BASEBALL
Research Primer
What follows are a few tips that might help get you started
on a research project. This
brief outline is not intended to replace the Society for American
Baseball Research’s (SABR) own 2000 publication, How to Do Baseball Research,
edited by Gerald Tomlinson (available at http://sabr.org).
That fine work focuses on all aspects of baseball research, and goes into much
more detail than we attempt here. This document is a start, something that
might help you organize the task ahead.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mark Armour for providing the bulk of this primer. Cary Smith and Dan Levitt contributed the majority the web-based information. Stew Thornley provided the Hennepin County Library research direction.
Contents:
Essential Web
Resources
Other Useful
Places to Surf
Historical
Newspapers Online
Historical
Magazines and Periodicals
Scholarly
Sources and Journals
Databases
Standard
Texts
Statistics
Using your
SABR Membership
Library
Services
Commercial
Services
Book Dealers,
etc.
Other Hints:
What to Look For
SABR
Baseball Research Journals
Access: http://research.sabr.org/brj/index.php/archive
Baseball Reference
Access: http://www.baseball-reference.com
An encyclopedia-style site managed by SABR member Sean Forman. Organized by player, team, year, etc.
Retrosheet
Access: http://www.retrosheet.org
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.
Baseball Library
Access: http://www.baseballlibrary.com
Day-by-days, season rosters, on-line version of The Ballplayers, on-line version of the Baseball Chronology.
The Baseball Index
Access: http://www.baseballindex.org
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.
Emerald Guide
Access: http://sabr.org/sabr.cfm?a=cms,c,2766,36,0
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
Access: http://www.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.
Google Books
Access: http://books.google.com
Enter “baseball” into the search window (or a more specific term, such as the title of the book). To narrow the list to books that are on line, change “All Books” to either “Limited Preview and Full View” or “Full View Only” in the “Showing” window.
Baseball Almanac
Access: http://www.baseball-almanac.com
Managed by SABR member Sean Holtz. Trivia style. Stories, jokes, lists, awards, etc.
Access: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/bbhtml/bbhome.html
This web site has a large image
collection of old baseball cards.
Access: http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com
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.
Peter Morris Books
Access: http://www.petermorrisbooks.com
In addition to a listing and summary of books by Peter Morris, this site contains links to other research performed by Morris.
Milkees
Press
Access: http://milkeespress.com
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.
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
For
St. Paul Public Library:
http://www.stpaul.lib.mn.us
Click on Online Databases (http://alpha.stpaul.lib.mn.us/screens/srchhelp_db.html)
If accessing remotely, click on Outside the Library (will eventually have to
insert name, library card bar code, and PIN, which can be obtained when
registering the card with the library).
Click on Articles – Newspapers
Options:
Go to Historical New York Times (limited to 1851-2005) or
Go to ProQuest Newsstand Complete (for Historical New
York Times or Historical Minneapolis Tribune, limited to 1867-1922) or
Go to Minnesota Newspapers (for a variety of Minnesota newspapers limited to
certain time periods, including the Star Tribune from January 1986 to present
and St. Paul Pioneer Press from January 1988 to present)
For Hennepin County Library:
http://www.hclib.org
Click on Databases A-Z (http://www.hclib.org/pub/search/SubjectGuides.cfm?Topic=Databases)
Options:
Go to Historical Minneapolis Tribune (1867-1922)
Go to Historical New York Times, 1851–2005
Go to ProQuest Newsstand (full-text articles from
major national and regional newspapers, including the Washington Post, Los
Angeles Times, Barron’s and the Star Tribune. Coverage varies by title.)
Brooklyn Eagle Archives
Access: http://brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle
The Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper digitized from 1841-1902.
Toronto Star Archives
Access: http://thestar.pagesofthepast.ca/Default.asp
A subscription provides access to millions of pages from The Toronto Star - pages that previously could be viewed only on a microfilm viewer. Pages of the Past is searchable by the text on the page, or by the date of publication. You can easily seek out birth, death and marriage notices; follow stories of international importance or local significance; view fashion trends, or check on the price of goods over the years.
US News Archives on
the web
Access: http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/internet/archives.html
A site that provides links to United States news archives available on the web. Some links may be slightly outdated.
NewspaperARCHIVE.com
Access: http://newspaperarchive.com
NewspaperARCHIVE.com is the single largest historical newspaper database online, containing more newspaper pages from 1759 to present than any other service. Subscription required.
Xooxle Newspaper and Magazine Archives
Access: http://xooxleanswers.com/newspaperarchives.aspx
Genealogy Bank
Access: http://genealogybank.com
Old Fulton NY Post Cards
Access: http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html
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.
Mid-Continent Public
Library
Access: http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us
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.
Historical Magazines and
Periodicals
New Yorker Magazine Archives
Access: http://www.thenewyorkerstore.com/books_completenewyorker_middle.asp?affiliate=TNYS06_TNYCN
Order the complete text of all New
Yorker magazines since February 1925.
The New Yorker had a number of baseball articles, in addition
to many famous ones by Roger Angell.
DVD – $19.99; Portable hard disk –
$179.99; Updates available.
Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles
Access: http://www.aafla.org/5va/serials_frmst.htm
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
Access: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/spaldinghtml/spaldinghome.html
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.
