The Baseball Encyclopedia by Gary Gillette (Editor), Pete Palmer (Editor)

Synopsis

Based on a completely new database compiled by the award-winning godfather of statistical baseball analysis Pete Palmer and edited by respected baseball historian, commentator, and editor Gary Gillete—and featuring several never-before-published statistics—The Baseball Encyclopedia 2004 is the most complete and accurate baseball database ever compiled. This remarkable volume, brought to fans at an unbeatable price, is brimming with information, including:

• Comprehensive year-by-year and team-by-team batting and pitching statistics for all 16,003 players in major league history (1871-2003).
• Sophisticated new fielding analysis that takes advantage of newly released play-by-play data (1969-2003) to much more accurately evaluate fielding range and catcher defense.
• Never-before-published stats like Run Support for Starting Pitchers, Blown Saves, and Stolen Bases against catchers, as well as Hit-by-Pitch and Intentional Walk numbers for both batters and pitchers.
• Comprehensive information on career interruptions due to wartime military service.
• "The Boys of Summer" section covering all MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and other major award selections.
• "The Naturals" section covering the Hall of Fame, including a list of all people ever receiving votes for the Hall of Fame as well as a chronological list of HOF voting.
• "Hometown Heroes" section showing yearly rosters for each team with all regular pitchers, players and top reserves.
• "The Long Season: The Historical Record" section with year-by-year standings, teams stats, 35 categories of league leaders, and essays on the pennant races.
• "The Men in the Dugout" Manager Register with year-by-year records and finishes for every manager in history.
• "The Glory of Their Times" section: The all-time leaders in more than 150 categories of career and single-season batting, pitching, and fielding stats.
• "Fields of Dreams" section with extensive information on current and former big-league ballparks.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Pete Palmer has been one of the foremost chroniclers of the National Pastime for the past four decades. Co-author of the seminal analytical work The Hidden Game of Baseball and co-editor of the groundbreaking encyclopedia Total Baseball, the depth and breadth of Palmer’s work is truly remarkable.

Prior to the publication of the first edition of Total Baseball in 1989, Palmer served as editor of the original Barnes Official Encyclopedia of Baseball and as a consultant to the Sports Information Center, official statisticians for the American League, from 1976-1987. While with SIC, he introduced on-base percentage as an official American League statistic (in 1979). He is a long-time contributor to Who's Who in Baseball as well as The Sporting News Official MLB Fact Book and Record Book.

Among Palmer’s analytical innovations is on-base plus slugging (OPS), now universally used as a quick but reliable measure of overall batting strength. He also discovered the statistical relationship between runs and wins, and developed such formulas as linear weights for translating player performance into team wins.

Palmer was a member of the board of directors of Project Scoresheet and is a contributor to Retrosheet. He has been a member of SABR since 1973 and served as chair of its Statistical Analysis Committee for 15 years. In 1989, he was awarded SABR’s highest honor, the Bob Davids award.

Palmer’s brushes with baseball greatness include bidding The Kid adieu at Ted Williams' final game, on September 28, 1960. He is married to the former Beth Statz, grandniece of the legendary outfielder Jigger Statz, perhaps the greatest player in PCL history.

Gary Gillette-a tireless baseball author, analyst, and editor with countless books and newspaper and magazine articles to his credit — including groundbreaking work for the sixth and seventh editions of Total Baseball — is always involved in several projects at once. In addition to The Baseball Encyclopedia, he is working on two forthcoming books: Going, Going…Gone?, about the post-World War II decline in popularity of the National Pastime, and an updated and revised edition of the renowned classic The Hidden Game of Baseball, in collaboration with Pete Palmer, co-author of the original. Gillette was also a contributor the Baseball Prospectus 2003.

Gillette was a co-founder and vice president of Total Sports, Inc., an Internet and print sports information publisher headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, from 1997 to 1999. Online, he served as the executive editor of Total Baseball Daily from 1996 to 1999, as the editor of The Baseball Workshop Online on AOL in 1996, and as a contributor to TotalBaseball.com, AT&T Interchange and Sports Illustrated Online. From 1992 to 1997, Gillette was the president and owner of The Baseball Workshop, which operated a national stringer network covering Major League Baseball while producing and maintaining a unique set of baseball databases. Sports Extra (publisher of Total Baseball) and The Baseball Workshop were merged with Koz Sports to form Total Sports in March 1997.

In addition to writing, Gillette works as an expert witness on baseball-related litigation, as a consultant to insurance companies on player contract issues, and as an adviser to player agents on salary arbitration cases. He has been featured as a baseball commentator and analyst for several NPR stations, including WHYY in Philadelphia, WKAR in East Lansing, Michigan, and Minnesota Public Radio.

Gillette’s field of dreams moment was playing Little League baseball on the same field that Christy Mathewson once trod in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. A Tigers’ fan since 1961, Gillette has experienced more than his share of despair in recent years. He was in Detroit for the last four games of the 2003 season, which he knows helped the Tigers avert a record-setting loss.

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