Access newspaper game accounts from 1897-1912
Attention, Deadball Era scholars!
SABR member Jonathan Frankel has set up a Google Docs library with hundreds of newspaper game accounts (play-by-play, game write-ups, game notes, box scores) that he collected and used during his recent research project on batter strikeouts. These newspaper scans cover the years 1897-1912 and include editions from the following cities:
- Chicago (Daily News)
- Cincinnati (Commercial Tribune, Enquirer)
- Cleveland (Leader)
- Detroit (Times)
- Louisville (Courier Journal, Times)
- New York (Evening Telegram, Evening World)
- Philadelphia (Evening Telegraph, Evening Times)
- St. Louis (Chronicle, Globe Democrat, Republic, Star)
Most newspaper files are downloadable in PDF, JPG or TIF formats. Note: Not all games are covered for a given paper/year.
Frankel’s library can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/FrankelSABR. It has also been added to the SABR Research Resources page.
“I tried not to duplicate scans that already exist on the web, either via free sources like the Library of Congress or Google newspaper archives or paid sites like GeneologyBank.com or Proquest,” Frankel said.
Frankel’s groundbreaking research on batter strikeouts has filled in the missing statistical record for individual batter strikeoutsin the National League from 1897-1909 and the American League from 1901-1912. This new data has been incorporated into Pete Palmer’s master statistical database and as a result has been populated into Baseball-Reference.com, as well. Learn more at his blog, http://batterk.blogspot.com.
To help add newspapers to this library, contact Frankel at jlfrankel@comcast.net.
To learn more SABR’s Nineteenth Century Research Committee, click here. To learn more SABR’s Deadball Era Research Committee, click here.
Originally published: February 23, 2012. Last Updated: February 23, 2012.