HIST 490C: Baseball and the World (Fall 2024)

Major League Baseball endures because of its historical reference points, and Baseball Almanac has dedicated itself to preserving the history of our national pastime. Baseball Almanac is an interactive baseball encyclopedia with 548,670 pages of in-depth baseball facts, original baseball research and baseball statistics not found anywhere else.

The Sports Reference sites first launched with Baseball-Reference.com in April 2000 by Sean Forman, Pro-Football-Reference.com in December of 2000 by Doug Drinen, and Basketball-Reference.com in April of 2004 by Justin Kubatko.

Sean Forman formed Sports Reference, Inc. in October of 2004, and in December of 2007 the three groups joined forces with Jay Virshbo to create Sports Reference LLC (based in Pennsylvania). We currently have 39 full-time employees.

The SABR Research Collection is an archive of 50+ years of groundbreaking baseball research that contains thousands of articles from the Baseball Research Journal (BRJ), The National Pastime (TNP), the SABR Digital Library, and more. Use the search bar at the top to find articles and content on just about any subject in baseball history from SABR’s collection.

Spotrac has become the largest online sports team, & player contract resource on the internet. The system was founded by Michael Ginnitti & Scott Allen in 2007 as an internal tool to facilitate fantasy sports, and answer every day questions about player financials. Since then it's grown exponentially into a team payroll, player valuation, and overall research tool for a variety of audience groups with the sports business community.

The site currently boasts financial information for MLB, the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLS. We're continually working to track down historical data for these leagues - in addition to adding new sports and leagues in the immediate future.

Baseball - All player and team statistics from 1871 to 2015 (AL, NL, UA, PL, NA, FL, AA).
Basketball - All player and team statistics from 1937-38 to 2014-15 (NBA, ABA, BAA, NBL).
Football - All player and team statistics from 1920 to 2014 (NFL, AFL, APFA, AAFC).
Hockey - All player and team statistics from 1917-18 to 2014-15 (NHL, WHA, PCHA, WCHL).

MISSION STATEMENT: The Negro League Baseball Players Association (NLBPA) exists to honor and celebrate the significant contribution of Negro Leagues players to baseball and American history, to collect and preserve that history, to educate others so that Negro League players may be a source of pride and inspiration for generations to come, and to support and promote the general and financial well being of former Negro Leagues players.

A treasure trove of free baseball materials are available through the Library of Congress website. While some of these materials are scattered throughout the site, several major digital collections and databases serve as gateways to the vast majority of the Library's online baseball content. These resources are described below, along with notable digital collections, databases, and catalogs not focused exclusively on baseball but which nevertheless include significant and historical primary sources about the game.