When Bill James published his original <I>Historical Baseball Abstract</I> in 1985, he produced an immediate classic, hailed by the <I>Chicago Tribune</I> as the "holy book of baseball." Now, baseball's beloved "Sultan of Stats" <I>(The Boston Globe)</I> is back with a fully revised and updated edition for the new millennium. <P> Like the original, <I>The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract</I> is really several books in one. <B>The Game</B> provides a century's worth of American baseball history, told one decade at a time, with energetic facts and figures about How, Where, and by Whom the game was played. In <B>The Players,</B> you'll find listings of the top 100 players at each position in the major leagues, along with James's signature stats-based ratings method called "Win Shares," a way of quantifying individual performance and calculating the offensive and defensive contributions of catchers, pitchers, infielders, and outfielders. And there's more: the <B>Reference</B> section covers Win Shares for each season and each player, and even offers a Win Share team comparison. A must-have for baseball fans and historians alike, <I>The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract</I> is as essential, entertaining, and enlightening as the sport itself.