Bill Deane

Born in Poughkeepsie, NY in 1957, Bill Deane was the Senior Research Associate at the Hall of Fame library from 1986 to 1994, when he helped to transform the library into the leading source for baseball research in the world. He also assisted a number of researchers in their work.

A researcher himself, his area of focus is the history of baseball numbers and statistics. He has compiled various lists of historical feats such as players who have homered in their final major league at-bat, or a list of times the hidden ball trick has been pulled off successfully, or of a more biographical nature, such as players who were murdered or who committed suicide. He is the person who re-created voting records for early awards such as the Most Valuable Player Award and the Rookie of the Year Award, providing the information for Total Baseball and also compiling his own book, Award Voting (1988) on the topic.

He was honored with the Henry Chadwick Award in 2015.

Further Reading

• Bill Deane: Award Voting, SABR, Cleveland, OH, 1988. ISBN 978-0910137324
• Bill Deane: Baseball Myths: Debating, Debunking and Disproving Tales from the Diamond, Scarecrow Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2012. ISBN 978-0810885462
• Bill Deane: Finding the Hidden Ball Trick: The Colorful History of Baseball's Oldest Ruse, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4422-4433-7
• Lyle Spatz: "Bill Deane", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Vol. 44, Number 1 (Spring 2015), p. 120.

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