STATS Baseball Scoreboard 1999 edited by John Dewan, Don Zminda, Jim Callis, and STATS, Inc. Stats, Inc., 1999 If you check the shelves of your favorite bookstore (down-the-street or in cyberspace) about late February to early March, you're bound to see the latest offerings from the world of baseball reading. If it's spring, it's new baseball book time. These days, the selections will undoubtedly include a variety of baseball stat books. Call them annuals, reviews, almanacs, extracts, whatever. The bottom line is that the modern baseball fan can go crazy, and broke, trying to decide which of these publications are worth your valuable time and money.

While it's not a hard core stat book with pages full of columns and rows of tiny numbers, STATS Baseball Scoreboard is one of the very best of the lot. Now in its 10th edition, the Scoreboard follows in the
tradition of Bill James and some of his best ever work. Indeed, if you liked the old James' "Abstracts," you'll love the Baseball Scoreboard.

The formula is simple and is used every year as the framework for this informative book. Essays are written on a wide variety of topics, including a team essay that takes on a subject near and dear to each major league club. Additional essays are written that cover the offensive, defensive, and pitching aspects of the game. Each essay is written in response to a specific and unique question posed by the editors or, in some cases, fans that have contacted the publisher. The best way to give a potential reader an idea of what is in the Scoreboard is to list some of the questions that are analyzed. Here is a small sample of some of the questions found in the new 10th edition:

• Were the 1998 Yankees the Best Team of All Time?
• Have the Braves Underachieved in the Postseason?
• Is Edgar Martinez the Best Late Bloomer Ever?
• Which Team is Best at Finding Talent?
• Was Kerry Wood's Game the Most Dominant Ever?
• Which Pitchers have Misleading Earned Run Averages?
• Who is Best in the Infield Zone? The Outfield Zone?

Don't let the perceived answers to some of the questions fool you. The answers may not always be as obvious as you might think.

Each essay is accompanied by relevant charts and/or graphs that are easy to read and you can grasp the data without getting eye strain. And here's the best part. The essays in the Scoreboard are, generally, no more than 2-3 pages. They are clear and concise and try to get the point across without drowning the reader in a sea of numbers. However, if you crave more detail, they handle that by continuing with comprehensive stats in detailed charts at the back of the book. The essays include a page number annotation to the detailed chart so you can quickly find what you're looking for. The "Scoreboard" also includes a glossary with handy formulas (On Base %; Slugging %, Total Bases), as well as definitions for some of Bill James' homegrown statistical categories, i.e.. Quality Starts, Games Scores, Cheap Saves, etc. In addition to the regular essays, the 10th edition of the "Scoreboard" features two special sections. The first is a series of articles on the great homer race of 1998. Sure, we've all read everything there is to know about McGwire and Sosa, but this section takes a refreshing look at last season beyond what you may have already read in other publications. A couple of the essays found in this supplement are:

• Who Was the Real National League MVP in 1998?
• Why is Sammy Sosa the King of the GARBI time?

The other special section is by Bill James himself. The STATS folks managed to get him to contribute a very interesting (and lengthier than the others) essay about all-time records. It's called "Which Marks Are In Jeopardy?" James discusses some of the more obvious records (Hank Aaron's, for example) that are starting to appear on fans' radar screens. However, he also weaves in some thought-provoking commentary about how we, as fans, perceive records and why it's a fallacy to say things like, "that record will never be broken."

The best accolade I can give this book is that you'll probably find yourself constantly referring to it throughout the baseball season, and beyond. By that I mean it's not a read-it-and-put-it-away baseball book. Most of my old copies are dog-eared and I'm constantly finding an old essay that helps answer a question or provides the impetus for a new debate. If you have 20 bucks to spend on a baseball book and you're pondering the choices, this is the one.

Finally, a note on purchasing the Scoreboard. You can find it in some bookstores and you can always order directly from STATS at www.stats.com. However, the best bet is to pick it up from amazon.com or one of the other on line discounters. STATS is a great baseball resource, but they generally don't discount their books until well after the original publication.

--Birdbrain, May 28, 1999

STATS Baseball Scoreboard 1999 may be available for purchase on the net at one of these sites.