NA), was the first fully- professional sports league in baseball. The NA was founded in 1871 and continued through the 1875 se ...
participants also had stat registers, as did MLB managers.
Other portions of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' included a section on baseball history and a listing of stat category leaders, which had single-season and career figures. Summaries and line scores were provided for all
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World ...
contests and MLB All-Star Games. Another section, titled "The Teams and Their Players", had seasonal team rosters and stats, along with league standings and stat category leaders, for each year starting in 1876. Overall, the contents of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' first edition totaled 2,337 pages; the book had a weight of six-and-a-half pounds.
Release and reception
The first edition of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' was released on September 10, 1969. Even at the $25 price point, it gained an audience, with sales of over 100,000 copies. The book attracted a mostly positive reception from reviewers as well. ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' received three separate reviews in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', by
Jimmy Breslin
James Earle Breslin (October 17, 1928 – March 19, 2017) was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York ''Daily News'' Sunday edition.''Current Biography 1942'', pp. 648–51: "Patterson, ...
,
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (June 14, 1934 – November 7, 2018) was an American journalist, editor of the ''New York Times Book Review'', critic, and novelist, based in New York City. He served as senior Daily Book Reviewer from 1969 to 1995.
Bi ...
, and
Leonard Koppett Leonard Koppett (September 15, 1923 – June 22, 2003) was an American sportswriter.
Born in Moscow as Leonard Kopeliovich, Koppett moved with his family from Moscow, Russia to the United States when he was five years old. They lived in The Bronx, ...
. Lehmann-Haupt described ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' as "Big for a book, small for an amusement park." The large size of the book was a subject of discussion, as it was nicknamed "Big Mac". Breslin offered praise for the attention the book paid to lesser-known players.Schwarz, p. 108. More critical reviews focused on the changes made to the stats of historical players. In ''
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
'', sportswriter
Robert Creamer
Robert Watts Creamer (July 14, 1922 – July 18, 2012) was an American sportswriter and editor. He spent most of his career at ''Sports Illustrated''.
Biography
Creamer was born on July 14, 1922 in Bronxville, New York
He attended Fordham ...
called the adjustment of Mathewson's win total "illogical, historically invalid, and personally upsetting to Christy Mathewson fans." However, historian
John Thorn
John A. Thorn (born April 17, 1947) is a German-born sports historian, author, publisher, and cultural commentator. Since March 1, 2011, he has been the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball.
Personal profile
Thorn was born in ...
later called the first edition of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' the best version.
Subsequent editions
Five years later, in 1974, the second edition of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' was published. This release included statistics that had been updated through the 1973 season. However, it was reduced in size by more than 800 pages. This was accomplished by excluding statistical summaries for all retired batters with fewer than 25
at bat
In baseball, an at bat (AB) or time at bat is a batter's turn batting against a pitcher. An at bat is different from a plate appearance. A batter is credited with a plate appearance regardless of what happens during their turn at bat, but a batt ...
s, and all retired pitchers with under 25 innings pitched and no wins or losses. A new editor was required as Neft had stopped working for ICI. Reichler was hired by Macmillan for the position; Schwarz saw him as wanting to "please his bosses at MLB", who were dissatisfied with the changes to player statistics that had been incorporated into the first edition.
For the 1974 version, Reichler reversed many of the previous changes. Schwarz noted a pattern in which adjustments that would result in additions to the stats of big-name players were made, but not those that required subtractions. This process continued in later editions, making the book less accurate. ''Sports Illustrated'' Jonathan Yardley criticized the second edition for its size reduction, suggesting that updated player stats should have been released in a supplement to the original book.
Starting in 1976, new editions of the ''Baseball Encyclopedia'' were released every three years for the next several versions. By 1982, when the fifth edition came out, sales had surpassed 250,000. Jeff Neumann, one of the book's editors, later said that editions consistently sold 50,000 copies while he was involved with ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' production, and that it was "a very profitable enterprise" for Macmillan. Aiding the publisher was an agreement it had made with the researchers before the original book was released, which allowed Macmillan to avoid making any royalty payments. Eventually, ICI went under and Macmillan gained full ownership of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia''.
