Game books update

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JeffreyMiller
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Re: Game books update

Post by JeffreyMiller »

Rupert Patrick wrote:It looks like my suggestion to the Redskins about putting their archives online has reached the right people. I followed up with them last week and they said they are tentatively planning to go ahead with it in the following off-season.

After suggesting the same to the Packers, it looks like the Packers are now also considering digitizing their archives and putting them online.

The Colts are in the process of digitizing their entire archives (game books, flip cards, media guides, press releases, coaches film, etc.) as we speak and the goal is to put it ALL online. Their special projects guy actually wanted to talk to me about what he was doing. I mostly listened and just asked questions about what the extent of what was in the Colts archives. He wanted my input and I told him I really wasn't in a position to give input other than to say once the documents are digitized, please continue to take proper care of them.

It took three months and emails to three different people in the Falcons PR department before I got a response. I was told there will be no game books from the Falcons for the foreseeable future. They are in the process of moving their historical items to another site and their game books are in storage and they never got around to digitizing their game books. They didn't give an ETA for when this would be completed.

Like the Falcons, it took three months and emails to three different people in the Giants PR department before I got the right person. I got a couple game books from the Giants.

I finally heard back from the Panthers and got the two game books I needed from them. I now have all of their game books.

Still no response from the Bears or Eagles. Tried to contact the Cowboys, Raiders and Seahawks, never heard back. Had a bad experience trying to get game books from the Jets.

I started going thru the game books from 1960 forward, opening up each game book and making sure all four (or five) quarters were there and they were all readable. In some cases if I had two different game books for the game I was able to use the Ilovepdf.com site to cobble the two game books into a single decent game book. I also fixed the game books, flipping the pages so they are all in the right direction. If I only had one game book for the game and there was a missing page or an unreadable page(s), I flagged the game book as an upgrade. Last night I finished going thru 1992, which was the first season I found where I had all the game books and no upgrades.

From 1960-92, after going thru a total of 6.427 game books, I found a total of 302 game books for which we need upgrades. Of those 302, there are 22 for which we already have the game books from both teams for a particular game and neither is either 100 percent complete or readable. (One of these 22 game books, by the way, is the 11/18/85 Giants-Redskins MNF game when Theismann broke his leg; I got game books from the Giants and Redskins and both game books were identical and they had legibility issues) It is hoped that possibly the Pro Football Hall of Fame has a decent copy of these game books.

I am going to need some serious help deciphering some hand-written 1949 Lions game books. There are four of them for the 10/8 (at Pittsburgh), 10/23 (at Chi. Cardinals), 11/13 (at Chi. Bears), and 11/20 (at NY Giants) games, and ideally I think at least two people should be deciphering these independently to ensure they both reach the same conclusions on their own. I think as historians we have a responsibility to try to decipher these hand-written documents into a general play-by-play form as many of us are authorities on the players of this era. These game books should be being put online shortly, but if you wanted to get a look at them now, PM me with your email address and I'll send them to you. The handwriting is hard to make out on these and unfortunately I don't think we have any Pharmacists among the PFRA membership, but if you're familiar with the players of the era, you might be able to assist with this.

We have the number of game books we need from 1960-2018 down from 961 last month to 872.
Great work, Rupert! Thanks for your efforts.
"Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football."
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

My previous post was long enough as it was, but I meant to add a page of one of these hand-written 1949 Lions game books just to demonstrate what we're up against. Each of these four game books is about 7 or 8 pages of what you see below, and I want to convert these into a more standardized play-by-play form that is easily readable:

Image
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RRMarshall
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Re: Game books update

Post by RRMarshall »

Sorry if I missed this in a previous thread but is their any information on game books for the Cowboys or Patriots? It they are online I couldn't find them.
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

RRMarshall wrote:Sorry if I missed this in a previous thread but is their any information on game books for the Cowboys or Patriots? It they are online I couldn't find them.
http://media.dallascowboys.com/

The Patriots game books 1960-02 are available in Members Only. They do have 2008-18 game books on their site:

https://media.patriots.com/public/index ... docs&pc=13
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

I just noticed the Vikings are putting game books up on their website:

https://vikings.1rmg.com/gamebooks/

It's just a few right now but it's a start.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

I don't know if it this link has ever been posted here before, but all of the Seahawks game books and flip cards archives are available here:

https://www.seahawksmedia.com/seasonarchive/1978/

And just use the drop down menu for the year.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

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The number of missing game books from 1960-2018 is now down to 837 (12,304 of 13,455 regular and postseason games), and we have additional 315 game books where the play-by-play is either not entirely complete or not entirely readable; I am attempting to contact both of the teams involved in order to get the game book from their archives to try to get a complete copy. In these cases I am looking for upgrades. In addition, there are 22 game books where I have contacted both teams and in both cases, could not get a complete game book from either of them or got the same incomplete game book from both of them. I'm not sure how to proceed with these, perhaps see if the Hall of Fame might have a complete game book, or if it is a recent game from the 80's or later, maybe I have a copy of this game or can get one and reconstruct an unofficial play-by-play for what is missing. I did review all the game books from 1960 thru 2003; I stopped after 2003 when it became apparent the NFL was doing a very good job of quality control with regard to their game books as I went four years with zero mistakes in the game books.

