One of the things I have written about over the years is the value and necessity of building a research library. Today, there seems to be an ever growing trend to rely on the “key stroke” as a primary research tool. While the internet is great, I still think that print references are the cornerstone of any library. Over the years I have built a nice personal library that contains a variety of references including:
Auction Catalogs
Hardcover & Soft Cover Books
Periodicals
Vintage Scrapbooks
Team Photographs
Wire Photographs
Team/Club Issue Photographs
Video and DVD Footage
Common Player Exemplar Uniforms and Color 1:1 Plates of Uniforms
Research Notes from Player Files at Cooperstown
Hobby References and Trade Publications
Baseball Cards and Baseball Card Reference Books
The other thing I have always looked for are team issues such as yearbooks and programs. The problem with trying to assemble these in great number rests on both the issues of availability and affordability, especially the further back in time that you go. Yearbooks from the 1940s and 1950s, if you can find them often,are priced in $100-$150 range and those from the 1960s can routinely cost at least half as much. A quick review of “The Standard Catalog of Sports Memorabilia” (3rd Edition-pages 272-279) will confirm this.
In years past, one of the only ways for collectors or researchers to identify what player might have worn a particular uniform that lacked any sort of “name” identification was to reference a jersey number against a yearbook or scorecard. Publications like “Baseball by the Numbers” by Mark Stang & Linda Harkness and “Now Batting, Number…: The Mystique, Superstition, and Lore of Baseball’s Uniform Numbers” by Jack Looney have made this both easier and far more affordable.
The hard thing for most collectors comes in weighing the cost of what they could spend on building their collection versus building a supporting library. For some, this is really not an issue because their collecting focus is narrow. As a researcher and one who also evaluates and offers opinions on items, I am required as well as expected to cast a fairly wide net when looking for references. One of the obvious advantages yearbooks have over other types of printed references is they are date specific. Meaning the images contained within them can not be any later than the date of publication.
I have written at length about the concept of imagery analysis and why it is far more than just “photo matching.” Images offer vast amounts of information if used in their totality and here is were things like team yearbooks are particularly helpful. Consider this scenario. You find a picture that is undated and the uniforms the players are wearing are not unique to a single season. Your player of interest has something associated with him that you are trying to year date such as longer or shorter sleeves; style of cap by slight variance of logo; variations in lettering, numbering or team crest or any number of other things…Now consider who else might be in the picture. Here is were yearbooks come in handy in that they allow you to date or place the picture in some sort of relative time frame by identifying other players in the image. This is much the same thing as dating a signed ball by accounting for all the signatures as compared to a team roster and looking for those one or two year players.
Another thing to consider with respect to yearbooks is what they tell us about the player with respect to height and weight. While static references such as “The Baseball Encyclopedia” or “Total Baseball” have a single entry for a player’s size, yearbooks can offer insights to chronological changes that can be used in tracking and or identifying when a players’ uniform size may have changed. Consider this example. Jackie Robinson is listed in “Total Baseball” as being 5’ 11”, 204lbs. If you look at Brooklyn Dodger yearbook entries you will find:
1950: 5’ 11 ¾” and 205 lbs
1952: 5’ 11 ¾” and 204 lbs
1953: 5’ 11 ¾” and 215 lbs
Now look at this against the examples of same period Robinson jerseys in the MEARS data base:
1950 Home, Spalding, size 42
1952 Home, Rawlings, size 42
1953 Road, Rawlings, size 44
In some cases, you will find that even over time, a players weight will not be reported to have changed or are even listed at all. I mention this so that people don’t assume I am stating this as a matter of absolutes, only an additional reference.
Team yearbooks are also a very solid period reference for determining the minor league affiliates for a club in a given year. This at times can help in researching provenance for items that were said to have been passed down to the minors and retained by the owner or family member. Also, since many yearbooks will feature budding stars in the minor league duds, they can serve as a means to also identify minor league uniforms and caps. A while back I was asked to look a mid 1950s NY Yankees home jersey manufactured by McAuliffe. There was very little in the way of Yankee McAuliffe exemplars in my data base. The jerseys were easy enough to identify as McAuliffe products in photographs by both the numeral font style and the style of NY crest so placing the jersey to 1953-1954 was not a problem. But what has happened to these jerseys? In the 1955 NY Yankees Yearbook you will find images of “up and coming stars” Ed Cereghino and Buddy Carter in spring training at Miller Huggins Field wearing these McAuliffe jerseys as indicated by the crest style.
The images contained in team yearbooks are probably the one thing that many collectors and researchers associate value with. While some will want to focus on those yearbooks from World Series seasons, the one from the subsequent year may in fact be more valuable as tool vs a collectable. Consider that this is the one that will contain images from the World Series.
One of the things I found most interesting along these lines was found in the 1956 Cincinnati Reds Yearbook. The Reds uniforms in 1955 featured the popular “mustached Mr. Red” patch worn on the left shoulder. But in looking at the 1956 yearbook with images from the 1955 season, you will see that there are two variations of this patch. The one worn on Opening Day was a square patch and later on, at least by the All Star Game in Milwaukee, the patch became a custom trimmed shape along the rough outlines of the figure of the head itself. The back page of this yearbook also offers detailed descriptions of the new uniforms (vests) that the Reds will wear in 1956. This includes fabrics and the manufacturer as well. If you are curious who manufactured the Colt 45’s home uniforms in 1962, consult the 1962 yearbook and you can see a picture of clubhouse man Norm Gerdeman proudly holding a up a Wilson home. Next to him is Equipment Manager Whitey Diskin holding up a road jersey. While no manufacturers label is visible because of the fold of the jersey, you can see what appears to be “42 62” in the collar indicative of what may be Spalding product.
