There are scores of new books coming out about the national pastime but two early runners for “most fun” have to be Baseball’s Memorable Misses: An Unabashed Look at the Game’s Craziest Zeroes, by Dan Schlossberg, and Major League Debuts 2023 Edition, by James Bailey.
It’s amazing that Schlossberg, with almost 40 baseball titles in his oeuvre, can still find things to write about, but he keeps churning them out. This one borders on the trivia category and isn’t something you need to plow through in a single sitting. In fact, it’s a perfect ballpark companion, to while away the time between innings (although not between pitches anymore).
The hundreds of little factoids are accompanied by illustrations by Ronnie Joyner, whose work is reminiscent of newspaper cartoonists of the mid-1900s. But not all is sunshine and lollipops. Some of the “zeroes” might come off as a bit silly and/or obvious. When Schlossberg notes Ron Blomberg hit 0 home runs against Bert Blyleven… I’m sure there are others against whom the Hall of Fame pitcher was similarly dominant. Likewise, Blomberg probably found other pitchers a headache as well. But kudos to the author for doing the legwork.
There are also some issues with accuracy: the Mets are “credited” with having a record of 60-120 in their inaugural season, an obvious error since the schedule consists of 162 games (their actual record was 40-120). In another instance, Sandy Koufax gets an extra Cy Young Award (four instead of three). There might be other slips and whether it’s the author’s responsibility or the editors, it can throw a little cloud over the rest of the information.
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Major League Debuts is another in the general genre of reference books/almanacs/etc. that come out every year (although this is Debuts debut). Bailey covers each of the 303 players who appeared for the first time in 2022 with what they did in their first big league game, their background, their overall season last year, and their “outlook,” which is always a tricky proposition.
Bailey, a former associate editor at Baseball America, is also the author of two baseball novels: The Greatest Show on Dirt and Nine Bucks a Pound.
All this got me to thinking how that compared with previous decades (I didn’t have the time or patience to look into every year). This is what I came up with, FYI and FWIW:
One would think that pre-expansion seasons which fielded a smaller number of teams would have a correspondingly lower debuts. One would be wrong.
From 1901-60, there were eight teams in each league.
1902 — 138 debuts
1912 — 221
1922 — 200
1932 — 253
1942 — 172. Here, I might have thought there would be more players, due to older players serving in the military during America’s first year in WW II.
1952 — 198
1961 — 112, when the American League expanded to 10 teams, so again, you would think more players.
1962 — 147, when the National League expanded to 10.
1969 — 183, when both leagues grew to 12 teams.
1972 — 122
1977 — 159, AL expanded to 14.
1982 — 142
1992 — 162
1993 — 203, NL expanded to 14.
1998 — 208, AL and NL each added one team, raising the ML total to 30.
2002 — 203
2012 — 206
2022 — 303. Quite a jump.
I didn’t look into the COVID seasons, but I wonder how that affected rosters. Numerous players came down with the disease, so they would need to be replaced. That’s for another research project.
is available on Amazon.com,
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