Book it: I'm old-school

 

As a young baseball fan in the late 1970s, I really wanted the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia.

 

I didn't know that the one I saw in advertisements was the third edition and it was released in 1976, which is why I was seeing it in every baseball publication I read in 1977, The Sporting News, Baseball Digest, etc.

 

I eventually bought the softcover version from an ad in Baseball Digest (EDIT: Turns out the one I had was not the Macmillan version but one of the updates of the Hy Turkin version. Turkin created the original baseball encyclopedia in the 1950s). I don't remember how much it cost but it was a lot for me at the time, maybe $12.99 or something? When it arrived, I took it everywhere. I distinctly remember taking it across the street onto the porch of our lifelong friends, two girls who didn't care a wit about baseball, and just pouring over the details right there on the porch.

 

The thrill for me was having every player's record, every team's record right there for reference. I never had to wonder about this stat or that, I could pull it off the bookshelf built into my bed and read it right there in bed. And I did. Many times.

 

I don't know what happened to that encyclopedia. I probably wore it out. I tried looking for a picture of it online but couldn't find anything that represented the 1976 cover that I have in my mind, which I think was a photograph of a play at second.

 

This is somewhat ironic because the internet is what killed off the need for baseball encyclopedias. You could find whatever baseball stat you needed right on your computer. And that's the way it was for years and years. It still is, to an extent. But not quite. Or it takes longer than just flipping a few pages in your reference book.

 

 

So that brings me to the Baseball Encyclopedia in my office at work.

 

It's the ninth edition, which is "unauthorized" (I'll get to that later). It was the second-to-last one that Macmillan put out. I claimed it for my office a year or two ago.

 

Our newsroom is filled with abandoned items like this Baseball Encyclopedia. During repeated downsizing, a lot has been left behind (I'm always fascinated by what people leave when they depart a job, I'm mean that's their stuff, don't they want it??). One day I was wandering over by where the copy editors used to sit and I spotted this lonely encyclopedia standing with a few scattered publications, which probably hadn't been opened in at least a decade. My eyes lit up upon seeing it -- I still think baseball encyclopedias are the coolest thing.

 

I asked the news editor who works nearby if I could take it. She shrugged in an "of course way" and it's been mine every since.

 

I'm a hypocrite, though, and a product of my modern environment. I don't go through it as much as I should. It's heavy man! But for the sake of this post, I looked through some pages and snapped some shots late at night after deadline. It's a lot of gray type, so I'll add a couple of cards to liven it up a little bit.

 

 

This probably doesn't mean anything. I tried to figure out who Ronald L. Kiner is/was. I'm guessing he was a previous owner of the book and he noted that he purchased it at the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993, which is when the encyclopedia was first out. The stamp on the previous page I showed said it was once owned by the Lyme Free Library, which is a small library about 15 minutes from me. Someone from the newsroom must have secured it from the library, which must have secured it from Mr. Kiner at some point.

 

 

 

Maybe this kind of thing isn't great to read on a backlit screen, but pressing on. Here is a partial list of all of the MVPs through 1992. This kind of thing, of course, is easily accessible at baseball-reference.com -- may it never leave us. But this is exactly what was the height of cool in the late 1970s.

 

 

A list of no-hit games. Again, Google hasn't mucked up this yet, but in case it ever does, I can give you the details as long as it didn't happen after 1992!

 

 

 All-time home run leaders at the time and home run percentage leaders. This is a list that has changed vastly since the early 1990s.

 

 

 

Fielding leaders, using the stats of the time. The best fielders were always something of a mystery to us fans of the 1970s and '80s. All we had to go by was sight in many cases. So stuff like this was fascinating.

 

(Note, I was taking these pictures in my office late at night, so apologies for any dim photos).

  

 

One of my favorite parts of the Baseball Encyclopedia -- then and now -- are the yearly standings and Macmillan gives you just about everything going back to the 1870s, plus the starting lineups and their stats.

 

Again, this stuff is easily found online but there is still an "all-in-one-place" feel to these encyclopedia stats that the internet can't replicate.

 

 

  

 A detailed "manager register". Topps may no longer care about managers, but the Baseball Encyclopedia always will!

 

 

 

The most appeal for me as a young fan though was being able to look up any player who had competed ever in the majors and find all of his stats. This is still baseball-reference's greatest achievement, but growing up in the '70s I will always admire this more because I admired it first.

 

 

 

A separate register for pitchers, of course!

 

 

 

I want to say that the 1976 World Series was the most recent World Series in that third edition paperback encyclopedia that I owned as a youngster. It's amazing to think that there was a time when the '76 World Series was the very latest World Series, but I do remember that time -- and, yes, I'm quite old. I'm writing about books aren't I?

 

 The back of the book contains a rundown of every All-Star Game and every trade, by player!

 

 

 

The 1993 edition includes stats for Negro League players known at the time and for the first time a listing of the members of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, no doubt a result of the wave attention prompted by the movie "A League Of Their Own".

 

Negro League players first appeared in the eighth edition of the Baseball Encyclopedia, which was issued in 1990. This edition also contained several edits to statistics from previous editions, creating an uproar in the media. MLB decided to stop endorsing the encyclopedia, which is why the 1990 edition and subsequent ones are considered "unauthorized."

 

It's still legitimate to me though.

 

Any book this big has to be!

 

My hope is that the internet will halt its downward slide when it comes to supplying information but I'm not counting on it, which is why I'm glad I have this physical resource. My office at work contains several old-school resource books used frequently throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. God love those media guides we once received in the mail every season. There are still several floating around the office.

 

I have lots of baseball resource books at home -- some of my favorite baseball books ever. And I do look through them from time to time. Obviously there are lot of people on this earth now that can't relate to this -- heck the last physical Baseball Encyclopedia was issued exactly 30 years ago and I'm quite sure there are more people alive today who didn't use a card catalog in the library than did.

 

That's OK. Old people are supposed to love their books. And I do.