Ernest J. Lanigan was the nephew of Sporting News founder Al Spink and one of three men in his immediate family to gain acclaim as a newspaperman. As sports editor for the New York Press and official scorer for a handful of World Series, he was the premier statistician of his day.

Lanigan compiled the first baseball encyclopedia in 1922, and it is reprinted here with each of its twelve annual supplements. As the original publisher advertised on the book's title page, it "[c]omprises a review of Professional Baseball, the history of all Major League Clubs, playing records and unique events, the batting, pitching and base running champions, World's Series' statistics and a carefully arranged alphabetical list of the records of more than 3500 Major League ball players, a feature never before attempted in print."