The National Association of Base Ball Players (1857-1870)

The National Association of Base Ball Players (1857-1870) was written by Marshall Wright and published by McFarland in 2000 (ISBN 978-0-7864-0779-8). It is primarily a narrative with available statistics of the early years of the first organized baseball (or base ball) league, covering the amateur NABBP that preceded the first professional league, the NAPBBP. It actually covers the earliest days of the game of base ball in the early 1840s, into the days of formal league organization and post-Civil War growth, through the heyday of the association, and ending with the birth of professionalism, the splitting of the amateur and professional associations, and the death of the formal amateur association. It identifies the early dominant teams and the game's first true stars.

Statistics for those early days are scant, but the author fills in what is available, plus scores of every known game, and includes the "new" stats as they were introduced into the game. It is probably the best source for information on the sport's pre-professional years.