Access: http://books.google.com/books?id=Zj8qAAAAYAAJ&dq=Reach+Baseball+Guides&lr=&as_brr=1
Baseball Digest, 1945-2007
Access: http://books.google.com/books?id=8SsDAAAAMBAJ
Search access: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCI
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.
Scholarly Sources and Journals
JSTOR
Access: http://www.jstor.org
Check your public library web site
for remote access.
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.
Hall of Fame Library
Catalog
Access: http://abner.baseballhalloffame.org/search
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.
Academic Search Premier (Ebscohost)
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)
WorldCat
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.
Access: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html
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.
Baseball1
Access: http://www.baseball1.com
Managed by SABR
member Sean Lahman. An outstanding
feature is a downloadable encyclopedia database. (Access, or
comma-delimited).
Baseball Player Database
A CD available from Old-Time Data,
Inc., Overland Park, KS
Access: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/minor-league
The site contains information
about ordering a CD-ROM from Old-Time Data, Inc. that contains the entire professional
records of plyaersbetween 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. With the CD you can search for teams by year, league, farm
system, etc., as well as looking for individual players.
SABR Minor League Database
http://minors.sabrwebs.com/cgi-bin/index.php
Win Expectancy Finder
Access: http://winexp.walkoffbalk.com/expectancy/search
Plug in a situation (bottom of the fifth, bags loaded, no out, visiting team
ahead by a run) to see a team’s chances of winning based on emperical
data from 1977 to 2006.
mlb.com statistics
Access: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/stats/index.jsp
Access: http://www.baseballrace.com
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.
Jim Albert’s home
page
Access: http://bayes.bgsu.edu/
Jim Albert is a SABR member who posts some of his sabermetric studies.
TangoTiger
Access: http://www.tangotiger.net/
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.
John 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.
Baseball Prospectus
Access: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/
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
Access: http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/
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.
Baseball Analysts
Access: http://www.baseballanalysts.com/
An excellent
overall baseball site run by Rich Lederer.
Beyond the Boxscore
Access: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/
An excellent site that includes
research by Cy Morong
Hardball Times
Access: http://www.hardballtimes.com/
Another good statistical site
SABR Statistical Analysis Committee
Access: http://www.philbirnbaum.com/
Phil Birnbaum’s
web site has all the past issues of By The
Numbers, the quarterly publication of SABR’s
statistical analysis committee.
SABR Research Tools Site (includes the resources noted below--underlined items are links to other resources)
SABR Research Committees
SABR
Regional Chapters
The
Online SABR Baseball Encyclopedia
Includes the SABR Biographical Committee Player Demographics Database, the Pete
Palmer Historical Player Statistics Database, the Tattersall-McConnell
Home Run Log, the SABR Pictorial Committee Player Image Index, and the SABR
Scouts Committee Who-Signed-Whom Database. Access is limited to SABR members
who have agreed to terms and conditions of use.
The Baseball
Index
The
SABR Lending Library
The
SABR-L Archives
SABR Triple Plays Database
SABR Batterymates Project
The Baseball Research Journal Archives
2007 Sporting News Complete Baseball Record and Fact Book
The National Baseball Hall
of Fame and Museum
A.
Bartlett Giamatti Research Center
ABNER (American
Baseball Network for Electronic Research) Online Library Catalog
The Library of Congress
American Memories Special Collections
By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball
Highlights, 1860s-1960s
University Libraries of
Notre Dame Baseball-Related Holdings
The Sports Research Collection
Cleveland Public Library
Unique Collections
The Mears & Murdock Baseball Collections
Western Reserve Historical Society
The SABR Archives, Frank Phelps Collection & Louis Van Oeyen Photographs
San Diego Public Library –
SABR Ted Williams Chapter
San Diego
Baseball Research Center
National Endowment for the
Humanities
Chronicling
America - Historic American Newspapers
U.S. Newspaper Program
(online directory to microfilm resources)
Note: The Society for American Baseball Research now offers the Emerald
Guide to all interested parties (not just SABR members). A pdf is versions back to 2007 may be downloaded at no
charge. Hardcopies of the guide may be ordered for a fee.
Minneapolis
Public Library
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, call or e-mail Heather Lawton, 612-630-6351, hblawton@mplib.org.
Can come in without appointment during
their hours but must contact Heather ahead of time if certain materials are
needed.
o
Putnam team
histories. Published 1945-55, fairly
comprehensive. Several have been
reissued with indexes.
o
Golenbock’s team oral histories (Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox,
Cardinals, Mets)
o
Post-1950 histories
fairly sporadic but plentiful for the big market teams.
MISCELLANEOUS
Online Forums
Ballparks
http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/index.htm
Business of Baseball (SABR Business of
Baseball Committee site)
Access: http://bob.sabrwebs.com/
Giant collection of baseball links
Access: http://baseballguru.com/bbsabr1.html
No-hitters
http://milkeespress.com/officialscorers.html
http://milkeespress.com/lostninth.html
Graves
http://www.thedeadballera.com/gravesitelist.html
http://stewthornley.net/halloffamegraves.html
http://www.baseballundertaker.com
Note: This research primer is a product of the Research Committee of the Halsey Hall Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research.