BaseballMusings, via James Crabtree, points out that the 1905 Reach Guide is available for free download via Google Books.
However, if you take that one step further and search Google Books for other baseball books, you'll see that the 1905 Reach Guide isn't the only one available. This search will return all books that Google Books has the full text freely available, many of which can be downloaded directly. Included are Baseball Goes to War, by William B. Mead, the 1910 Baseball Reach Guide, and the 1912 Who's Who in Baseball.
And don't forget that the full run of Baseball Digest is also available on Google Books.
Showing posts with label Reference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reference. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
SABR and the Emerald Guide to Baseball
Well, I'm not the first person to mention this, but I figured that, in keeping with my mission to highlight resources available free on the internet, it would still be good to mention this here: SABR, the Society of American Baseball Research, is offering a PDF version of The Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009 online for free. You can see what the New York Times has to say about the Emerald Guide here.
Here is what SABR has to say:
I also want to take this opportunity to promote SABR itself. It's an organization that has interested me for years, and I finally took the plunge today and signed up for a membership. With a membership, you gain access to an active and interested baseball community, the full slate of SABR publications, SABR's detailed baseball encylcopedia, and, most importantly, SABR-L, the SABR mailing list, which contains some of the best baseball discussion you can find. You also get access to the full SABR membership directory, which is nice. I've only been a member for a day now, and I already love what I've found.
If you're interested in baseball or baseball history (and SABR really is about more than just statistics), then you owe it to yourself to take a look at SABR. And what better time than today, when they're giving you the Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009 for free? Go take a look!
Here is what SABR has to say:
"The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is pleased to to offer the Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009 as a free PDF to the world baseball community.For non-SABR members to download the PDF, all you need to do is provide your email address. From there, they will send you an email with a link to the 2007, 2008, and 2009 guides. It's a fantastic opportunity, and I hope as many people as possible take SABR up on the deal.
Edited by accomplished and acclaimed baseball historians Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer and published by SABR, The Emerald Guide distills the 2008 season down to 586 fact-filled pages that contain the pitching, fielding, and hitting statistics for every player active in the major and minor leagues in 2008. A bound version is available via print on demand at Lulu.com for $23.94. .Every page in the bound edition is in the PDF."
I also want to take this opportunity to promote SABR itself. It's an organization that has interested me for years, and I finally took the plunge today and signed up for a membership. With a membership, you gain access to an active and interested baseball community, the full slate of SABR publications, SABR's detailed baseball encylcopedia, and, most importantly, SABR-L, the SABR mailing list, which contains some of the best baseball discussion you can find. You also get access to the full SABR membership directory, which is nice. I've only been a member for a day now, and I already love what I've found.
If you're interested in baseball or baseball history (and SABR really is about more than just statistics), then you owe it to yourself to take a look at SABR. And what better time than today, when they're giving you the Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009 for free? Go take a look!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Baseball Records
Well, first things first, Manny finally made a deal with the Dodgers today. That's great news, because it means that we can finally start talking about real, honest-to-goodness baseball. I'm excited about that. I do plan on having a post up about Manny and his free agency-tendencies either sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. It should be interesting, I think.
In the meantime, I thought I'd point this out (even though I'm probably the last person in the world to find this out). Playing around on the baseball-reference.com site earlier, I noticed something hiding in the corner. Normally, when I go to their homepage, I know exactly what I'm looking for, so I don't usually see all the other things they might link to. But I noticed this, and I thought it needed to be pointed out.
The Complete Baseball Record Book that Sporting News publishes every year has been available as a free PDF download for the last two years. Currently, you can find the 2007 Baseball Record Book and the 2008 Baseball Record Book online. It's hard to say if there will be a 2009 version since TSN was taken over last year, but I suspect there will be. If and when that happens, I'll be sure to post a link to it. In the meantime, go take a look.
I remember, as the 1998 season was going along, I decided that getting the 1999 version of this book would be great, since it'd have all of these new records in it. I was excited when I finally saw it on the shelves and I bought it right away. Of course, three years later half of those 1998 records were obsolete. I still have the book, I'm pretty sure, but it did put me off from buying it year-in and year-out. It's nice to see it online, and I hope to see the 2009 version soon.
