BEST Minor Lg sites for old rosters??

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Posted By: Fred Y

Haven't posted in a while, but continue to lurk, read & learn from this great Forum.

I always seem to run into a snag when I want to find old Minor Lg teams, rosters or stats.

Would certainly appreciate it if you can list some sites you all use for such information.

Thanks alot!

Fred

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Posted By: Ken W.

This site shows all the Triple-A league teams that the HOFers played on:

http://www.triple-abaseball.com/HallofFame.jsp

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I don't think there is a comprehensive site....you just have to do Google searches and hope for the best.

This site has most of the team rosters for minor league teams in Nebraska going back to 1900. IMO it is one of the best minor league baseball sites on the net period. If someone did this for all 50 states that would be a heck of an accomplishment.

http://marian.creighton.edu/~besser/baseball/second.html

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Posted By: dennis

here's the minor league baseball site.
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/history/top100.jsp

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Posted By: Fred Y

Thanks guys---All good sites, but Dan, you are probably right that there is no all-encompassing site for a history of individual teams.

For instance: I was looking for a roster of all players who played for the 1987 Gastonia Rangers (besides Sosa, Juan Gonzalez & Dean Palmer), or how about a list of players for the 1963 Wellsville Red Sox in the old Class D PONY Lg ( Tony Conigliaro's only Minor Lg team).

I find myself quite often wishing such a site existed for many reasons: Who were Tony's team-mates that yr, who else from that team made the Majors--stuff like that for example!

If anyone else has suggestions or other sites to mention, I'm jotting them down!!

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Hmmm....I just sold two 1964 and 1966 Pittsfield Red Sox programs that had Billy Conigliaro in it. The only other players on that 64 team that I recognized as major leaguers were George Scott and Reggie Smith...the 66 team had Sparky Lyle. I bet some of those guys were on that class D squad the year before, but I've already got the programs packed up and ready to ship.

edited to add a pic of the 66 program that has the team roster right on the front:

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Posted By: Fred Y

Hey Dan--What a coincidence w/ that program!

I'm almost certain George Scott was on that '63 Wellsville team w/ Tony C---and that guy in the back row--pitcher John Thibdeau??

I know him---He married my sister's best friend from Wellsville back then and is still happily married to her & living in CT I believe!

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Small world....I had six programs from Pittsfield on the BST for about a week and sold one of them. Then today some guy that's making a documentary of the ball field in Pittsfield bought the rest of them. He's already interviewed Bill Lee, Jim Bouton and he's talking with Mark Grace and Bill Murray (evidently Murray owned one of the Cubs minor league teams in Pittsfield). This guys father and brother both played baseball for Pittsfield. If not for the timing I could have gotten you that roster out of the 1964 program.

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Posted By: Tom Hufford

Its not online, but a fellow names Pat Doyle, in the Kansas City area, has compiled a "Professional Baseball Player Database" and sells it through his company Old-Time Data, Inc. You can purchase it online, but to avoid any problems or conflicts, I'll not give the link here. You can easily find it with a Google search, however.

The database comes on a CD, and lists player data from 1922-2004 (it may have been updated by now, but I just have the one that goes through 2004). You can search by player name, to find his full record; by team and year, to get team rosters; by year and league, etc.

A word of warning - the data was taken from old baseball guides, which didn't always list first names in the early years, and didn't always list players in less than 10 games or fewer than 45 IP. But this database is better than anything else thats currently out there.

And a heads-up for SABR members. Hopefully, within the next 6-12 months (maybe sooner!), the Baseball Encyclopedia on the SABR website will add the complete lifetime records of nearly 200,000 professional players (both major and minor league), which will be a tremendous asset (and represents an incredible amount of work on the part of SABR's minor league committee members).

Tom Hufford

By the way, the 1987 Gastonia (South Atlantic League) team produced quite a number of future major leaguers, for a team that low in the minors. In addition to Juan Gonzalez, Sammy Sosa, and Dean Palmer, the team included Bill Haselman, Wilson Alvarez, Roger Pavlik, Rey Sanchez, Terry Mathews, Bob Malloy, and Wayne Rosenthal. An 11th member of the team, Darrin Garner, finally made it to the majors late in 2006 when he was added to the Seattle Mariners' coaching staff.

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Posted By: RC

I actually acquired the bulk of my vintage cards from the son of a gentleman who played minor league baseball in Tennessee in the 30's. My Goudey's, Diamond Stars, and Wide Pens belonged to this gentleman. His name was Ernie Loy. He played in the lower levels of the minors. I plan to check some of the above sites for info. An earlier google search was futile.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I would appreciate it.

I may not have much access to a computer for a while but will check in when I can.

RC

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Posted By: Fred Y

Nice info, Tom--Keep us updated on that SABR project.

Dan--Thanks for your replies! It IS a small world sometimes!

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Posted By: Joe Pelaez

If you haven't, give this a shot.

http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?invocationType=topsearchbox.search&query=1987+GASTONIA+RANGERS

Hope it helps.
Joe