BASEBALL
Research Primer
This primer is a supplement, produced by the Halsey Hall Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), to SABR’s Research Resources page. The latter is available only to SABR members.
Contents:
Useful Places to Surf
Scholarly Sources and Journals
Research Resources from SABR
The main page for links to SABR research resources. (Must log in as SABR member.)
Ball park or ballpark? Hyphen in pinch hit? Two RBI or RBIs? The SABR Style Guide is a must for anyone writing about baseball. It builds on style books such as The Associated Press Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style with terms specific to baseball.
Links to past issues of the SABR Baseball Research Journal and The National Pastime.
An encyclopedia-style site managed by SABR member Sean Forman. Organized by player, team, year, etc.�
Managed by SABR member David Smith. A tremendous resource with a surprisingly diverse number of statistics and breakdowns. Game-by-game information, including downloadable play-by-play. Anyone can join, and they have a member listserv.
The Baseball Index (TBI) is a free catalog to baseball literature.� It encompasses books, magazine articles, programs, pamphlets, films, recordings, songs, poems, cartoons, advertising, or anything else that may be of interest to the baseball fan or researcher. It is an ongoing project of the Bibliography Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) to catalog the entirety of baseball literature, from the earliest references to the present day. TBI is the creation of volunteers. Their hours of work and financial contributions have made your TBI research possible.
Remember, TBI is an index to baseball literature. It is a guide to what has been written about baseball subjects. It does not include the full-text of the sources referenced.
The SABR Oral History Collection includes hundreds of interviews conducted with ballplayers, executives, scouts, authors, writers, broadcasters, and other figures of historical baseball significance. It also has special sessions from SABR events.
2014 Emerald Guide to Baseball
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) offers
the Emerald Guide to Baseball as a free PDF to the baseball community.
The Emerald Guide contains statistics and other information that had
been available in the annual Official Baseball Guide published by The
Sporting News. In addition to the free PDF (past issues back to 2007 are
also available), bound copies are available for purchase.
Ancestry.com
Ancestry.com offers a large collection of government
historical information.� Most notably
they provide U.S. Federal Census records, Birth, Marriage & Death records,
and a Social Security Death Index. Monthly and annual subscriptions are
available.
GenealogyBank
A genealogical resources that includes modern obituaries and historical newspapers. Subscriptions available.
Enter �baseball� into the search window (or a more specific term, such as the title of the book).
Managed by SABR member Sean Holtz.� Trivia style. Stories, jokes, lists, awards, etc.
This web site has a large image
collection of old baseball cards.
This site tracks Major League baseball contracts, signing bonuses, service time and franchise values. The information is unofficial and has been collected from various published reports.
Milkees
Press
A research service by SABR member Stew Thornley, this site
contains monographs, including an ongoing list of no-hitters broken up in the ninth
inning since 1961, a list of Minnesota Twins uniform
numbers, research on the demise of the reserve clause,
and articles and information on Minnesota baseball history, including the Minneapolis Millers.
Cliff Blau: Original Baseball Research
Links to baseball research by SABR member Cliff Blau
Baseball History
This site, by SABR member David Trombley, has links to league and team histories.
University of Maryland Special Collections
Baseball Rule Books from 1871 to 1910
ARCHIVEGRID: Topics > Baseball
Evolution of Baseball
Proquest
Access: Hennepin County and St. Paul Libraries, which also
offer remote access to those with a library card registered with them (does not
have to be issued by the specific library, just registered with them).
Includes:
Historical New York Times
Minneapolis Tribune
Selected Minnesota Newspapers
Atlanta Historic Newspaper Archives
Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online
The Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper digitized from 1841-1902.
New York Clipper
The New York Clipper was a weekly entertainment newspaper, with outstanding baseball coverage, from May 7, 1853 to July 12, 1924.
U. S. News Archives on
the Web
A site that provides links to United States news archives available on the web.� Some links may be slightly outdated.
NewspaperARCHIVE.com is the single largest historical newspaper database online, containing more newspaper pages from 1759 to present than any other service.� Subscription required.
XooxleAnswers Newspaper Archives
California Digital Newspaper Collection
Old Fulton New York Quebec Magazines and Newspapers Scanned newspapers available for free. It downloads in searchable pdf form. The text can be copied and translated with Google Translate or another on-line program.
Mid-Continent Public
Library The St. Paul and Hennepin County library databases (also listed above) include useful links to magazines and periodicals. Hennepin County Library (includes Minneapolis Libraries): For remote access, will need a library card and PIN, which can be obtained when the card is registered with the library.
Includes: Baseball Magazine 1909-1918 (not
complete)
Sports in History 1993-2001 Journal of Sports History 1974-2002 Sport Management Review 1998-2004 Other magazine and journals This web site has indoor base ball
guides from 1903-1926 and Spalding base ball guides from 1889-1939. Not every
year is there, but many of them are.
