The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Definitive Record of Major League Baseball

No single volume sings the epic saga of the game with quite the rhythms of The Baseball Encyclopedia. Now in its 10th edition, the granddaddy of all sports reference books is, at just over eight pounds and 3000 pages, the National Pastime's weightiest tome. As all-seeing as Homer and Milton, as all-knowing as Shakespeare and Yeats, the encyclopedia finds its poetry in the rhythms of baseball's numbers. Every player--regardless of significance--is present, with all the essential statistics of his career. There are, no doubt, some soulless creatures who may open the encyclopedia and just see page after page of dry, meaningless, numbing data; the rest of us know better: 755, 714, 61, 511, .406, 1.12, and 4,256 are all self-contained dramas filled with tension, and inspiring awe. It is in these stats, and thousands more, that the mysteries of the game begin to reveal themselves.