After the release of the 1988 edition of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'', Reichler died and was succeeded by Rick Wolff.Schwarz, p. 168. In 1990, the eighth edition came out. Along with updates that brought the number of MLB players covered to more than 13,000, six fielding statistics were newly added to players' summaries, which necessitated the use of larger pages. A directory with information for over 130
Negro league
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...
players active from 1920 to 1950 was also included, as was information on teams' home and away records and streaks. For this version, Wolff elected to rely heavily on the database from the first edition, rejecting adjustments made under Reichler that were not backed by firm proof. Numerous changes were made to historical statistics; among them was reducing
Honus Wagner
Johannes Peter "Honus" Wagner (; February 24, 1874 – December 6, 1955), sometimes referred to as "Hans" Wagner, was an American baseball shortstop who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1897 to 1917, almost entirely for the Pitts ...
's career hit total by 12, which was enough to cost him two percentage points from his career batting average and drop him one place on the all-time hit list. Media members were strongly critical of the edits.
Jerome Holtzman
Jerome Holtzman (July 12, 1926 – July 19, 2008) was an American sportswriter known for his writings on baseball who served as the official historian for Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1999 until his death.
Newspaper career
Born in Chicago, Il ...
of the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television ar ...
'' said they were "tampering with baseball's most sacred text." Schwarz later disagreed with Holtzman's viewpoint, saying that Reichler had been responsible for adjustments before the press had paid attention. Regardless, the changes were noticed by MLB, which decided to no longer officially endorse ''The Baseball Encyclopedia''.
Three years later, the non-endorsed ninth edition was published. The
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was a professional women's baseball league founded by Philip K. Wrigley which existed from 1943 to 1954. The AAGPBL is the forerunner of women's professional league sports in the Uni ...
was given a section in the book, a first for ''The Baseball Encyclopedia''. With the advent of the Internet, the need for baseball reference books diminished. The final version of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'', the 10th, came out in 1996. Jeanine Bucek was the lead editor of that edition.
IDG Books
International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.’s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technol ...
purchased the book's rights from
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...
, which had bought Macmillan.
Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, in p ...
later obtained the rights from IDG, but no new editions were produced.
Legacy
''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' was an influential publication in the field of baseball statistics. Shortly after the release of the first edition, the
Society for American Baseball Research
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a membership organization dedicated to fostering the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball primarily through the use of statistics. Established in Cooperstown, New ...
was founded. The research done for the books was reflected in future compilations of stats. The first edition of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' served as a template which fellow encyclopedia ''
Total Baseball
''Total Baseball'' (latest edition , first published 1989) is a baseball encyclopedia first compiled by John Thorn and Pete Palmer in 1989. The latest edition, published in 2004, is its eighth. Various editions of that book were published between 1989 and 2004. Thorn has stated that he considers the websites
Baseball-Reference.com
Baseball-Reference is a website providing baseball statistics for every player in Major League Baseball history. The site is often used by major media organizations and baseball broadcasters as a source for statistics. It offers a variety of advan ...
and
Retrosheet
Retrosheet is a nonprofit organization whose website features box scores of Major League Baseball (MLB) games from 1906 to the present, and play-by-play narratives for almost every contest since the 1930s. It also includes scores from every major ...
"descendants of ''The Baseball Encyclopedia''". Sean Forman, the founder of Baseball-Reference.com, called it as an inspiration for the site's development, saying that the objective was "making the pages connectable." Neft cited the encyclopedia as having an effect in publicizing the statistical achievements of players like
Addie Joss
Adrian "Addie" Joss (April 12, 1880 – April 14, 1911), nicknamed "the Human Hairpin", was an American professional baseball pitcher. He pitched for the Cleveland Bronchos of Major League Baseball, later known as the Naps, between 1902 and 191 ...
and
Sam Thompson
Samuel Luther "Big Sam" Thompson (March 5, 1860 – November 7, 1922) was an American professional baseball player from 1884 to 1898 and with a brief comeback in 1906. At , the Indiana native was one of the larger players of his day and was known ...
to Hall of Fame voters. In 2002, ''Sports Illustrated'' selected ''The Baseball Encyclopedia'' as one of the 100 greatest sports books.