THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I agree as well.  I had an old encyclopedia that sounds exactly like the Neft/Cohen layout.  A few pages for each year with stats for each player separated into the team they played the most for.  A description of the major events of the year to start it off, and the full stats by era after all the years of the era.  Great layout.  It let me look at all the stats for a single year at one time.  Unfortunately, the stats they included were limited but that’s where my Total Baseball came in handy.

IIRC the history of encyclopedias that Pete Palmer explained to me, there was MacMillan, there was Neft/Cohen, and there was Pete.  Everyone else relied on these three sources.  I’ll have to find his email.

Ok, found the email.  Pete said “Neft worked for ICI who compiled the data for Macmillan”.  The third source was Neil Munro and STATS, according to Pete.  So, ICI/MacMillan/Neft is one, Pete is another, and Munro/STATS is the other.

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Pete also said this about quality:

And it wasn’t until around 2000 when MLBAM started comparing box scores and checking differences on video tape that the stats really became accurate.  So even with all my work, the stats are still more or less approximations. [ redacted ] found 6 errors in Gehrig’s 1931 record rbi figure, but they all canceled out, so the original figure was correct.  This is discouraging and we will have to find a solution at some point.

This is why I don’t get too worked up about the accuracy of stats.

Good point on the prices.  I didn’t even think of an automated system.

Ken, the book you describe has to be Neft/Cohen--the Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball.  If the book listed OBA and pitcher runs allowed and home runs it would have been darn near perfect (for me at least).

Tango, you’re absolutely right about automated pricing schemes. Click my name for an article I saw on twitter a couple weeks ago about how two used book sellers both using automated pricing led to a book being listed for $23,698,655.93 for a while.

"That’s probably why I can remember Bill James’ Baseball Abstract writings from 25 years ago, but not his electronic writings from 25 days ago.” Great line. So true.

And it wasn’t until around 2000 when MLBAM started comparing box scores and checking differences on video tape that the stats really became accurate.

This is a tangent, but I found that an interesting statement, one I agree with.  MLBAM has really done a bang-up job with stats, and their audits and procedures seem to improve every year.  I’ve been very willing to point out at times when they’ve made a mistake or I disagree with their philosophy about something, so I want to take this opportunity to point out how much MLBAM has contributed to the stats community.  All the MLBAM-provided and cross-checked stats are an amazing resource.