Credits for BaseballChronology.com

By Patrick Mondout

First and foremost I want to thank Dr. John Eigenauer. He has written several first-rate baseball book reviews for the site and his insightful feedback and innovated suggestions have proven invaluable, but it is his continued friendship that I value the most. Thank you, John.

For a project of this scope, I have literally too many people to thank. For example, I am using Retrosheet files (with permission, of course!) for the statistical portion, but that does not tell you all the names of the people who have contributed to making Retrosheet.org the most trusted source of baseball data in the known universe! So first and foremost, I must specifically thank David Smith of Retrosheeet and generally anyone involved with that amazing project. Without David Smith, I would not even have pursued a baseball section of this site beyond a list of standings and pages for teams from the 1970s and 80s. I can't thank you enough, Dave!

I will quote from some of Retrosheet's own materials below in order to try to thank some of the individuals who created Retrosheet itself. For those I miss, please accept my apologies and let me know you contribution by using the Contact link at the top right of this page; I'll be sure to credit you here.

Retrosheet

Retrosheet volunteers themselves are the experts as to who exactly deserves credit, so as with so many baseball pages here, the following credits are copied with permission of Retrosheet:

The beautifully linked files with connections that take you multiple places have all been generated by Tom Ruane, who deserves everyone's thanks for making our data so user-friendly.

Game logs, player pages, etc.: Since one of the two basic sources used in this section are the game logs, we should perhaps start by thanking Bob Tiemann, who originated the logs, and Arnie Braunstein, who computerized them.

Much has been added to the original logs since then and here are a a few of the people and groups contributing significant research:

• SABR Biographical Committee provided the information on players' vital statistics (birth, death, and so on).
• Stats Inc. donated their log of starting and winning pitchers since 1920. They also donated their play-by-play data for 1991 and 1992.
• Rich Pray sent us his data on starting pitchers from 1883-1919. In addition to mailing us his box of sheets (at his own cost), he has been patient and helpful throughout the process.
• Frank Vaccaro sent us his game logs, with starting and winning pitchers (and much more), covering the 1871-1908 period. Besides being fascinating work in its own right, his logs helped us enormously during the proofing of the 19th scores as well as the 1901-08 starting pitcher data.
• In addition to originally starting these logs, Bob Tiemann also entered all the umpire data from 1986 and 1987, and helped us correct the home park data for the years during the 1930s and 1940s when the Cleveland Indians had two home parks.
• Mark Armour went through all our games from 1980-1983 and filled in the holes (and there were LOTS of them) in our umpire, game length, day/night and attendance data.
• Ted Turocy (1984 and 1987), Marc Stephenson (1986) and John Stryker (1985) filled in all the 1984 and 1987 attendance and game length data from The Sporting News Box Score books.
• David Ball permitted us to use his extensive research on 19th century player transactions.
• Lyle Spatz and Cliff Blau have done an enormous amount of research into transactions and were kind enough to share their work with us.

Boxscores: The following people contributed valuable research to the box score project: Dave Lamoureaux, Bob Allen, Scott Andersen, Tom Bradley, Mike Cipoletti, Tom Davis, Larry Defillipo, Chris Dial, Joe Elinich, Steve Ferenchick, Jim Fraasch, Gary Frownfelter, Frank Gill, Mike Grahek, Eric Jones, John Kalous, Brad Kent, Tom Lee, RJ Lesch, Trent McCotter, Wayne McElreavy, Sheldon Miller, Joe Murphy, Brad Ramirez, Denis Repp, Jim Sandoval, Carl Schweisthal, Stu Shea, Paul Silvestri, Terry Small, Richard Smiley, Tom Stillman, Bob Timmermann, Ted Turocy, Steve Vetere, Ron Weaver, Paul Wendt, Jim Wheeler, Jim Wohlenhaus, Brian Wood and Andrew Zager.

Umpire data: This information is based on the groundbreaking research done by S.C. Thompson in the 1930s and continued more recently by Larry Gerlach. The current effort was coordinated by David Vincent, who collected the large majority of the biographical data and also recorded daily umpire assignments for thousands of games in the 19th century. Bob Boynton has spent countless hours reading microfilm and gathering data for the 1945-1960 era. Other people have contributed to this data collection as well, including Bob Boynton, Rich Carletti, John Schwartz and Joe Simenic.

The Sporting News used to keep index cards on active umpires listing biographical data as well as league assignments. We were allowed access to these cards to gather information for our database. The card set includes many arbiters who only worked in the minor leagues. Thank you to the fine people at TSN for allowing us to read the cards.

