NAME:  roster2008.txt
TYPE:  Population  
SIZE:  1384 observations on  7 variables

DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT:
Play by play data for all plays for all games during the 2008 Major
League Baseball season is contained in the file "playbyplay2008.txt".  This datafile contains 
information about the players in the 2008 season.

SOURCE:
The Retrosheet organization at www.retrosheet.org/game.htm.

FORMATS:
The roster dataset is available as a text file roster.txt" 
Tab characters are used to separate variables in the text file.

READING INTO R:
The roster.txt text file can be read into R by the command
roster=read.delim("http://bayes.bgsu.edu/baseball/roster2008.txt")

VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS:
Each row represents information about a particular player.

abbrev		abbreviation code for player (used in play by play data)
last.name 		last name of player
first.name 	first name of player
bats    		side that the player bats (either R, L, or B)
throws		side that the player throws (either R or L)
team    		team abbreviation for player   
position		primary fielding position of player

Missing values are denoted with NA.

PEDAGOGICAL NOTES:
This dataset is used together with the play by play dataset playbyplay2008.txt.  Player 
abbreviations are used in the play by play dataset and the roster dataset can be used to match 
full names with these abbreviations.  

REFERENCES:
Albert, Jim, Baseball Data at Season, Play-by-Play, and Pitch-by-Pitch Levels

SUBMITTED BY:
Jim Albert
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH  43403
albert@bgnet.bgsu.edu