John Tattersall

John C. Tattersall (1910-1981) was a baseball researcher whose specialty areas of research were home runs and players from the early days of baseball. He compiled scrapbooks of boxscores for major league games from 1876 to 1890 that were vital in the publication of the Official Encyclopedia of Baseball in 1951, the Baseball Encyclopedia in 1969 and Total Baseball in 1989. He was the first person to compile pinch-hitting and hit-by-pitch records, and the first to create data regarding batter vs. pitcher records.

Another key contribution was the home run log, containing information on every home run hit in major league history, a database that is still maintained by SABR to this day and serves, for example, as the source of this data on the main Baseball-Reference.com site.

He was honored posthumously with the Henry Chadwick Award in 2014.

Further Reading

• John Thorn: "John C. Tattersall", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 43, Number 1 (spring 2014), p. 124.

Related Sites

• SABR tribute page