Legions of other people have been involved in the project over the last several years. Since the expanded years are directly derived from the play-by-play files created by Retrosheet, Baseball Workshop, Total Sports, Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer, anyone who has worked on any of these projects has contributed to these pages.

A partial list of those who have contributed valuable comments, suggestions and/or research include Derek Adair, John Agius, Carlton Andrews, David Arcidiacono, Bernd Argus, Dvd Avins, Mark Bachman, David Ball, Bill Ballou, Richard Berg, Charlie Bevis, Mike Billeci, Cliff Blau, Rob Bonter, Bill Brown, Dave Brown, JP Caillault, Richard Carletti, Bill Carr, Jim Charlton, Dave Chase, David Cheadle, Andrew Clarke, Kevin Cluff, Clem Comly, Philippe Cousineau, Andy Cox, Mike Crain, Jonathan Daly, Chris Dickerman, Clayton Doak, Stephen Drake, Len Durrant, Scott Eisenberg, Paul Ember, Mike Emeigh, Bob Evans, Bruce Fleming, Sean Forman, Larry Foster, Greg Franklin, Joe Freitas, Terrance Freund, Marty Friedrich, Frank Gill, Mike Grahek, Jim Hamilton, Ed Hartig, Chris Hartranft, Thom Henninger, Darrell Henry, Jim Herdman, Dan Hickling, Bill Hickman, Jerry Hoffman, Shane Holmes, Geoffrey Hooker, Michael Hurley, Kevin Johnson, Steve Johnson, Jonathan Judd, Shuichi Kashiwaya, Jim Keats, Ray Kerby, Bob Kistler, Bill Knight, Mike Lackey, Sean Lahman, Andrew Landry, John Lavalie, Art LePage, Scott Levison, John Lewis, Jack Little, David Lund, Patrick Maher, Mike Mathias, Ken Matinale, Chris Mavraedis, Michael Mavrogiannis, Trent McCotter, Wayne McElreavy, Bryan Mechtly, Scott Merzbach, Jeremy Mills, Nick Morgan, Michael Morrongiello, Dave Morris, Peter Morris, David Moss, Joe Nadler, Rod Nelson, David Nemec, Cliff Otto, Pete Palmer, Gus Papadopoulos, Doug Pappas, Gary Plunkitt, Greg Prince, Rich Pyatt, Greg Ralls, Mark Rappaport, Brian Rash, Rob Ratliff, Denis Repp, John Rickert, Richard Ruane, Mark Ruckhaus, Steve Ruskowski, Charles Saeger, Frank Santarpia, John Schmidt, Kenn Scott, Lauren Scrafford, Frank Serkland, Terry Simpkins, Andy Singer, Mitch Soivenski, Lyle Spatz, Greg Spira, Marc Stephenson, John Stryker, Matt Thomas, Stew Thornley, Vinnie Tredici, Ted Turocy, Alain Usereau, Bob Vanderberg, Dennis VanLangen, David Vincent, Ron Weaver, Paul Wendt, Jim Wheeler, Garry Williamson, Walt Wilson, Jeff Wolfe, John Wolfe, Brian Wood and Rob Wood.

We are sure that we have accidentally neglected to mention many others. If you or someone you know was overlooked in this fashion, we apologize and please don't hesitate to let us know so we can correct the oversight.

Once again, none of the fine people mentioned above are in any way responsible for any problems or errors in the data we have presented here.

Non-Retrosheet Data

The data on coaches and executives (but not general managers) was originally compiled by Larry Gerlach with additional work by Mike Crain, Rod Nelson, and others. I added to this via my own research including a long search for a list of GMs that started at MLB.com. I'd also like to acknowledge Gary Gillette and others in the SABR Business of Baseball committee whose "GM Project" will allow me to fact-check my work. The same is true of Baseball America and their new Executive Database. While the former only covers GMs and the latter only covers the period after 1950, they are invaluable resources.

A special thanks to the late Doug Pappas, by the way, for permission to use broadcaster data now found on the Business of Baseball SABR committee's website. Data on salaries was also compiled by the Pappas. Special thanks to Maury Brown and other members of SABR's Business of Baseball Committee. The broadcaster data was updated through the 2006 season using the efforts of Robert Smathers as a reference.

Rodney Fort compiled some of the other economic data, including the revenues/expenses, valuations, and fancosts (though fancosts specifically originated at Teammarketing.com). Fort is a professor of economics at Washington State University who has a passion for the economics of sports. He has an excellent site full of data related to the economics of sports.

Additional 19th Century attendance figures come from the work of Robert L. Tiemann in Total Baseball.

Data used to create the Hall of Fame voting pages provided by Keith Hemmelman.