In the meantime, I thought I'd point this out (even though I'm probably the last person in the world to find this out). Playing around on the baseball-reference.com site earlier, I noticed something hiding in the corner. Normally, when I go to their homepage, I know exactly what I'm looking for, so I don't usually see all the other things they might link to. But I noticed this, and I thought it needed to be pointed out.
The Complete Baseball Record Book that Sporting News publishes every year has been available as a free PDF download for the last two years. Currently, you can find the 2007 Baseball Record Book and the 2008 Baseball Record Book online. It's hard to say if there will be a 2009 version since TSN was taken over last year, but I suspect there will be. If and when that happens, I'll be sure to post a link to it. In the meantime, go take a look.
I remember, as the 1998 season was going along, I decided that getting the 1999 version of this book would be great, since it'd have all of these new records in it. I was excited when I finally saw it on the shelves and I bought it right away. Of course, three years later half of those 1998 records were obsolete. I still have the book, I'm pretty sure, but it did put me off from buying it year-in and year-out. It's nice to see it online, and I hope to see the 2009 version soon.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Quick Notes: Being Commissioner and the Vault
A couple of quick links on an early Friday evening...
1. Jason over at It Is About the Money, Stupid... asked for people's suggestions last week on what they would do if they were Commissioner for a Day. I decided to put in my two cents and so I sent him some (atypically) brief thoughts on stadium financing and the World Baseball Classic. He posted my submission earlier today; go check it out.
2. It was only this past Sunday that I put up a link detailing The Sporting News Vault. Sadly, though, I found out today that Paper of Record, the company that was handling the Vault, has been taken over by Google News and that the TSN vault is no longer available. If you do an Advanced Search with "Sporting News" as the Source, you can find some issues from about 1999 and on. It's nowhere near as complete or detailed as what it was in the past, though.
Over at the Baseball Think Factory thread where I discovered this, user Howard Megdal posted a note he received from the POR webmaster. This seems to be the only real word we can find about what has happened. Hopefully things will get resolved in the future, but I doubt it'll be anytime soon. Here's the note Howard received:
1. Jason over at It Is About the Money, Stupid... asked for people's suggestions last week on what they would do if they were Commissioner for a Day. I decided to put in my two cents and so I sent him some (atypically) brief thoughts on stadium financing and the World Baseball Classic. He posted my submission earlier today; go check it out.
2. It was only this past Sunday that I put up a link detailing The Sporting News Vault. Sadly, though, I found out today that Paper of Record, the company that was handling the Vault, has been taken over by Google News and that the TSN vault is no longer available. If you do an Advanced Search with "Sporting News" as the Source, you can find some issues from about 1999 and on. It's nowhere near as complete or detailed as what it was in the past, though.
Over at the Baseball Think Factory thread where I discovered this, user Howard Megdal posted a note he received from the POR webmaster. This seems to be the only real word we can find about what has happened. Hopefully things will get resolved in the future, but I doubt it'll be anytime soon. Here's the note Howard received:
Howard -- Thanks for your note. It's been re-directed to Google as they acquired our content in 2006. I spoke at length with SABR to no avail. The Sporting News database was not moved over a Google could not come to a deal with TSN. However all the data is there and could be made available if we could find someone to pay for it. It's frustrating, but we've attempted to secure SABR for two years now--Best---Bob HugginsI'll update the reference pages soon...
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Sporting News Vault
Updated (1/23/09): So, only five days after I discover the Sporting News Vault, this happens: the TSN Vault is no longer available, so all of the below is pretty much moot...
In keeping with my promise to track the various baseball magazine and newspapers available in digital archives online, I want to make sure to link everyone to this.
While reading some discussions online last week, I came across someone who was able to cite specifically the number of times a certain player's name appeared in the The Sporting News back in 1905 or something similar. That sounded pretty precise to me, so it made me wonder if TSN had some kind of archive available online.
I checked out their site and, sure enough, they do have an archive available. It's called The Sporting News Vault, and is available for free. It's not the greatest, though. TSN has partnered with a company called Paper of Record to provide the Vault. POR is apparently an archival company, providing decades of newspaper archives for papers all over the world. In order to get full search capabilities, you'll need to register with Paper of Record. It's a simple, free process, but they may require more information than some are willing to give.
