Peter C. Bjarkman

The New York Mets Encyclopedia (Second Edition, Sports Publishing LLC, 2003) is fully updated and provides the exciting story of modern-era baseball's most popular expansion-age franchise, with coverage through the 2002 season. From those lovable losers of 1962 and 1963, to the Miracle Mets of 1969 and 1973, and on to the year-in and year-out contenders of the 1980s and 1990s, the Mets have written some of the most exciting pages in baseball history. This volume combines detailed narrative history with archival photographs, statistics, and portraits of the team's most memorable characters throughout four decades of ball club annals.

Table of Contents
Introduction: The Miracle Mets
Chapter 1 - Summers of Endless Diasappointment: Mets Struggles at the Dawn of the New Century
Chapter 2 - Concise History of the New York Mets
Chapter 3 - The Great, the Memorable, and the Coloful: profiles of 1000 Unforgettable Mets Players
Chapter 4 - Unforgettable Moments in Mets History
Chapter 5 - A Dozen of the Mets' Most Memorable Seasons
Chapter 6 - Postseason Heroics
Chapter 7 - The Mets Managers
Chapter 8 - Legendary Front Office Personalities and memorable Broadcast Voices
Chapter 9 - Mets at the Millennium
Chapter 10 - The 2000 Subway Series Season
Chapter 11 - Mets by the Numbers: New Yoprk Mets Statistical History

Encyclopedia of Major League Team Histories (2 Volumes)

In his valuable 1993 survey of baseball literature ("Not Quite Ready for Prime Time: Baseball History, 1983-1993" in: Journal of Sports History 21:2), Professor Larry Gerlach comments that "the best historical assessments of most franchises are the essays in Peter C. Bjarkman's Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball Team Histories."

American League (Volume 2)
Introduction: Historical Perspectives on the Junior Circuit by Peter C. Bjarkman
Boston Red Sox: Their Foot Shall Slide...Baseball's Most Potent Myth by Frederick Ivor-Campbell
Chicago White Sox: Second Class in the Second City by Richard C. Lindberg
Cleveland Indians: Recent Wahoo Woes Overshadow Cleveland's Baseball Tradition by Morris A. Eckhouse
Detroit Tigers: The Cornerstone of Detroit Baseball is Stability by Morris A. Eckhouse
Kansas City Royals: Building a Champion from Scratch in America's Heartland by Bill Carle
Los Angeles Angels-California Angels: A Cowboy's Search for Another Champion by Richard E. Beverage
New York Yankees: Pride, Tradition, and a Bit of Controversy by Marty Appel
Philadelphia Athletics-Kansas City Athletics-Oakland A's: Three Families and Three Baseball Epochs by Norman L. Macht
St. Louis Browns-Baltimore Orioles: One of the Very Worst, and One of the Very Best by Bill Felber
Seattle Mariners: Waiting for a Winner in Baseball's Forgotten City by James O'Donnell
Seattle Pilots-Milwaukee Brewers: The Bombers, The Bangers, and The Burners by
Toronto Blue Jays: Okay, Blue Jays! From Worst to First in a Decade by Peter C. Bjarkman
Washinton Senators-Minnesota Twins: Expansion-Era Baseball Comes to the American League by Peter C. Bjarkman
Washington Senators-Texas Rangers: There Are No Dragons in Baseball, Only Shortstops by Peter C. Bjarkman

National League (Volume 1)
Introduction: Breaking Traditions in the Senior Circuit by Peter C. Bjarkman
Boston Braves-Milwaukee Braves-Atlanta Braves: More Woes Than Wahoos for Baseball's Wanderers by Morris Eckhouse
Brooklyn Dodgers-LA Dodgers: From Daffiness Dodgers to the Boys of Summer and the Myth of America's Team by Peter C. Bjarkman
Chicago Cubs: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi by Art Ahrens
Cincinnati Reds: Cincinnati's Hometown Games, from the Red Stockings to the Big Red Machine by Peter C. Bjarkman
Houston Colt .45s-Houston Astros: From Showbiz to Serious Baseball Business by John M. Carroll
Montreal Expos: Bizarre New Diamond Traditions North of the Border by Peter C. Bjarkman
New York Giants-San Francisco Giants: A Tale of Two Cities by Fred Stein
New York Mets: From Throneberry to Strawberry: Baseball's Most Successful Expansion Franchise by Pete Cava
Philadelphia Phillies: Swooning in the Shadow of the Miracle Whiz Kids by Peter C. Bjarkman
Pittsburgh Pirates: The Art of the Comeback by Paul D. Adomites
San Diego Padres: The Saga of Big Mac and Trader Jack by David L. Porter
St. Louis Cardinals: Baseball's Perennial Gas House Gang by Stan W. Carlson
Colorado Rockies: Rocky Mountain High, For Awhile by Peter C. Bjarkman
Florida Marlins: Baseball's Big Splash in the Caribbean by Peter C. Bjarkman

