Sports Reference Resources
by James Meier, The Sporting News

• Information Please Sports Almanac / edited by John Hassan. New York: Hyperion Books, 1999. Better than SI’s almanac. Online at http://infoplease.com/sports/

• Total Hockey : the official encyclopedia of the National Hockey League / ed. by Dan Diamond. New York, NY: Total Sports, 1998.
• Total Baseball. John Thorn and Pete Palmer. New York, NY : Warner Books, 1997.
• Total football : the official encyclopedia of the National Football League / ed. Bob Carroll. New York : HarperCollins Publishers, c1997.
• The Official NBA basketball encyclopedia / edited by Alex Sachare. New York : Villard Books, 1994.
• Official Major League Baseball Fact Book. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1999. Mixture of info. from the Guide & Record Books.
• National Football League Record and Fact Book. New York: NFL, 1999. The most detailed record book for football.
• National Hockey League Official Guide and Record Book. New York: NHL, 1999. The most detailed record book for hockey.
• The official NCAA men's college basketball records book. Overland Park, Kan. : National Collegiate Athletic Association, 1999.
• The official NCAA college football records book. Overland Park, Kan. : NCAA, 1999. Covers all divisions.
• The complete book of the Olympics / David Wallechinsky. Boston : Little, Brown, 1996.

• Team and tour media guides: Get NBA & NHL from league offices; the rest from teams or tour associations (ATP, WTA, PGA, LPGA, PBA) themselves. For minors/college, get local teams first, then all opponents, then rest of league. For major league teams, you’ll need all teams in the league. Great for biographical information.
• The Sporting News Guides and Registers. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1999. Guides have stats from previous season and current season rosters and schedules. Registers have year-by-year stats on all current players. Separate books for four major sports leagues.
• Complete Baseball Record Book. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1999. The most detailed record book for baseball.
• The official NCAA Final Four records book. Overland Park, Kan. : NCAA, 1999. Covers only the mens’ NCAA Div. I tournament.
• National High School Sports Record Book. Kansas City, MO : National Federation of State High School Associations, 1998. See also their website at www.nfhs.org for a directory of all state high school athletic associations.
• State high school coaches directories. Cassville, MO: Clell Wade Coaches Directories. Lists all jr., middle and sr. HS in your state.

• Bud Collins' modern encyclopedia of tennis / edited by Bud Collins and Zander Hollander. Detroit : Visible Ink Press, c1997.
• The stock car racing encyclopedia / edited by Peter Golenbock and Greg Fielden. New York : Macmillan USA, c1997.
• The world encyclopedia of soccer / Michael LaBlanc & Richard Henshaw. Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994. If you only cover the World Cup, just get an encyclopedia for that event (Ency. of World Cup Soccer / Orlando Duarte. New York: McGraw Hill, 1994).
• The A-Z of world boxing : an authoritative and entertaining compendium of the fight game from its origins to the present day / Bert Blewett ; with a foreword by Reg Gutteridge. London, England : Robson Books, 1996.
• The baseball encyclopedia. Tenth ed. New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1996.
• The pro football encyclopedia : the complete and definitive record of professional football / edited by Tod Maher and Bob Gill. New York, NY : Macmillan, c1997.
• The Hockey News Hockey Almanac / ed. by Zander Hollander. Detroit, MI : Visible Ink Press, 1999.
• Inside sports magazine college basketball / Mike Douchant ; foreword by Billy Packer. Detroit : Visible Ink Press, c1998.

