The Ballplayers: Baseball's Ultimate Biographical Reference

In a collective biography of the greatest players in baseball, this distinctly nonstatistical guide to America's pastime presents more than 5700 profiles, five hundred photographs, and interesting historical facts

This hefty, mostly biographical dictionary summarizes lives and careers of past and present major leaguers. Entries vary from a few lines of dates and cursory performance totals to several columns for famous stars. Statistics run through 1988 but 1989 updates are promised. Omitted are players with fewer than two or three big-league years, except for rarities such as Bill Veeck's midget Eddie Gaedel. Negro league players, many owners, officials, writers, broadcasters, umpires, and baseball's famous fans are here--even the San Diego Chicken and Abbott and Costello. Also included are histories of major league parks, past and present, the two leagues, their predecessors and rivals, Negro leagues, and Japanese and Mexican baseball. Player entries were checked against The Baseball Encyclopedia (Macmillan, 1988. 7th rev. ed.), Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, edited by Hy Turkin and S.C. Thompson (A.S. Barnes, 1976. o.p.), Gene Karst and Martin J. Jones's Who's Who in Professional Baseball (Arlington, 1973. o.p.)--all of which this partially updates--and Zander Hollander's Complete Handbook of Baseball (NAL, 1989 ed.). Of 39 entries checked at random only one error was found (Jose Uribe's birthdate). This is no replacement for Macmillan's "Big Mac" (an update is scheduled for June), which has much broader scope, but many of the features noted above are unique to this volume. Recommended for sports reference shelves.
- Morey Berger, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.