Cracking Baseball's Cold Cases: Filling in the Facts About 17 Mystery Major Leaguers

by Peter Morris

This book is the result of one man's twenty-year quest to solve some of baseball's most enduring mysteries--the "cold cases" of major leaguers about whom virtually nothing is known. (In many instances, the various baseball encyclopedias list only their names and one other "deceased.") Some of these mysterious players had negligible professional careers and their time on a major league diamond was more the result of good fortune than anything else; others were stars in their day and then vanished. The Biographical Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research is committed to finding them and award-winning researcher Peter Morris tells the story of some of the most remarkable of the searches that resulted, many of which featured twists so surprising no mystery writer could have invented them.

Genres: Baseball

208 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2013

Reviews

[Vincent T. Ciaramella · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book I finished in 2025. As a contributor to the SABR Bio Project, this book was for me. I specialize in late 19th/early 20th century baseball players from Pittsburgh, through I have written a few about players from elsewhere. My favorites are the cup-of-coffee players. I find them beyond fascinating. I was thrilled to see Ren Wylie’s name mentioned. My wife, son, and I wrote a book titled Greats in the Graveyard where we documented anyone who had a hand in Major League Baseball buried in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Wylie was one of the players we documented.

I have to say my favorites in those books were Ed Clark, and the two managers Harvey Watkins and Louis Phelan. Space on my baseball bookshelf is limited and books that don’t make the cut end up being sold. This one is a keeper!