Mike Trout Cashing In - 12 year extension @ 430 Million

As an even older old man, concur with the experience of you guys.  Before the first Macmillan Encyclopedia came out in 1969 -- an event overshadowing the lunar landing that same year -- I used to get the version put together by Hy Turkin and CS Thompson, published by AS Barnes.  The first version I had was published in 1956, and was re-done every few years until Macmillan came along and dominated the field.

The Macmillan version was more comprehensive and many pounds heavier, but the Barnes version  did a lot of the spade work that was incorporated into later editions.  Turkin and Thompson spent years doing research, having to personally do things like get death certificates of old players and comb through newspapers at libraries all over the country.  It was an imperfect work for sure, but it was foundational to the whole concept of a baseball encyclopedia.  It seemed like manna to anyone devoted to baseball history.

That first Macmillan edition was a beauty -- it came with a box slipcover -- I think the last one was published in 1996, when of course online information made everything else obsolete. 

Neft and Cohen used to put out the year-by-year team rosters and stats, which to this day is handier to use than even baseball ref when it comes to a quick comparison for individual seasons.  And as GF said the Bill James annuals were indispensable.  Before those, the Street and Smith annuals were must-reading, with the listing of all-time and current leaders in many statistical categories and nice roundups of each team.

I still think I learned as much from baseball cards as from any printed source, or at least more that stuck with me. "Marv was third in the Three-I League in doubles in 1959."  Stuff like that.

I think I owned three of those tome at one point. I’d wait until the new ones were due in and buy the year old ones at Barnes and Noble for about 1/4- 1/3 of the cover price. Damn, I’m a tightwad...

I swear I would take a book marker and read those stats line by line...The numbers would consume my brain for months at a time. Then, I’d start over, rechecking highlights , Yankees, and other favorites...

I still buy Baseball Prospectus every year to read on the crapper.

Sure we can all go along with the story that that’s how you met Tony Suck and Johnny Dickshot....

Rembering the Cumm boys, Scott and Randy, from my home town, and Peter Eder, who lived about 25 miles away...