The Baseball Cyclopedia was the first encyclopedia covering major league baseball. It was compiled and published by sportswriter Ernest J. Lanigan, who served as the editor of the sports section of the New York Press . The nephew of Sporting News publisher Al Spink, Lanigan was known for being a baseball statistician, having served as an official scorer for multiple World Series. [1]
Published by The Baseball Magazine Co. of New York City, which also published Lanigan's Baseball Magazine, the title page of the Baseball Cyclopedia advertised it as the first compendium of baseball statistics and history ever published:
Comprises a review of Professional Baseball, the history of all Major League Clubs, playing records and unique events, the batting, pitching and base running champions, World’s Series’ statistics and a carefully arranged alphabetical list of the records of more than 3500 Major League ball players, a feature never before attempted in print. [1]
In addition to the original publication of 1922, 12 annual supplements were published. The supplement claimed to contain "a complete up-to-date supplement of recent records" and retailed for $1.00.
The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team is named after the Twin Cities area comprising Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization. It is the oldest of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. A total of 30 teams play in Major League Baseball: 15 teams in the National League (NL) and 15 in the American League (AL). The NL and AL were formed as separate legal entities in 1876 and 1901, respectively. Beginning in 1903, the two leagues cooperated but remained legally separate entities. In 2000 the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball.
Christopher Mathewson, nicknamed "Big Six", "The Christian Gentleman", "Matty", and "The Gentleman's Hurler", was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher, who played 17 seasons with the New York Giants. He stood 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 m) tall and weighed 195 pounds (88 kg). He was among the most dominant pitchers in baseball history, and ranks in the all-time top 10 in several key pitching categories, including wins, shutouts, and ERA. In fact, he is the only professional pitcher in history to rank in the top 10 both in career wins and career ERA, if taking 19th-century pitchers' statistics into account. Otherwise, both Mathewson and Walter Johnson would hold that distinction. In 1936, Mathewson was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its first five members.
A perfect game in Major League Baseball is a game in which a pitcher pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and no opposing batter reaches base. To achieve a perfect game, a team must not allow an opposing player to reach base by any means, including hits, walks, hit batsmen, or fielding errors; in short, "27 up, 27 down". The feat has been achieved 23 times in MLB history – 21 times since the modern era began in 1900, most recently by Félix Hernández of the Seattle Mariners on August 15, 2012. A perfect game is also a no-hitter and a shutout. A fielding error that does not allow a batter to reach base, such as a misplayed foul ball, does not spoil a perfect game. Weather-shortened contests in which a team has no baserunners and games in which a team reaches first base only in extra innings do not qualify as perfect games under the present definition.
Jesse Cail Burkett, nicknamed "Crab", was an American professional baseball left fielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1890 to 1905 for the New York Giants, Cleveland Spiders, St. Louis Perfectos / Cardinals, St. Louis Browns, and Boston Americans.
Henry Albert Bauer was an American right fielder and manager in Major League Baseball. He played with the New York Yankees (1948–1959) and Kansas City Athletics (1960–1961); he batted and threw right-handed. He served as the manager of the Athletics in both Kansas City (1961–62) and in Oakland (1969), as well as of the Baltimore Orioles (1964–68), guiding the Orioles to the World Series title in 1966, a four-game sweep over the heavily favored Los Angeles Dodgers. This represented the first World Series title in the franchise's history.
The Willie Mays World Series Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award is given to the Major League Baseball (MLB) player deemed to have the most impact on his team's performance in the World Series, which is the final round of the MLB postseason. The award was first presented in 1955 as the SPORT Magazine Award, but is now decided during the final game of the Series by a committee of reporters and officials present at the game. On September 29, 2017, it was renamed in honor of Willie Mays in remembrance of the 63rd anniversary of The Catch. Mays never won the award himself.
Leland Gaither "Lee" Allen was an American sportswriter and historian on the subject of baseball. He was known for an accessible writing style that made history more interesting, typically focusing on the people in the stories as much as the events.
George Bevan Strickland, nicknamed "Bo", was an American professional baseball player and manager who spent ten seasons from 1950 to 1960 as am infielder in Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cleveland Indians. He served as the Indians' interim manager twice in the 1960s. He was also a cousin of Hal Bevan.
Thomas David Gorman was an American pitcher and umpire in Major League Baseball who pitched five innings in four games with the New York Giants in 1939, and went on to serve as a National League umpire from 1951 to 1976, then as a league supervisor. His son Brian has been a major league umpire since 1991 and wears the same uniform number 9 the elder Gorman wore after the NL began adding numbers to umpire uniforms in 1970.
The New York Press was a New York City newspaper that began publication in December 1887 and continued publication until July 2, 1916, when its owner Frank Munsey merged it with his newly-purchased Sun. The New York Press published notable writers such as Stephen Crane.
Alfred Henry Spink was a Canadian-born American baseball writer and club organizer based mainly in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1886, he established a weekly newspaper, The Sporting News (TSN), that emerged from World War I as the only national baseball newspaper or magazine.
Harry Simmons was a baseball executive, writer and historian.
Ernest John Lanigan was an American sportswriter and historian on the subject of baseball. He was considered the premier baseball statistician and historian of his day. He was a pioneer at gathering information about baseball statistics and about the players themselves, and was the author of the first encyclopedia of the subject.
Cyclopedia, cyclopaedia or cyclopædia is an archaic term for encyclopedia.
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