A while back, I was looking on E-Bay for references and I noticed a number of reproduction yearbooks that appeared to be of solid quality. The price was clearly more in line with what I was looking to spend given my purpose for acquiring them. I am interested solely in content and not collectability. I decided to contact the seller and asked if there were others besides what was listed and asked about making a bulk purchase. The price seemed right, but given the volume, was not cheap. I sent off payment a couple of weeks later, two large boxes showed up at the door. I could not have been happier with the almost 200 yearbooks in the purchase.
This is a list of the yearbooks I added to my reference library with this purchase:
1934 Cubs
1934 White Sox
1934 Tigers
1939 Tigers
1941 Dodgers
1942 Dodgers
1942 Cubs
1945 Browns
1946 Braves
1946 Cubs
1946 Red Sox w/poster
1947 Braves
1947 Dodgers
1947 Giants
1947 Reds
1948 Indians
1948 Cubs
1948 Reds
1949 Reds
1949 Phillies
1949 Dodgers
1949 Athletics
1949 Cubs
1950 Yankees
1950 Phillies
1950 Athletics
1950 Senators
1950 Braves
1951 Braves
1951 Cubs
1951 Giants
1951 Dodgers
1951 Dodgers (Spring)
1951 Reds
1951 Cardinals
1951 Pirates
1951 Athletics
1951 White Sox
1951 Red Sox
1951 Browns
1951 Yankees
1951 Yankees (Revised)
1952 Yankees
1952 White Sox (Revised)
1952 Browns
1952 Red Sox
1952 Dodgers
1952 Dodgers (Spring)
1952 Cardinals
1952 Cubs
1952 Phillies
1952 Pirates
1952 Reds
1952 Braves
1952 Giants
1953 Reds
1953 Dodgers
1953 Cubs
1953 Giants
1953 Phillies
1953 Pirates
1953 Braves
1953 Cardinals
1953 Yankees
1953 White Sox (Revised)
1953 Indians
1954 Indians
1954 White Sox (Revised)
1954 Yankees
1954 Athletics
1954 Orioles
1954 Senators
1954 Braves
1954 Dodgers
1954 Giants
1954 Cardinals
1954 Cubs
1954 Pirates
1954 Phillies
1954 Reds
1955 Phillies
1955 Pirates
1955 Braves
1955 Reds
1955 Dodgers
1955 Giants
1955 Cardinals
1955 Cubs
1955 Yankees
1955 Red Sox
1955 Orioles
1955 Senators
1955 White Sox
1955 Indians
1955 Indians Sketchbook
1955 K.C. Athletics
1955 K.C. Athletics (Spring)
1955 Tigers
1956 Dodgers
1956 Braves
1956 Giants
1956 Phillies
1956 Pirates
1956 Cardinals
1956 Cubs
1956 Reds
1956 Red Sox
1956 Yankees (Spring)
1956 Yankees (Revised)
1956 Athletics
1956 Athletics (Spring)
1956 Indians
1956 Senators
1956 Orioles
1957 Orioles
1957 Tigers
1957 Indians
1957 Yankees
1957 Senators
1957 Senators (Revised w/poster)
1957 Red Sox
1957 Athletics
1957 Cubs
1957 Dodgers
1957 Giants
1957 Phillies
1957 Braves
1957 Cardinals
1958 Athletics
1958 Orioles
1958 Yankees (Spring)
1958 Yankees (Revised)
1958 Tigers
1958 Indians
1958 Red Sox
1958 Senators (Spring)
1958 Senators (Revised)
1958 Cardinals
1958 Dodgers
1958 Giants
1958 Braves
1959 Phillies
1959 Cardinals
1959 Giants
1959 Red Sox
1959 Senators
1959 White Sox
1959 Yankees (Spring)
1959 Yankees
1959 Tigers
1959 Indians
1959 Orioles
1959 Athletics
1959 Athletics (Spring)
1960 Athletics
1960 Indians
1960 Orioles
1960 Red Sox
1960 Tigers
1960 Yankees
1960 Senators
1960 Cardinals
1960 Giants
1961 Minn. Twins
1961 Yankees
1961 Wash. Senators Inaugural
1961 Giants
1961 Cardinals
1961 Phillies
1962 Houston Colt 45’s
1962 Mets
1962 Cardinals
1962 Angels
1962 Senators
1962 Twins
1962 K.C. A’s
1962 Yankees
1962 Giants
1963 Angels
1963 Athletics
1963 Yankees
1963 Mets
1963 Cardinals
1964 Cardinals
1964 Mets
1969 Seattle Pilots
These yearbooks have all been created by copying the covers in color and then the insides, by and large, in black and white. The interior pages are doubled sided and the volumes are neatly spiral bound. The interior images, while not of the exacting quality of the originals, are more than sufficiently useful for research purposes.
While the focus of this article and purchase has been on vintage references, I would encourage new and younger collectors to begin to add more modern yearbooks to their libraries/collections as well. Not only are you building a reference library that can be used for the above mentioned reasons, but since these are new, you are also buying an affordable collectable that may increase in value over time.
For those of you interested in the publications that I bought, the seller is Mr. Kevin Kearney. Kevin has given me permission to provide you with his contact information should you wish to make a purchase. For the record, I paid Kevin’s asking price for the bulk purchase and will not be compensated in any manner should anyone else decide to purchase his products.
Kevin Kearney
E-mail: kear48ne@yahoo.com
As with all my references, if you have a question that I might be able to answer or steer your research in a particular manner, please drop me a line…that’s why we write and that’s what we’re here for.
MEARS Auth, LLC