Myron "Jack" Smith, Jr., Tusculum College library director, recently completed the second edition of "The Baseball Bibliography", a guide to the literature of the American national pastime as demonstrated in every baseball book and articles in 1,712 different journals available since 1840.

The work, three years in preparation and including 57,000 entries, is two-thirds larger than the first edition released in 1986, and is the largest reference guide to writings on a single sport ever published. The citations, in 10 languages, cover all aspects of the game as played in the U.S., in Japan, Canada, Latin America, and other international venues, including the Olympics.

Baseball at the amateur, youth, high school, collegiate, and professional levels is reviewed, as are a variety of sub-topics such as baseball management, financing, marketing, gambling, fiction and poetry, minority concerns, drugs and medicine, broadcasting, and religion.

Works on stadiums, amateur and professional teams, including Little League, the minors and major leagues are referenced, along with works on officiating, coaching, and the instructional points of pitching, fielding, and hitting. In addition to collective biography, individual biographical profiles (and accompanying citations) are offered for 3,900 people associated with baseball, including players such as Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds, presidents and politicians such as Ronald Reagan and Eugene McCarthy, actors such as Kevin Costner, and literary figures such as Ring Lardner and Mark Twain.

Written in cooperation with the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY, the book includes a foreword by John Kuenster, the dean of American sports magazine publishers and editor of Baseball Digest.

The book's cover color photo, provided by Lynsi House, depicts a 2004 Pioneer Park game between the Greeneville Astros and the Pulaski Blue Jays, while the frontispiece photo reproduces an autographed glossy given to the author a decade ago by Joe DiMaggio.

Smith's work will be available from McFarland & Co., Inc., of Jefferson, N.C. in time for the 2005 World Series. Smith's next scheduled project is a narrative history of the logistical struggle between North and South on the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers during the Civil War.

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