The search capabilities of TSN's Vault are a mixed bag. It does seem to have excellent full-text search, unlike SI's own Vault, but the results are tough to utilize. Every page that the search term appears on is shown in the search results, with the ability to view that single page as a pdf. There are simple browsing capabilities (next page, previous page, etc), but it's not nearly as simple as, for example, Google Books. It's especially a pain if you're interested in reading a whole article, since it only opens one page at a time for you.
Regardless of its faults, though, it's definitely a nice thing to be able to read every page of The Sporting News. Now, if they could also include their annual baseball yearbooks, that'd be perfect.
The Sporting News Vault homepage can be found here. To go directly to The Sporting News search at Paper of Record, go here (remember, you'll need a login).
I'll be sure to add what I can to the "Preview Guides Available Online" post.
In keeping with my promise to track the various baseball magazine and newspapers available in digital archives online, I want to make sure to link everyone to this.
While reading some discussions online last week, I came across someone who was able to cite specifically the number of times a certain player's name appeared in the The Sporting News back in 1905 or something similar. That sounded pretty precise to me, so it made me wonder if TSN had some kind of archive available online.
I checked out their site and, sure enough, they do have an archive available. It's called The Sporting News Vault, and is available for free. It's not the greatest, though. TSN has partnered with a company called Paper of Record to provide the Vault. POR is apparently an archival company, providing decades of newspaper archives for papers all over the world. In order to get full search capabilities, you'll need to register with Paper of Record. It's a simple, free process, but they may require more information than some are willing to give.
The search capabilities of TSN's Vault are a mixed bag. It does seem to have excellent full-text search, unlike SI's own Vault, but the results are tough to utilize. Every page that the search term appears on is shown in the search results, with the ability to view that single page as a pdf. There are simple browsing capabilities (next page, previous page, etc), but it's not nearly as simple as, for example, Google Books. It's especially a pain if you're interested in reading a whole article, since it only opens one page at a time for you.
Regardless of its faults, though, it's definitely a nice thing to be able to read every page of The Sporting News. Now, if they could also include their annual baseball yearbooks, that'd be perfect.
The Sporting News Vault homepage can be found here. To go directly to The Sporting News search at Paper of Record, go here (remember, you'll need a login).
I'll be sure to add what I can to the "Preview Guides Available Online" post.
Monday, December 29, 2008
A few follow-up notes...
Playing around on the internet over this long holiday weekend, I came across a few items that were related to past posts here on wezen-ball. It seemed like a good idea to share these pieces in a "follow-up" manner...
On the Pitcher of the '80s:
In the original post, I discussed an article in the 1990 Street & Smith's preview guide that named Jack Morris and Fernando Valenzuela as right-handed and left-handed pitchers of the 1980s. I thought it was note-worthy because it showed that contemporary writers put Morris and Fernando on even-footing in the "pitcher of the decade" argument, an argument that many use to bolster Morris' Hall of Fame bid even though Fernando never had so much as a sniff of the Hall.
Well, in a similar article written in the December 1989 issue of Baseball Digest, the authors come to the same conclusion: Morris and Valenzuela as pitchers of the decade. Again, I'm glad to find articles like this because a) it helps to show the relative weakness of the "Pitcher of the '80s" argument for Morris' HOF candidacy and b) it helps people remember Fernando and his legacy.
On A Charlie Brown Christmas:
I mentioned one of the best gifts I had ever been was a copy of Sandlot Peanuts that my brother had found in some random used book store. Well, it turns out that 1978 baseball preview issue of Sports Illustrated included a review of the book:
In a blog I just found through a post by TangoTiger, the good folks over at BaseballGB (as in Baseball - Great Britain) seem to be just as excited as I am about the availability of Baseball Digest on Google Books. They also provide a great service by pointing out that Baseball Mercury, a "modest British equivalent," is also available online. Thanks for that!
On the Pitcher of the '80s:
In the original post, I discussed an article in the 1990 Street & Smith's preview guide that named Jack Morris and Fernando Valenzuela as right-handed and left-handed pitchers of the 1980s. I thought it was note-worthy because it showed that contemporary writers put Morris and Fernando on even-footing in the "pitcher of the decade" argument, an argument that many use to bolster Morris' Hall of Fame bid even though Fernando never had so much as a sniff of the Hall.
