Old baseball annual publications

[Patrick425]

For some reason on my way to work this morning I was thinking about baseball publications I use buy every year. I'm wondering if anyone else is old enough to remember any of these.

 

One of my favorites was one that I can't remember the name of now (I may have an old copy in my basement somewhere). It was a thick paperback type book that previewed all the teams and players on each team. Towards the front of the book they would predict the AL and NL races and they would do it in horse racing style. For example on the bottom of the AL East predictions they might say something like 'Boston comes out of the gate fast and sets the pace with Milwaukee and Baltimore on it's heels. New York and Detroit loom in the middle of the pack. Cleveland and Toronto stumble coming out of the gate and never are a factor. Milwaukee shows some late speed down the stretch and noses out Boston at the finish line.' I'm not sure when they stopped printing this book. I think the last time I purchased it was around 84 or 85. Anyone remember that one?

 

I also use to purchase the annual AL Red Book (the NL had a Green Book, didn't purchase it because the Brewers were in the AL). It had all the stats from the previous year. Information on each stadium. 40 man rosters. Historic and year by year records for each team and some other statistical information. It was always printed in landscape form. I'm pretty sure they do not print this any more.

 

The last one I remember always getting was the Street and Smith annual publication. I have not seen this over the last several years, but I think they were still printing it in the late 90's/ early 00's . It was a publication that my dad always purchased for me when I was a kid because it was something he always purchased when he was a kid. It was your basic predictions and team by team preview magazine. I also remember that they would always have a couple pages on upcoming milestones for active players.

 

Not sure what the point of this thread is, other than me being a very nostalgic person. I guess I'm wondering if anyone else remembers any of these publications (especially the first one) or if there are any baseball publications that you remember buying as a kid that are no longer being published.

 

edit: Doing further research, it appears that Street and Smith have recently combined with The Sporting News and from what I can tell the AL Red Book was last published in the mid 90's sometime. Here is a picture of the 1978 book:

 

http://images.yuku.com/image/pjpeg/dd2150967df9911c4b91b992f343c413bf8e516.pjpg

[JimH5]

Street & Smith's certainly is a classic. . .as is Who's Who in Baseball. . .and Baseball Digest. . .and Athlon's Baseball preview was always loaded with good crisp color photos. And I did have one of the old AL Redbooks, too. I remember it being full of stuff I couldn't get elsewhere.

 

And I had a 1975 Brewers Media Guide back in Junior High that got passed around among a few of my classmates and came back to me with pen marks and scribbling all over the cover. Dirty rotten losers.

[Fatter than Joey]

For some reason on my way to work this morning I was thinking about baseball publications I use buy every year. I'm wondering if anyone else is old enough to remember any of these.

 

Yeah -- Sporting News made a "register" and a "guide" every single year and those things were invaluable back in the day. When I was growing up I collected them, and I have every single guide and register going back to the 50s.

 

I used to collect media guides as well, and have most of the MLB media guides from the 80s. Some teams guides would suck, but then some would be awesome, for example the Rangers did a guide one year where they listed every single K Ryan had, and then broke it out by father and sons, HOFers, guys who faced Ryan the most w/o K'ing.

 

The older TSN registers were cool because they had pictures of the dudes -- and every now and then there would be a dude that never had a baseball card made of them, and I would make a photocopy of their register entry, put it on some sort of an index card and send it to them to be signed.

[Patrick425]

The older TSN registers were cool because they had pictures of the dudes -- and every now and then there would be a dude that never had a baseball card made of them, and I would make a photocopy of their register entry, put it on some sort of an index card and send it to them to be signed.

Wow, that was a pretty cool idea. Did you ever get any responses and if so, do you still have any of them?

[Fatter than Joey]

Yes and Yes.