Looking It Up

By Peter Staler

THE BASEBALL ENCYCLOPEDIA

Macmillan; 2,142 pages; $25

Ice on the ground, snow in the forecast. Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Yankee Stadium closed for the season. Faced with such spiritual deprivation, Cato fell on his sword and Ishmael shipped out to sea. Baseball buffs have a better way of alleviating off-season angst. Like fundamentalists who find solace in Scripture, they take down their own holy writ entitled The Baseball Encyclopedia. Impervious to time and temperature, the good book returns readers to baseball's Jurassic era, when teams were owned by individuals rather than conglomerates, when the game was played on vegetation instead of plastic, when professionals had to hit at least .300 before they were considered superstars.

Heavy enough to induce hernia in the unconditioned. The Baseball Encyclopedia does not contain all there is to know about baseball. But it does hold more than enough to nourish the fan until opening day. It is the definitive reference book of baseball, the only tome that lists the year-by-year performance statistics for almost every man and child (Joe Nuxhall was only 16 when he pitched for Cincinnati) who ever played in the major leagues. The current (third) edition is now being sold out. There will not be another until 1980 --an aeon away to the true baseball nut. who relies upon the book for sooth as well as solace.

Just about every ball ever pitched, hit or dropped is recorded in its constantly enlightening pages. The record shows, for example, that in his 19 years as a pro fessional baseball player, Infielder Ernie Banks played in 2,528 games, had 9,421 official times at bat and logged 2,583 hits for a lifetime batting average of .274. The same volume also records a loser who had but one time at bat in the majors -- and struck out. His name: Walter Emmons Alston.

Some use the book to provoke bar bets:

Who was waiting in the on-deck circle in 1951 when the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hit the "shot heard 'round the world"? Willie Mays. Name three men who hit .400 three times in their careers.

Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Jesse ("the Crab") Burkett. Others use the book to settle arguments. Who struck out more than any other player? Mickey Mantle, who whiffed 1,710 times during his 8,102 official times at bat. Which pitcher gave up the most bases on balls? Early Wynn, who issued 1 ,775 passes in his 23-year career. (He also struck out 2,334 batters.) Many encyclopediasts pass the winter months compiling their own alltime, all-star teams. Unfortunately, most of the casts are depressingly alike: Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Cy Young, et al. Recently, however, the book has supplied names for more unique aggregations. The latest off-season base ball game consists of compiling teams with players related by name rather than achievement. There is the all-animal team: "Spider" Jorgensen, "Rabbit" Maranville, Jimmy Foxx. The all-color men:

"Red" Ruffing, Joe Black, Vida Blue, Bob by Brown. Work has begun on an all-rhyming team. So far, compilers have not been able to go beyond Don Hahn, Ed Head and Matt Batts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.