HighBeam Research
Access:� highbeam.com HighBeam Research provides one
place where you can access the free Web, online services to which you subscribe
(both for-pay services and free services requiring registration) and a
proprietary Library archive of 35 million articles from 3,000 respected
publishers. HighBeam Research
Offers Basic and Full Membership Options. Full Membership includes unlimited
viewing of full-text articles, full use of personalization tools, and the
ability to export research to Microsoft Office.
Specializes in historical scholarly
journals.� Articles go back at least to 1869.
Includes
journals in law, religion, business, feminist and women�s studies, African
American studies, geography, history.
ABNER Library
Catalog (Baseball Hall of Fame) ABNER (American Baseball Network
for Electronic Research) is the National Baseball Hall of Fame Online Library
Catalog. Library material is not available for loan. However, such material may
be used on site at the Hall of Fame�s A. Bartlett Giamatti
Research Center. Research services are available by contacting the Library.
EBSCO Academic Search Premier
Access: Check your public library
web site for remote access. Has a very strong search engine to
filter out publication, age, full text or citations. Includes: American Journal of Sports
Medicine 1/1/1992-Current (Citations) Culture, Sport, Society
3/1/2000-12/31/2003 (Full Text) International Sports Journal
1/1/2002-6/30/2004 (Full Text) Journal of Sports Sciences
5/1/1996-Current (Citations) Journal of Philosophy of Sport
5/1/2003-Current (Citations) Newsweek 2/21/1983-Current
(Citations) Nine: A Journal of Baseball
History & Culture 9/1/2005-Current (Citations) Access: Check your public library
web site for remote access. Do a search of
libraries all over the country for many things including books, Visuals,
Articles, Maps, almost anything a library would have in their collection.� There are only citations so the best way to
use this database is for finding hard to get items and then using interlibrary
loan. SeanLahman.com Databases Old-Time Data Inc.: The Professional Baseball Player Databases
The site contains information
about ordering a database that contains the entire professional
records of players between 1922 and 2004. The data is
limited�batting average, home runs, runs batted in for position players, and won-lost record and earned-run average for
pitchers, but it is invaluable for finding records of men who did not reach the
major leagues.
Chadwick Baseball Bureau: Tidy Baseball Data Historical Baseball Writer Database
Clem’s Baseball: Our National Pastime & Its “Green Cathedrals” Twin Cities Ballparks (booklet - PDF 3.2 MB/11 pages) Washington Park, Brooklyn
Northern League Organization and Team Histories St. Paul Saints History 1920-39 Minneapolis Millers Spalding’s Minneapolis Amateur Base Ball Year Book for 1905 This is a site maintained by SABR member Terry Bohn with links to research he has done on the early history of baseball in North Dakota. History of Playing and Scoring Rules
Protoball: Pre-pro Baseball Protoball:Pre-pro Clubs and Games in Minnesota
Baseball Hall of Fame Gravesites
List of Major League Baseball No-hitters Lost in the Ninth: No-Hitters Broken Up in the Ninth Inning Since 1961 No-Hitters and Official Scorers
Scouts Research Committee by SABR Diamond Minds - Information on Scouts from the Baseball Hall of Fame Baseball America: 2013 Big League Debuts and Their Signing Scouts SABR Scouts eGroup
The baseballrace.com site is the creation Christopher J. Falvey. It is an online application that allows you to view
any Major League Baseball season, split by league or division (even wild card
races), as an animated, date-by-date race between the various teams you choose. If Linear Weights, Run Expectancy,
and Runs Created mean something to you, if you are a fan of Pete Palmer or Bill
James, then you�ve come to the right place. This is just a dumping ground for
research or reports that I�ve done, and people might find interesting. One day,
I will post all my research here.
Statistical Studies of Baseball by John F. Jarvis
Access:� http://knology.net/~johnfjarvis/baseball.html In the world of professional team
sports baseball is unique in several ways. The discrete nature of the game,
enabling individual plays to be readily categorized with a modest number of
possible outcomes, leads to a very complete statistical record. Likewise, the
discrete nature of the game enables detailed simulations to be carried out. The
game�s statistical record provides accurate parametrization
of the simulator and insight into the game can be obtained from these
simulations. A number of statistical studies based on simulator results and
full season play-by-play descriptions are linked to this page. If you�re not familiar with
Baseball Prospectus, here�s what we�re all about: understanding the game better, and innovating in order to do it. Everyone at BP
loves the game of baseball with a passion that most people just don�t
understand. We feel that this greatest of games is so compelling that we want
to know everything about it. We always want to improve our understanding of the
game; each player, each play, each pitch, each throw, each hit--what does it
really mean? Those arguments that take place in bars about
the relative merits of different players? We really want to know the
definitive answer to those questions. But we don�t want to kill the joy of the
game while we�re looking. Baseball Think Factory and its
family of affiliated sites is dedicated to providing unique baseball content
(information, blogs, links, news, forums, chat) to thinking baseball fans.
An excellent
overall baseball site run by Rich Lederer.
