A friend of ours used to like to spend some ofhis free

time thumbing through the list of major league base-

ball players. One of his delights was to assemble a team

of players named Smith. I personally haven t taken the

time to count the Smiths, or the Joneses for that matter,

but I m certain there are enough of each to field a

representative team. Overall, beyond the Smiths and

Joneses there are, since 1901, almost 10,000 men who

have played major league baseball. Of course, few have

left their mark on the ages, and many only came up to

have their proverbial "cup of coffee." Still, it is a rare

honor to have appeared in at least one game, and a

fantasy which most of us share.

This friend of ours, whose presence no longer graces

our lives, was Lee Allen. At the time of his death in

1969, Lee was historian at the Baseball Hall of Fame in

Cooperstown, New York. The Sports Encyclopedia:

Baseball, which is the big brother to this handy paper-

back, was dedicated to his memory and to all he repre-

sented in baseball research. In many ways, Lee was a

pioneer whose main passion was not so heavily sta-

tistical as it was to hunt for the missing pieces of docu-

mentation which made up the man: birth, death, middle

name, born as (some men changed their family name),

and even such trifles as bats, throws, height, and weight.

Lee spent the last part of his life collecting such informa-

tion. Happily, his efforts, and the efforts of all those

before and after him, are included in this rich collection

which includes every man to have played in the major

leagues since 1901.