© Jay Wigley. All rights reserved.

Letters from Retrosheet's Founder

As described in Chapter Four, Dave Smith earned an audience with MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent late in 1989. After a face-to-face meeting, Smith sent a letter to Vincent explaining his vision for Retrosheet and what it might provide to both MLB and its fans.

As described in Chapter Seven, Dave Smith was thrilled to speak with Allan Roth, one of baseball's first professional statisticians. After their 1992 phone call, Smith wrote to Roth about many topics including Retrosheet.

As described in Chapter Eleven, Dave Smith and Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau forged a friendship that was put to the test when it came to the subject of revising baseball's official record book. Smith defused the tension in a letter from the summer of 1996.

Allan Roth's Unusual Scoresheets

Considered the cornerstone of the Retrosheet collection, Allan Roth's scoresheets provide amazing details. Unlike the limited illustration in the book, here you can see a full game's scoresheet and instructions for decoding Roth's nomenclature.

Game Log Illustrations

As described in the Interlude before Chapter Six, SABR member Bob Tiemann donated his collection of game logs covering every MLB season in the Retrosheet era. See a complete league-season of Tiemann's work, and his color chart of the 1964 NL pennant race.

Photos

Photos here were not of sufficient quality to include in the book. But perhaps photos online may be forgiven their flaws.

First is Goodwin "Goody" Goldfaden, of the ADCO Sports Book Exchange. The photo is from 1963, several years before Dave Smith purchased Frank Finch's scorebooks from him.Speaking of Finch's scorebooks, here is a photo of one of his 1965 Dodgers games.Last, David Stephan somehow left no photographs of his face anywhere, save a few in his college yearbooks. The only photograph I could find of him was from a 1998 Los Angeles Times article, reproduced here. (The inset photo is from that college yearbook.)Last, a couple of random Retrosheet volunteers at a Phillies game a few years ago.

Goody Goldfaden in 1963

Frank Finch 1965 scorebook

David Stephan circa 1998