The Brooklyn Dodgers. New York and Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1992.
It seems as though almost everyone who first became adicted to baseball in its more innocent days of real grass and sunshine still loves the Dodgers from Brooklyn. From the earliest seasons of the hapless Daffiness Dodgers in the 1930s, through the trailblazing integration experiment of Rickey and Robinson, on to the glorious reign of the "Boys of Summer" dynasty team of the early 1950s, the Brooklyn Bums hold a special charm for diehard fans everywhere, a magical pull on the heartstrings matched by no other single baseball franchise. Although the Brooklyn club ceased to exist as a team in 1957, and their beloved shrine in Ebbets Field was levelled by urban development more than three decades ago, the ghostly presence of these long-departed Dodgers has only gained strength over the past generation, emerging as a living metaphor for the belief that professional baseball teams are cherished public property. The long-silent Dodgers still live on today as the first and only team ever owned solely by the memories of their devoted fandom.

Baseball's Great Dynasties: The Reds. New York: Gallery Books, 1991.
The Cincinnati Reds are baseball's team of unsurpassed innovation. It was Cincinnati that witnessed such pioneering moments as the first pro team; the first padded glove and double play; the sport's first switch-hitter, doubleheader, and no-hit game; the inauguration of night baseball and televised league games; and the very first all-synthetic playing surface. Blended with this spirit of innovation is an uncompromising sense of baseball tradition. Cincinnati is, after all, the city where pro baseball began with Harry Wright's barnstorming Red Stockings in 1869, and it remains today the traditional home of the annual spring religious rite know as major league baseball's Opening Day. Throughout the past century and a quarter the Queen City has also been home to some of the game's greatest moments and its most colorful players. In fact no two players in baseball's entire history have ever been as unbendingly revered by the adoring hometown fans as have lead-footed yet powerful-hitting catcher Ernie Lombardi with the 1930s pre-war Reds, and incomparable Pete Rose ("Charlie Hustle") of the modern-day Big Red Machine.

Baseball's Great Dynasties: The Dodgers. New York: Gallery Books, 1990.
First came the notorious Daffiness Dodgers of the 1920s and 1930s, bungling big-league pretenders stumbling into memorable traffic jams along the basepaths. Later arose the glorious "Boys of Summer" Dodgers immortalized for all ages of true baseball fans by the nostalgic portraits of author Roger Kahn. More recent seasons have witnessed the efficient and businesslike Los Angeles club of the much maligned Walter O'Malley—transplanted West Coast Dodgers boasting a wholesome new image and asserting relentless domination over National League baseball for three decades. While many present-day ball clubs have dared to commandeer the hollow title of America's Team, no franchise in baseball history has so persistently captured the imagination and the rabid following of so many of the nation's zealous baseball fans.

The Toronto Blue Jays. New York: Gallery Books, 1990 and The Toronto Blue Jays. Toronto: B. Mitchell Publishers, 1990.
Loaded with talented and colorful young players, and blessed with baseball's most lavish pleasure-dome stadium, the Toronto Blue Jays are one of the premier drawing cards of North America's favorite pastime. In 1989 over 3.3 million fans crammed into Toronto's Exhibition Stadium and passed through the portals of the remarkable Toronto SkyDome, establishing the largest home attendance total in the long history of American League baseball. The Blue Jays story that unfolds in these chapters is the exciting saga of a youthful baseball franchise with an already rich and stories history—one stretching back across the past decade and a half, and encompassing some of contemporary baseball's most distinctive heroes and most cherished moments.