Emerald Guide to Baseball

Go get it. ... Now!

When people hear SABR, they often confuse it with sabermetrics. However, the Society for Baseball Research (SABR) is really dedicated to baseball history, and if you are interested in baseball history, you should become a member (the site is on one the link lists to the right). You get really cool stuff, which is mainly random newsletters with random baseball history. I think it's cool, okay.

Anyway, on to the reason for the post. Sporting News used to put out a baseball guide each year detailing what happened the previous season. They ceased doing this in 2006. To fill that void, SABR members Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer (geez, what's up with the alliteration?) began The Emerald Guide to Baseball to fill that void. Okay, so here's the great thing for those of you who are not members of SABR -- it's free for everyone in the whole-wide world (the bound book is not, but the electronic PDF is). Go to this page, and you can download a PDF full of the goodness that it is. I've downloaded it, and it contains all the statistics one could want for all major and minor league players from 2008. Again, it's completely free, and it's a wonderful tool for the statistics enthusiasts out there. I hope to comb through it a bit over Spring Break.