• The new Dickson baseball dictionary / Paul Dickson. San Diego, CA : Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999.
• Super Register / ed. by Allan Simpson and Jim Keller. Durham, NC : Baseball America, 1998. Stats for all current baseball players in majors & minors.
• The Ballplayers : baseball's ultimate biographical reference / edited by Mike Shatzkin New York : Arbor House/William Morrow, c1990.
• SABR presents the home run encyclopedia : the who, what, and where of every home run hit since 1876 / edited by Bob McConnell and David Vincent, SABR. New York, NY : Macmillan, 1996. Every home run from 1876-1995.
• The Sport Americana baseball address list / by R. J. "Jack" Smalling. Cleveland, OH : Edgewater Book Company. Lists recent addresses or death dates and locations for major league baseball players.
• The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball : the official record of minor league baseball / edited by Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff. Durham, NC : Baseball America, 1994.
• The biographical encyclopedia of the Negro baseball leagues / James A. Riley . New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994.
• Baseball by the numbers : a guide to the uniform numbers of major league teams / by Mark Stang and Linda Harkness. Lanham, MD : Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1997. Has uniform numbers for every team through 1992.
• The encyclopedia of the NCAA Basketball Tournament : the complete independent guide to college basketball's championship event / Jim Savage. New York, N.Y. : Dell Pub., 1990. Has box scores for every tournament game through the 1990 Final Four.
• Chase's calendar of sports events / Steve Gietschier. Chicago, Ill. : Contemporary Books, 1999. Identify specific dates for historical sports events.
• Biographical dictionary of American sports / edited by David L. Porter. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1995. Series of books for baseball, football, other sports.
• Professional sports team histories / Michael L. LaBlanc, editor ; Mary K. Ruby, associate editor. Detroit : Gale Research, c1994. Four volume set covering MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL through 1994.
• Encyclopedia of world sport : from ancient times to the present / David Levinson and Karen Christensen, editors. Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, c1996.
• Rules of the game : the complete illustrated encyclopedia of rules for all the sports of the world / by the Diagram Group. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1995.
• Official Rules. NFL and NHL publish their own. NBA and MLB published by The Sporting News.
• Sports Market Place. Phoenix, AZ : Franklin Quest Sports, 1998. Huge directory of franchises, marketers and manufacturers.

• The Sports Hot Sheet - http://members.xoom.com/hotsheet/sports.html Created by Jack Styzczynski of NBC. Lists almost all the official league and team sites. Also, links to media sites.
• SportsPages - http://www.sportspages.com Links to many sports sections of daily papers and other sports media sites.
• Yahoo! Sports - http://dir.yahoo.com/recreation/sports.index.html Better for finding sites for sports outside the mainstream.
• Sportquest - http://www.sportquest.com/index.html Created by Sport Information Resource Centre of Canada. Very well indexed and does good job for international sites.
• STATS Inc. on AOL. The best organized, most detailed, and most accurate place for current stats for the Big 6 sports.

• Sports Collectors Digest, 700 E. State St., Iola, WI 54990, 715-445-2214. weekly. $60.00 per year.
• Team Marketing Report, 660 W. Grand Ave, Suite 100E, Chicago, IL 60610. 312-829-7060. monthly. $179 per year.
• Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal, 120 Morehead St., Suite 310, Charlotte, NC 28202. 704-973-1400. weekly. $199 per year.
• Also check out Fortune magazine for their annual ranking of sports franchise values.  

• PORTFOLIO ONE (For small library without a major league team or Div. I-A school): ie. Bismark, ND
• IPSA
• local team/tour media guides - need the tour guides only if you’re hosting an event
• high school books
• TSN Baseball Guide - summary of previous year’s seasons in every major and minor league
• PORTFOLIO TWO (For mid-city library with minor league teams and Div. I-A) ie. Columbus, OH
• IPSA, media guides, HS books, TSN Guides in your sports, NCAA books
• PORTFOLIO THREE (For big city library with major & minor league teams and Div. I-A) ie. St. Louis, MO
• IPSA, media guides, HS books, TSN Guides/Registers, NCAA books, Total Sports ency., League record books

SPORTS REFERENCE - PRESENTED BY JAMES MEIER, LIBRARIAN, THE SPORTING NEWS

PHONE: 314-993-7777

EMAIL: jmeier@sportingnews.com or tsnjrm@aol.com