Ah yes, I remember it well

August 13, 2013

The New York Times ran this marvelous story about the annual Complete Book of Baseball (and lesser sports) edited by Zander Hollander. A nice history lesson.

I still have all of these, along with their predecessor, The xxxx Major League Baseball Handbook. These paperbacks sold for, like 50 cents, maybe a buck towards the end of the run. They included capsule profiles of each team’s starters and pitchers and a few key utilitymen/relievers. Some had tiny line drawings of the players and each team had a roster and a “depth chart,” with the players put in their position on diagrams of the home field. So cool, even now. You know, just because you have all these fancy graphics, and charts, and bells and whistles doesn’t necessarily mean they make things better.

Along with the Street and Smith baseball magazines, these were the publications of my youth, appointment-buying, if you will. In those days, you anxiously awaited their appearance on the newsstand or in the bookstores. None of this instant gratification of the Internet, where you get PO’d if your story doesn’t load immediately. Those were the years when Topps was the only producer of baseball cards, and you couldn’t buy the whole set at one time, you had to wait for the release each month of the next 132-card “series.”

 

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