[.ca] The Sports Encyclopedia Baseball 2006 (ISBN 0312350015)

From Amazon.com:
Statistics are to baseball as nails are to carpentry: they define, inform, and hold the game together. When the teams fly south for spring training, fans, eager to sort through and argue over the numbers, flock to the sports shelves for the statistics. The Sports Encyclopedia has what baseball aficionados want. From 1901 through 1997, the reference supplies updated and revised lifetime numbers for every player, plus seasonal summaries of each team's performance. In addition, there are details of every playoff and World Series game ever played, profiles of every no-hitter since 1901, updated stats on RBIs, on-base percentages, and fielding, plus classic baseball legends and intriguing trivia. As salaries and sports politics get murky, it's refreshing to surround yourself with pages and pages of solid, quantitative information.

nice source for statistical information on the major leagues:
I bought this book because I wanted to do a longitudinal data analysis on home run frequency. The book has all the details for teams and the leagues going from 1900 through 1999. I used the data from 1910 to 1999. I also found the brief summaries of the year in baseball interesting. For those seasons that I remember it brought back memories and filled in details that I had missed or forgotten. I very much agree with Tucker's evaluation of the book. The many typos are annoying and if a book is intended to be a reference on baseball statistics the numbers should be correct. I found a few typos on team games played in a given season. Usually these errors are easy to detect and sometimes even to correct. However I wish I had better confidence in the numbers since I need them to get the home runs per game for each team.

my review was for the 2000 edition:
I published a review for the 2000 edition of this book not 2001 or 2002. Many of the reviews listed under this edition are for earlier editions and some comments may not pertain. Books like this one can change dramatically from year to year. Errors could be corrected, new errors introduced and there is always a whole new season of statistics that has an effect on the flavor of the book. For instance 2002 was the year that Bonds broke McGwire's homerun record, so I am sure that there is coverage of that. These books are not worth buying every year. But these authors do a credible job and I would expect this to be of similar quality to the one I own. I would suggest buying a copy once every 5 years if you are a baseball enthusiast and only every year if you are a fanatic. However for sports statistic fanatics it may be that Total Baseball has more information.

This is the best baseball book ever!!! buy it:
i was in the bookstore one day looking for a baseball book that i get every year-- the sporting news 2001 baseball guide (which by the way is very good)but it wasnt there. Then I came across this book, I read the back and discovered that the Sporting News had named it a must for every baseball fan, so it must be good. I got home and took it out of the plastic and discovered it was great! It has every baseball player from 1900 to 2000. Every statistic possible. This is a must have for every baseball fan!!!

Great source for everything since 1901...:
This book does a great job of giving a one-source place to see how every player did for a particular team in a particular year. If you're not particularly interested in what happened before 1901, this is a must-have. But being an amateur student of 19th century baseball, I do wish they'd expand their coverage to at least go back to 1876, including the start of the National League, and include other recognized major leagues before 1901 (the American Association, Players League and Union Association). I give it five stars for what it does since 1901. But because "major league" baseball goes back to 1876 and arguably 1871 (with the National Association), I have to take a star away because it feels "incomplete."

Great Book, But...:
I bought the 2003 edition of The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball today, & as usual am overall pleased with the wealth of information in this very valuable book. However, there are a few problems which the editors need to resolve for future editions.This series has always been plagued by poor editing & typos, & the 2003 edition is no exception. In fact, there is one HUGE error that should never have gotten past whoever edited this edition. Turn to page 700 & you'll see it: instead of the statistics for the 2002 NL Championship Series between St. Louis & San Francisco the ones for the 2001 NLCS between Arizona & Atlanta have been reprinted. Someone should have caught this major blunder.Since this annual series does have typos & errors (what book with so much info doesn't?) the editors should provide their readers with an e-mail or snail mail address to notify them of mistakes so they can be corrected. I was able to do so in the 1980s & several errors were corrected. I hope the editors will be open to input from their readers once again, for that only strengthens the factual integrity of the book.I'm sure there are other mistakes but the one above is the reason I give The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball 2003 a rating of 4 instead of 5. It will make a good addition to your baseball reference library, but it's probably a good idea to have another encylopedia handy to doublecheck the info. Trust, but verify, with all these huge statistical books, I say.