The Great 19th Century Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball by David Nemec

For the true baseball fan, the past is never just the past; it's always prologue. This comprehensive and engaging volume performs a valiant CPR on professional baseball's infancy and early childhood, returning the Dark Ages from 1871-1900 to vivid life. Unlike most sports encyclopedias, it goes way beyond statistics, though there are, of course, pages of those. It's the prose that truly covers the bases here. Meticulously researched, with a grandstand full of enlightening anecdotes, its clear history brings the distant past into the present by showing how closely related--and far afield--the era of Anson and Spalding and Keeler is to that of Griffey and Maddux and Gwynn.