Some draft data is from the work of Mike Crain, Cliff Blau, Lyle Spatz, Tom Ruane, Rod Nelson, Mike Grahek and others at the Baseball Transactions Group.

Some data comes from the Baseball Databank, an open-source baseball database. This is an amazing database and will doubtless be used in many future websites and projects. I have only begun to imagine the possibilities. Special thanks to Sean Forman and the others who have worked so hard on this project. If only something similar existed for basketball and football!

Books

You can't seriously hope to take on a project of this size without several editions of the incomparable Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia by John Thorn and others at your side. If you've actually taken the time to read this far down on this page and don't own an edition of TB, what's wrong with you?

Many of the books that I've used to create various sections/pages of this site are mentioned in the sources/bibliography section near the bottom of such a page, but I would like to mention four other books that I've enjoyed and relied upon heavily:

Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of All 273 Major League and Negro League Ballparks by Philip J. Lowry, which I am happy to learn is about to be updated.

The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870 by Marshall Wright. Having spent countless hours looking through fuzzy PDFs of mid-19th Century newspapers myself, I can appreciate the value and difficulty of Wright's achievement. To the extent that it is possible given the lack of a "modern" boxscores from the period, he has managed to extend Total Baseball back to the earliest era possible with this mostly statistical work that is invaluable for folks like me.

The Beer and Whisky League: The Illustrated History of the American Association - Baseball's Renegade Major League by David Nemec. I have yet to purchase Nemec's book on 19th Century ball as I am anxiously awaiting the new edition that will soon ship, but I can attest to the value and pleasure I received in reading The Beer and Whiskey League, which covers the history the National League's chief 19th C. competitor, the old American Association. In contrast to Wright's NABBP book, Nemec focuses on the stories rather than the stats and the AA was full of compelling ones.

Total Ballclubs: The Ultimate Book of Baseball Franchises - by Donald Dewey, Nicholas Acocella. This is the kind of book I would have researched and attempted to write had I not been so committed to my websites. Thankfully, Dewey and Acocella have already addressed the need for a book covering the histories of all major league franchises. I say thankfully because as I read it, I realized that they have done a much better job than I would have. My only complaint is that that they start with the 1876 National League, rather than the 1871 National Association. Given that MLB itself recognizes 1876 as the true beginning of the "major" leagues, this is a quite reasonable decision on their part. Perhaps I can cover that ground adequately in the coming months.

Photos

BaseballChronology.com would not be the same without the thousands of pictures we own from some of the best freelance sports photographers of the latter 20th Century. We thank them on a separate page. I want to thank John Rogers for working with me for over a year to help me obtain these slides (photographs) I needed to create this site.

If you have pictures of ballparks, players, managers, coaches, or other relevant baseball images that you yourself have taken and that you are willing to allow me to use here (you will retain all rights and will be given credit), please let me know.

Logos

Images of team logos used with permission from Chris Creamer's awesome Sports Logo site. The editorial use of such logos here is for identification purposes and by no means implies endorsement by Major League Baseball, it's teams, affiliates, or sponsors. The logos and marks themselves remain the property of their respective owners and appear here under the "fair use" provision of the copyright law.

SABR

If you do any baseball research at all, then you already know about SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. It is the organization to be a member of if you are serious about this history of the sport. As former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent recently said in an interview I helped transcribe for the SABR's Business of Baseball Committee, "I think if you're bordering on manic about baseball you might like it. If you're not crazy about baseball you shouldn't join."

As a member, I have had access to some of the brightest, most knowledgeable, and most helpful baseball historians and fans who have been a constant source of information, advice, and contacts that have made this task both easier and more enjoyable. SABR members also receive access to a variety of sources of data that have helped me greatly in creating this site; the SABR members-only site has proven to be an indispensable reference (particularly the ProQuest subscription), even for non-baseball articles I write!

...But not least

I'd also like to thank Keith Maciver, who is my sales representative from our ISP, MaximumASP.com. Though he is a soccer fan first, I always enjoy talkin' baseball with him when it is time to upgrade our servers. Cheers, mate!

It perhaps goes without saying that despite all of the help I've received, the errors found within these pages are mine as I'm ultimately responsible for the content. I would very much appreciate it if you would point out any errors you do find as anyone who has read this far has a keen interest in the "national game." Just use the Contact link at the top of any page to send me an anonymous (though you're free to share your identity) message to me pointing out the problem.

Thanks to all - I truly could not have done it without you and I sincerely hope that this site, which you all are very welcome to contribute your memories to, in some way pays you back as a source of enjoyment in the decades to come.

-- Patrick Mondout

P.S., I haven't intentionally left anyone out.
Please let me know if I have missed someone.