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Diamond Dates
Diamond Dates, the baseball birthday book, includes over 16,000 major league baseball players from all eras. These players are divided up, based on their birthdays, into teams that represent each day of the year. This format allows the reader to have fun comparing teams while learning about some of the early players in the game. Teams are divided into starting line-up, starting pitchers and closer, bench players and relief pitchers. Each team has players from the many different eras, a true “blending of the eras of baseball”. When these teams are assembled it is not possible to make trades or sign a free agent to fill weak positions. Sometimes it is necessary for players to move to a different position to help the team. There are many great teams. Others are not so great, but all continue to get better as new players come into the major leagues and are added to their own birthday team. I encourage fans to update their information and continue adding new players and add to the career statistics of the existing players. Each team has combined statistics listed. These are the statistics for all of the players and pitchers combined for that date. These statistics include batting average, at bats, hits, home runs, runs, runs batted in, and stolen bases for the hitters. The pitcher statistics include wins, losses, earned run average, winning percentage and innings pitched. At the end of each month these totals are listed again along with all the other days for that month. This makes it easier for fans to compare the different days of the month. Also included at the end of each month is that month’s leader board. This page includes top tens in each of the categories listed above. These are the top ten players for that month in each category. For batting average a minimum of 3000 at bats has been used. For earned run average and winning percentage a minimum of 1000 innings pitched has been used. All other categories are based on highest totals. Some of the categories to have fun with include finding the teams that have achieved a combined total of 1000+ in home runs, stolen bases and wins. It is also fun to see which teams have the highest totals in each category. For instance, I believe there is only one team that has a combined 10000+ runs scored. It is also fun to compare the leader boards to see how one month may compare to another. Some months have great hitting numbers while other months are better in the pitching statistics. Another fun thing is to see how current players are moving up toward the leader board, which includes the all-time greats. It is also fun to look at the different teams to see how many Hall of Fame players are included on each team. These are a few of the fun things to do with this book, as well as looking at your own birthday to see who is included on “your” team. Many of baseball’s great players have interesting nicknames. The August 16 team has arguably two of the all-time great nicknames, Baby Doll Jacobson and Willie “Puddin’ Head” Jones. Diamond Dates is a book that every baseball fan should own. Enjoy the book and remember, baseball is the game! 422 pages. ISBN #9780978900007 ________________ Price: $16.95 + $5.00 shipping and handling. |
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Copyright © 2007 Herness Publishing
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