Well, in a similar article written in the December 1989 issue of Baseball Digest, the authors come to the same conclusion: Morris and Valenzuela as pitchers of the decade. Again, I'm glad to find articles like this because a) it helps to show the relative weakness of the "Pitcher of the '80s" argument for Morris' HOF candidacy and b) it helps people remember Fernando and his legacy.
On A Charlie Brown Christmas:
I mentioned one of the best gifts I had ever been was a copy of Sandlot Peanuts that my brother had found in some random used book store. Well, it turns out that 1978 baseball preview issue of Sports Illustrated included a review of the book:
"These inner struggles take place in a closed world in which we never see grown-ups or many of the opponents who roll up astronomical scores. Yet the outside world can intrude, as in the sequence in which Snoopy challenges Henry Aaron in an attempt to be the first to break Babe Ruth's home-run record. Lucy howls. 'It'll be a disgrace. You're not even human.' Ignoring her and his hate mail, the canine slugger ruminates, 'I just want to be a credit to my breed.'"On Finding Preview Guides Online:
In a blog I just found through a post by TangoTiger, the good folks over at BaseballGB (as in Baseball - Great Britain) seem to be just as excited as I am about the availability of Baseball Digest on Google Books. They also provide a great service by pointing out that Baseball Mercury, a "modest British equivalent," is also available online. Thanks for that!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Finding Guides Online
A quick note that I discovered earlier today:
As part of their Book Search service, Google is now offering full text searching of certain magazines. They haven't released a full listing of what magazines are available, but the examples they cite include Popular Science and Ebony. Poking around it myself, I've discovered that the full back-catalog of Baseball Digest Magazine is available, meaning that every page of every issue can be viewed (and searched) online for free. That's a pretty sweet deal, especially considering their annual preview issues (check out the 1948 or 1962 or 1989 issues).
Couple this with the complete text search abilities of the Sports Illustrated Vault, and we can get a taste for just how cool this digital age really is. It effectively grows my preview guide collection by decades.
I plan on adding a page to the blog focusing on these external sources, for later reference. I figure it could be useful.
And now something cool just for reading...
As part of their Book Search service, Google is now offering full text searching of certain magazines. They haven't released a full listing of what magazines are available, but the examples they cite include Popular Science and Ebony. Poking around it myself, I've discovered that the full back-catalog of Baseball Digest Magazine is available, meaning that every page of every issue can be viewed (and searched) online for free. That's a pretty sweet deal, especially considering their annual preview issues (check out the 1948 or 1962 or 1989 issues).
Couple this with the complete text search abilities of the Sports Illustrated Vault, and we can get a taste for just how cool this digital age really is. It effectively grows my preview guide collection by decades.
I plan on adding a page to the blog focusing on these external sources, for later reference. I figure it could be useful.
And now something cool just for reading...
Friday, October 3, 2008
Preview Guides Available Online
It's sometimes easy to forget just how cool of a world we live in. As I do my best to collect the various annual preview guides, I discover again and again that the internet has me beat by miles (well, in one way... it's still a thousand times easier and more fun to own and read physical magazine instead of computer files/web pages).
As of today, I know of these digital archives:
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The list below provides direct links to each publication's annual preview issue for each year.
As of today, I know of these digital archives:
- The Sports Illustrated Vault - a collection of every Sports Illustrated issue ever, online and for free; the search functionality makes it more difficult to go through than it should
- Baseball Digest Monthly on Google Book Search - the full back catalog of Baseball Digest Monthly, since 1945, is available for free viewing within Google Book Search; being on Google, the search functionality is fantastic, and makes it real easy to find what you're looking for
- UPDATED 1/
1823/09:The Sporting News Vault - all issues of TSN are available for viewing and searching online to registered users through their Paper of Record service. See my post about it here. (Since you must be registered to use the service, I am unable to link to the specific preview issues here.)Sadly, the Sporting News Vault is no longer available.
-------------------------------------
The list below provides direct links to each publication's annual preview issue for each year.
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