SB Nation: Beyond the Boxscore
An excellent site that includes
research by Cy Morong.
Another good statistical site.
Phil Birnbaum�s
website contains a sabermetric research blog.
A Guide to Sabermetric Research SABR Statistical Analysis Research Committee
Baseball Analyst Archives
Prints & Photographs Online Catalogs from the Library of Congress Just about any player who played
for the Cubs or the White Sox from 1902-1933 is pictured in this
collection. Many of the photos are also
of visiting players from the same era.
Hennepin County Central Library - Minneapolis
Most of the books with Library of Congress classifications
are now on the shelves on the main floor.�
The books in the tall shelves in the section closer to 3rd
Street are circulating copies.� Books in
the shorter shelves closer to the atrium are reference copies or are books in
the Popular Library. Current periodicals and newspapers are on the third
floor.� All the microfilm reels for the
Minneapolis newspapers are in cases in this area.� All of the St. Paul papers back to 1967 are
in these cases, as well. ����� Other
newspapers�Washington Post, New York Times, are in the stacks area on the other
side of the atrium on the third floor. ����� In this area are
the periodicals A through O.� P to Z are across the hall. History and Social Services are on the fourth floor.� The stacks contain reference books as well as
circulation copies of annual books.�
Sports books are in the section GV 877 to GV 971.� Books on the Olympics are at GV 721.5.� Also, check out the oversized (folio) baseball
books in the stacks at fGV 863 to fGV
878. ����� Other sports
books with the Dewey Decimal System (797) are in the stacks, as well. ��������� James K. Hosmer
Special Collections Library�Fourth floor. ����� Open by
appointment only on Mondays and Wednesdays (10 to 1 and 2 to 4:30) and the
first and third Saturday of each month from 11 to 2. ����� To schedule an
appointment or to have certain materials available, call 612-630-6351.
Baseball America Executive Database Baseball: The National Pastime in the National Archives BaseballGuru.com Baseball Research & Analysis Baseball Resources at the Library of Congress Beyond the Box Score:
Baseball Records in the National Archives Brooklyn Dodgers Archival Material - Guide Effa Manley Collection of Negro Baseball Papers 1938-1976 Esteban Bellan Collection at Fordham (Cuban Baseball) Using the leaderboards and team section, all sorts of statistics are available, including the latest pitch type information. Examples: Index of Online Baseball Guides The Joyce Sports Research Collection: Baseball National College Baseball Hall of Fame - Southwest Collection Archive Norman Macht Baseball Research Collection Guide A great resource for pitch types. Example: Dallas Keuchel pitch location box from 2015 Smithsonian Institution: Guide to the Ronald Gabriel Collection of Baseball Memorabilia Content related to the Brooklyn Dodgers Spalding’s Official Base Ball Record Books 1908-1922 Sullivan Family Baseball Research Center The Society for American Baseball Research collection, housed in the Sullivan Family Baseball Research Center at the San Diego Library, is the largest baseball research collection outside of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Yahoo Groups: Minnesota Baseball An on-line discussion group centered on Minnesota, although any baseball topic is allowed. Note: This research primer is a product of the
Research Committee of the Halsey Hall Chapter of the Society for American
Baseball Research.
This site has New York
Newspapers, including the Brooklyn Eagle up to 1955 as well as
newspapers from Binghamton, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Auburn, and
Utica.
The Mid-Continent Public Library has a non-resident card
available for a fee and provides access to historical newspapers such as the Chicago Defender, Atlanta Daily World, Los Angeles
Sentinel, New York Amsterdam News, and Pittsburgh
Courier.
Magazines and Periodicals
The Sporting News Baseball Players Contract Cards CollectionLibrary of Congress Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939
Google Books: The Reach Guide
Scholarly Sources and Journals
Managed by SABR
member Sean Lahman.� An outstanding
feature is a downloadable encyclopedia database.� (Access, or
comma-delimited).
From the Society for American Baseball Research Baseball and the Media Committee
Standard Texts
Encyclopedias
Biographical
Sources
Teams Histories
Baseball History
� General
Periodicals,
Annuals
Ballparks
Seamheads.com Ballparks DatabaseHistory
Includes links to all games played by the Minneapolis Millers, 1884 to 1960
A 164-page guide with information and statistics on amateur and semi-professional teams in Minnesota in 1905
The Protoball Chronologies cover the evolution of ballgames from ancient Times to 1870, just before the first professional baseball league began.
Covers the spread of baseball in MinnesotaGraves/Necrology
No-Hitters
Scouts
Moderated discussion group for members of the SABR Scouts Committee
Statistics
A sabermetrics journal edited by Bill James from 1981 to 1989Photos
Photographs from the Chicago Daily News
1902-1933
Umpires and Official Scoring
Using Your SABR Membership
Library Services
Miscellenous
All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Interviews
The Sporting News Baseball Players Contract Cards Collection at the LA 84 Foundation
Vintage Baseball Cards from the Collection of Senator Richard B. Russell