Ernest Lanigan

Ernest John Lanigan (January 4, 1873 in Chicago, Illinois – February 6, 1962 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an American sportswriter and historian on the subject of baseball. He was considered the premier baseball statistician and historian of his day. He was a pioneer at gathering information about baseball statistics and about the players themselves, and was the author of the first encyclopedia of the subject.

In addition to having parents who were both writers and editors (George Thomas Lanigan and ), Lanigan was the nephew, on his mother's side, of The Sporting News founders Al Spink and Charles Spink, and one of five men in his family, including J. G. Taylor Spink and C.C. Johnson Spink, to gain acclaim as a newspaperman.