About Biographical Information

We have made every effort to make this information as accurate as possible and as up to date as possible. We have date of death information up to the 1998 season and will be working from there forward to bring our database up to date. Currently, we are probably missing some Necrology data from 1999-2002, but after that date, the data is fairly up-to-date.

Much of the data is due to the volunteers at SABR.org specifically the Biographical Committee, ably headed by Bill Carle. We're members of SABR and you should be too.

The SABR biographical committee routinely puts out updates for new information (or even new ballplayers) found. This can include updated birth, name and death information.

The SABR Collegiate committee maintains the database of schools attended by players.

Tom Ruane of retrosheet produced the original transaction database.

Arnie Braunstein (another SABR member) contributed information on related players.

Height and Weight Information

Weight and to a lesser degree height can change throughout a player's career. We do not have the means to track a player's weight throughout his career and therefore must make choices in how the data is presented. Starting in 2012 or so, we began updating weights to match those provided by Major League Baseball. This means that current and recently retired players should have either their weight at time of retirement or their current weight. For players who retired prior to then, we rely on SABR's biographical committee which typically uses the weight reported at the start of the player's career. This leads to some odd cases. Barry Bonds is listed at 185, but Bartolo Colon is listed at 285. Bonds did at one time weight that while playing, so that number is no less accurate than listing 235.

One should also keep in mind that you should not have great confidence in the weights here or elsewhere. We have not been able to get any information on how this information is produced, so they may just be estimates from team PR rather than actual weights generated by a scale.