... particularly the early Baseball Abstracts, are masterpieces of analysis, and the reason they’re so good is that he doesn’t just produce reams of stats and say “That’s it, take it or leave it”. He writes spectacularly well and is able to explain his reasoning.

Baseball-reference.com and Retrosheet.org—I don’t know what I’d do without them. I bow in admiration to Sean Forman and Dave Smith, who run those two sites.

.... but I have also used http://www.baseball-reference.com/ and http://www.baseball-almanac.com/. For books, look at this post from a while back: http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2008/2/16/194214/209 and http://www.bleedcubbieblue.com/2008/3/15/182732/413. I had the same questions a while back. Hopefully these will help… Good luck!

If you haven’t read it yet, please go out and do so. I just re-read it and it’s really an incredible book. I also enjoy Baseball Between The Numbers, written by members of Baseball Prospectus, as it talks about a LOT of interesting things (i.e. why there’s no such thing as clutch hitting).

Online, I stick with www.baseball-reference.com and Baseball Prospectus.

I come here and tap the great baseball minds at this site.

For enjoyable fiction or nonfiction, anything written by Mark Harris on the subject of baseball (outdated, but thats what I like so much about them), Man on Spikes by Asinof (really good book), and I also really liked Praying for Gil Hodges.

This is not a complete list.

Major Leagues:

www.baseball-reference.com – Splits, Batting Runs, OPS+/ERA+
www.fangraphs.com – Batted ball data and pitch type/speed data for five years
www.hardballtimes.com – Fielding Independent Pitching, fielding data and sortable lists
www.espn.com – Fielding data, sortable lists
www.sportsnet.ca – Fielding data
http://baseball.bornbybits.com/2008/pitchers.html – PitchFX player cards

Minor Leagues:

minors.baseball-reference.com
www.minorleaguesplits.com – Split stats for current season
www.first-inning.com
www.milb.com – Avenue of last resort

As already mentioned for straight stats Baseball Reference is the best. Not many ads either to clutter up the pages. I like Sickels web site for baseball prospect discussions. I’ll also hit the Baseball Analysts, Hardball Times and other sites for general discussion when I have time. I see cwyers has mentioned some of the technical sites.

Books (these have been mentioned before):
- The Glory of their Time – Ritter
- Boys of Summer – Kahn
- Babe – Craemer
- Cobb – Stump (make sure it is the book he wrote after Cobb died)
- Anything by Bill James
- The various Halberstam baseball books (I like some of his non-baseball stuff too)
- Only the Ball was White – Peterson (on Negro Leagues)

Finally, join SABR if you are interested in baseball history. The free publications are worth the yearly dues. You also can sign up for various email trivia lists and daily email list discussions.

Although baseball-reference.com is incredible, I find the interface on Yahoo Sports much cleaner, simpler and enjoyable, so I use it for “everyday” queries about players, boxscores, basic stats.

I also find it much cleaner than MLB.com/Cubs.com etc. for stats, scores and schedules.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb

Try the Elias Book of Baseball Records and Total Baseball edited by Paul Thorn and Pete Palmer.

I really enjoyed Bill James’ “Goldmine” as a primer for this upcoming season.

Ripete has a list of what look like historical…biographical…baseball books,
does anyone have a list of more literary (halberstam would maybe qualify) type books?
Thanks.

but ill go to different blogs and to espn as well. I also have been using my company website a bit more as that always has good information.

Off the top of my head, I’d highly recommend any books by Roger Angell-esp. “The Summer Game” and “Season Ticket” (In “Season Ticket” he travels to each ML park during the 1985 season-really interesting takes on different cities, fan bases, etc. He has some particularly nice observations about Cub fans (and he’s a New Yorker).

Tom Boswell, a well known baseball writer has published several collections of his writings and they’re all very worthwhile; particularly “How Life Imitates The World Series” and “Why Time Begins On Opening Day’.

“Wrigleyville” an oral history of the Cubs by Peter Golenbock is required reading for any Cubs fan-I’ve probably read it ten or fifteen times-fascinating to read the players’ takes on things like the 1969 season, the Dallas Green years, etc.

The aforementioned “Moneyball” was given to me as a gift a couple of years ago and I’ve read it several times-

“Lords Of The Realm” by John Heyman is another book I love-I never would have thought that a book covering the business side and the complicated labor history of baseball could be such a page turner but this one is.

“Ball Four”, Jim Bouton’s once notorious diary of his 1969 season, might be my all-time favorite baseball book. It’s especially interesting to see how different the game has become over the last few decades.

If you’re curious at all about older players and want biographical info instead of just stats, two additional resources are:

TheDeadballEra.com

This site has an pretty substantial database of the obituaries of ML players. Many of the obituaries are scanned from the NY Times.

SABR Biography Project

The Society for American Baseball Research has a number of player biographies online as part of their biography project. Although the SABR site isn’t as extensive as the obituary index, the profiles themselves are far more in-depth.

Also, my favorite Cubs-specific book is probably “The Cubs Reader”, which was published in the early 90s. It’s just a compilation of things of things written about the Cubs, a whole variety of stuff, from Roger Angell’s essay about the 1984 team to excerpts from Johnny Evers’ book.

check out Baseball America if you follow the Minors at all. No other publication goes into nearly as much detail about prospects. If you pay for a subscription you can access all online stuff…or you can pay less for the online stuff and not get the magazine mailed to you.

does he count? He’s my stat guy.

Baseball Reference Dot Com for most stats.

Books I’ve enjoyed, to name just a few :

Moneyball-Michael Lewis

Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract- Bill James

I Was Right On Time - Buck O'Neil

The Celebrant - Eric Greenberg

The Universal Baseball Association – Robert Coover

For reference I use “The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball” and “Total Ballclubs” along with Baseball-Reference.com and Baseball-Almanac.com.

Most of my other books are a combination of team biographies, retellings of memorable years in a team’s history, and recounts of famous games. “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over” is a look at the greatest pennant races by Baseball Prospectus that I really enjoyed, and “Paths To Glory” is a great analysis of how specific championship teams were put together.

Here’s my Cubs books: “Wrigley Field” by Stuart Shea; “You Gotta Have Heart” by Ned Colletti; “Durocher’s Cubs” by David Claerbaut; “The Cubs of 69” by Rick Talley; “The Million To One Team” by George Castle; and “Baseball, Chicago Style” by Jerome Holtzman and George Vass.

and am over a 100 pages into it. Awesome book