SABR is pleased to help baseball fans cut expenses this season by publishing and giving away the The Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009. Yes, we said "giving away." The guide, which fills the hole in the baseball record left by the 2006 demise of The Sporting News Baseball Guide, contains detailed statistics for every player at every level of the professional game, team histories, and up-to-date team contact information and schedules.Baseball fans anywhere in the world—both SABR members and non-members—can download the PDF version of the book free of charge from the SABR website at www.sabr.org.Edited by acclaimed baseball historians Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer, The Emerald Guide distills the 2008 season down to 586 fact-filled pages that contain the pitching, fielding, and hitting statistics for each player active in the major and minor leagues in 2008. As with the classic Sporting News Guides, the Emerald Guide also features team-by-team daily results, a directory of important contacts, a synopsis of the just-completed season, and much more. A bound version is available via print on demand at Lulu.com for $23.95. Every page in the bound edition is in the PDF.Why are we doing this? Well, part of SABR's mission is to disseminate the history and record of baseball, and that's exactly what we're doing. If you find this book valuable, please consider joining SABR if you aren't already a member. And feel free to send friends and family to www.sabr.org so they can get their free PDF of The Emerald Guide to Baseball 2009.
As a boy I would pour over every page of the Sporting News Guide (wasn't it also called the "Spinks Guide" after the editor?)It could be found all summer long at my bedside, as I would refer to it while listening to Ernie and George on my transitor hidden under my pillow.
ReplyDeleteBut alas, these SABRE matricians have taken all the fun out of baseball. I love cutting the grass on Saturday morning, then after lunch, settling in with a few beers, and I'm sleeping like a baby by the 5th inning. I wake up in the 9th and catch the end. Does that make me less of a fan?
I THINK NOT!
I love going to games with my pals, talking about the old times and old players, making outrageous claims, and asking stupid questions, looking up, and five runs have scored. Does that make me less of a fan?
I THINK NOT!
I'll sit down and be quiet now. Two cups of coffee before 9 a.m. really are too much.
Gregg, what did you pour on the pages? :)
ReplyDeleteBeer; what else?
ReplyDeletePore/pour, picky, picky, picky. Maybe it's little wonder why my journalistic career went no further than three years with the Michigan Catholic, but with the state of newspapers to day, maybe that was a blessing.
(Our journalist in resident, Mr. Peek, has much more discreetly given me better copy edits, which I have also ignored. There's just no help for the illiterate.
My mom, a journalism grad from Marygrove College, wrote for the Michigan Catholic. And that esteemed publication has the "honor" of being the first to print one of my photos.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Said photo was of a meeting of parents and students who wanted to keep SHS High School open. It included Ken Swan.
ReplyDeleteDid Mom write full-time for the MC? I have fond memories of the place, and people, but didn't land there until about 1975 when a certain reporter stopped showing up for work because he was gay, the sued the paper for discrimination. I knew an opportunity when I saw it, and called the editor, Margaret Cronyn, bless her soul.
ReplyDeleteYes she wrote FT for the MC, mostly, I think, in the early '50s before she started having kids. Later she did free-lance work for the MC as well as the Detroit News and NY Times.
ReplyDelete