The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Definitive Record of Major League Baseball (10th Ed Rev, Upd & Exp)

Rating:
Summary: Great statistics, but the CD is a catastrophe
Review: This is a great book of sport statistics, but the CD is a catastrophe. It didn't work on Win98, it didn't work on Win95, it even destroyed the registry of Win 3.11, and it seems to be incompatible with Microsoft Office (and I'm not a computer beginner). This book is also available without the CD, so my recommendation is to buy only the book.

Rating:
Summary: "The Baseball Encyclopedia"
Review: This is the bible by which all other baseball encyclopedias are measured. My main criticism is that it is not kept up to date. I have the tenth edition which only goes through the '95 season (date of this review 24 March 2000). Some of the features are of little interest to me: trades, lifetime rosters, and home-road performances. I did enjoy some features in previous editions which have since been deleted, such as the difference in winning percentages between pitchers and the teams they played for. This was a really revealing stat! Some pitchers considered outstanding by most of us actually had lower winning percentages than the teams they played for, and some, Walter Johnson for example, who played for dreadful teams most of his career, are even greater than their indivdual stats would indicate! This is not a perfect book, and some information can be better obtained elsewhere, but it is still the gold standard, and I certainly will purchase the next edition, if I live that long.

Rating:
Summary: "The Baseball Encyclopedia"
Review: This is the bible by which all other baseball encyclopedias are measured. My main criticism is that it is not kept up to date. I have the tenth edition which only goes through the '95 season (date of this review 24 March 2000). Some of the features are of little interest to me: trades, lifetime rosters, and home-road performances. I did enjoy some features in previous editions which have since been deleted, such as the difference in winning percentages between pitchers and the teams they played for. This was a really revealing stat! Some pitchers considered outstanding by most of us actually had lower winning percentages than the teams they played for, and some, Walter Johnson for example, who played for dreadful teams most of his career, are even greater than their indivdual stats would indicate! This is not a perfect book, and some information can be better obtained elsewhere, but it is still the gold standard, and I certainly will purchase the next edition, if I live that long.

Rating:
Summary: It's sad to see a giant decline. . .
Review: With each edition, this once venerable tome gets less and less accurate - and seemingly more stubborn about it (challenges? when you guys stubbornly refuse to examine the records of Heinie Zimmerman and Ty Cobb in challenged years?). Avoid this book and get Total Baseball instead.

Rating:
Summary: A stats-person's heaven!!
Review: You could easily spend hours paging through the book. It has just about every stat that you could think of. One feature I really liked was a complete list of trades that were made over the many years. All-star game stats as well as world series stats complete with the box scores. If you like stats and you like to see the stats of the old-timers, this is the book to get.