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 word: "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...