Review: The SABR Baseball List and Record Book

May 21, 2007

The SABR Baseball List and Record Book, edited by Lyle Spatz (Scribner)

The ambitious Record Book contains almost 750 categories. The cover heralds 00sabr_records_1 the volume as “Baseball’s most fascinating and unusual statistics” with an asterisk that draws the eye to a tiny footnote claiming that the information is “not available online or in any other book.” (It’s a commentary on the book industry that it has to play second fiddle to the Internet.)

Strictly speaking, of course, this statement is not true. There are other sources where one can find the most consecutive games played or most wins by a right handed relief pitcher. And although there are several interesting lists, for the most part I daresay they would be classified as neither “fascinating” nor “unusual.” While the fact that Sammy Sosa holds “the record” for the longest time between home runs in a park (5,824 days at Fenway) is interesting, I would hesitate to classify it as fascinating, save in the characterizing of those people who would take the time to keep track of such ephemera.

Having said that, this book is quite entertaining. One could easily see broadcasters utilizing the book to supplement the teams’ media guides (longest gap between 100 RBI seasons: Harold Baines, 14 years).

But it could have been better, more user friendly. For some categories, it might have been useful to provide the players’ teams, especially for certain seasonal citations. It might also have been helpful to have some typographic device to indicate active players to put them in context with the all-time leaders.

Infrequent notes are helpful. For example, Ted Williams’ only pinch-hit home run in a 1-0 game clinched the pennant for the Red Sox in 1946. Such nuggets, however, are few and far between, which could be attributed to space issues.

Among the highlights of the SABR Baseball List:

  • In 1996, Brady Anderson led off four consecutive games for the Orioles with home runs; the Birds lost all four games.
  • A table of Triple Crown losers (i.e., batters who finished last in HR, RBI and BA).
  • Barry Bonds had more walks than games played in four straight seasons.
  • Of Leon Wagner’s 26 home runs for the Angels in 1963, only two came at his home field.
  • Walter Johnson won 110 shutouts; 38 of them were 1-0.
  • Since 1957, no one has made more game-ending outs than Pete Rose’s 150.
  • Umpire Bill Klem ejected 239 players and managers over his career.
  • Tommy Davis hit home runs that gave Sandy Koufax a 1-0 victory on three occasions.

Despite some flaws in design and scope, the SABR book is a labor of love that will undoubtedly be useful to researchers and just plain fans.

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1 N Y Expat August 2, 2007 at 1:00 am

This is a volunteer work-by-committee, and embodies the problems inherent in such a structure: inconsistency of conception, format, and quality. The best parts of this book are excellent, and the worst ones are head-scratchingly inadequate.

Quality control is not SABR’s forte. The organization’s need to publish x-many books every year militates against that.
And because those books always need to be tangible to placate some of the more conservative members, projects best suited to ongoing updating and correcting on the web — such as this one — instead become ossified in the form of inalterable paper objects.

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