Reach guides

[Forever Young]

Does anyone know when reach guides were published. By when, I mean what time of the year. Was it a yearly, consistant thing? Were they a recap of the previous year?? What was the purpose of the guedes? For example, the 1924 guide shows composites of images of players on the 1923 teams. Were all the images in a 1924 guide from 1923? I am interested in figuring out release dates of the early to mid20s.

[thecatspajamas]

I don't know what time of year they were published, but yes, all photos in the Reach guides were of the previous year's team (so all team photos in the 1924 guide would be of the 1923 teams, and so on).

As for the purpose of the guides, I think we take for granted the easy availability of any and all information, especially sports-related. Publications like the Reach and Spalding guides were like the "baseball bible" in those days. Fans could have the entire year, across all leagues major and minor, covered in one handy publication, and with pictures! The format must have been popular, because it was used by several different publishers of annual guides.

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

I don't know what time of year they were published, but yes, all photos in the Reach guides were of the previous year's team (so all team photos in the 1924 guide would be of the 1923 teams, and so on).

As for the purpose of the guides, I think we take for granted the easy availability of any and all information, especially sports-related. Publications like the Reach and Spalding guides were like the "baseball bible" in those days. Fans could have the entire year, across all leagues major and minor, covered in one handy publication, and with pictures! The format must have been popular, because it was used by several different publishers of annual guides.

So would all the photos used for the composites be from the previous year too then? See the example below..IT SAYS : "A GROUP OF NEW YORK YANKEES--WORLD'S CHAMPION'S 1923" but I wanted to see if it was known if all the images were from 1923. So was the purpose then, to recap the previous year? Was there anything published about 1924 in the 1924 copy for example? Did they give a schedule? I would guess it was published prior to the season in 1924 if not/or if schedule was in there. Is that a reasonable assumption??

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Forever Young

So was the purpose then, to recap the previous year?

I believe so, yes. To quote Mr. Spalding, his guide was intended to be an "authoritative chronicle of base ball," meant to appeal to statisticians and historians of the sport.

There is a good overview of base ball guides on the SABR website:
http://research.sabr.org/journals/ba...-guides-galore

[barrysloate]

All the guides, Reach and Spalding alike, offered statistical recaps of the previous season. I would assume they were available in the spring, right before the baseball season started.

[bcbgcbrcb]

Agree with Barry.