Daguerreotypes

Daguerreotypes by The Sporting News is subtitled: The Complete Major and Minor League Records of Baseball's Greats

It was published by The Sporting News in 1934 and reprinted in expanded editions in 1951, 1958, 1961, 1968, 1971, 1981 and 1990. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-63683; ISBN 0-89204-352-0

In 1839, the year that baseball was founded in Upstate New York (or so the legend goes) (see Abner Doubleday for disputation), Frenchman Louis Daguerre invented the first practical process of photography.

Daguerre's discovery proved timely in terms of baseball's ability to chronicle its formative years. Indeed, the game's early goings-on were captured in part on "daguerreotypes", photographs which were made on plates of chemically treated glass or metal.

The art of playing baseball and the art of taking phographs both have come a long way over the years. And while the game is now recorded for historical safekeeping by highly sophisticated photographic and video equipment, baseball's storied past also lives on in DAGUERREOTYPES, The Sporting News' book that creates its own vivid images of yesteryear by presenting lifetime records of baseball's retired greats.

Each publication contains all Hall of Fame members and those who have reached certain milestones as well as (especially in the earlier editions), a rather arbitary selection of former greats (e.g., 1934 includes Bill Friel).