I finally heard back from the Bucs, and got the game books I needed. I now have all their game books but five of them are are incomplete (upgrades) that they could not help me with.

I also heard back from the Jags concerning one game book I needed from an 11/19/1995 game against Tampa Bay that didn't have fourth quarter play-by-play, but the game books I got from both the Jags and Bucs didn't have it eiher. If anybody should happen to have that game on video, please PM me.

I also finally had success with the Raiders. It seems my email got to their head PR guy who was a former PFRA member and when I explained our online game book library project, he thought it was a great idea and said the Raiders would cooperate in any way they could. In the next month or two we should have everything from the Raiders archives we need.

We're also down to about 20 or so game books that we need from the Chiefs archives, which we should have in the next month or two.

The Colts have sent out their game books and other archival items (flip cards, press releases, media guides, game films, game day programs, etc.) to have it ALL digitized; they should have everything back late next month and after that they should start putting things up.

The Vikings have a dozen or so game books up on their site but they haven't put any up in a long time. I'll have to find out how that is going.

The Chargers and Saints are somewhat sporadic in getting back with me, and I wish the Bears and Giants would help us with this. I did get a couple game books from the Giants one time several months ago but they never replied back since. The Cardinals, Packers, Vikings, Redskins, Colts, Titans and Raiders have been very helpful.

I'm hoping to put this new database up on the site soon. There is still a lot of work to do with these game books; I'm still finding more game books that need upgraded and others where we have two fair game books that need to be cut and pasted into a good game book. Anybody who is interested in volunteering to help in this effort, let me know.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
TodMaher
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Re: Game books update

Post by TodMaher »

Rupert Patrick wrote: I did review all the game books from 1960 thru 2003; I stopped after 2003 when it became apparent the NFL was doing a very good job of quality control with regard to their game books as I went four years with zero mistakes in the game books.
Well, there shouldn't be anything missing starting in 2000. That is the year the NFL went completely digital with the gamebooks and stated using the current software.

I also finally had success with the Raiders. It seems my email got to their head PR guy who was a former PFRA member and when I explained our online game book library project, he thought it was a great idea and said the Raiders would cooperate in any way they could. In the next month or two we should have everything from the Raiders archives we need.
Not sure what would be missing from the Raiders. Joe Cronin (not the baseball player) and I made several trips to the Raiders years ago and copied all their regular season and playoffs gamebooks. I then scanned them in and gave those files to PFRA. That's what is available on the PFRA website. Maybe we missed something - it's possible.
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Rupert Patrick
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Re: Game books update

Post by Rupert Patrick »

TodMaher wrote:
Rupert Patrick wrote: I did review all the game books from 1960 thru 2003; I stopped after 2003 when it became apparent the NFL was doing a very good job of quality control with regard to their game books as I went four years with zero mistakes in the game books.
Well, there shouldn't be anything missing starting in 2000. That is the year the NFL went completely digital with the gamebooks and stated using the current software.

I also finally had success with the Raiders. It seems my email got to their head PR guy who was a former PFRA member and when I explained our online game book library project, he thought it was a great idea and said the Raiders would cooperate in any way they could. In the next month or two we should have everything from the Raiders archives we need.
Not sure what would be missing from the Raiders. Joe Cronin (not the baseball player) and I made several trips to the Raiders years ago and copied all their regular season and playoffs gamebooks. I then scanned them in and gave those files to PFRA. That's what is available on the PFRA website. Maybe we missed something - it's possible.
I did get from the Raiders a game book for a 10/26/1962 game against the Patriots that was 100 percent readable, and it is not the same one that is in either the 1962 zip file, the 1962 Patriots zip file, or the 1962 Raiders zip file. The game books that are in those three zip files have three different names, but if you open them up, they are all the same exact game book; you can tell because they are all the same size, 974 KB. That game book, if you open it up, it is hard to read and at the start of the fourth quarter, the play-by-play looks like this:

Image

The one I got from the Raiders looks like this:

Image

I also got from the Raiders two game books that were not in the PFRA zip files, one from 11/11/62 against the Houston Texans and another from 10/10/1976 against the Packers.

We've only got five Raiders game books which need an upgrade, meaning they're either not 100 percent complete or 100 percent readable. They are:

9/10/1960 vs Houston - Third quarter play-by-play unreadable in places
11/1/1964 vs San Diego - No third quarter play-by-play
12/10/1967 vs Houston - No play-by-play
9/14/1980 vs San Diego - Very poor quality on second and fourth quarter play-by-play
10/3/1999 vs. Seattle - No play-by-play for second, third and fourth quarters

I feel pretty confident we can get all of those game books complete, either from the Raiders or the Chargers or Titans.

I appreciate the work that everybody did before me in procuring all of those game books on the site that I started with when I began the project, I do understand the amount of sweat and effort that went into it. I had to open each of those game books and review them, finding the best one if there were a couple for the same game, and in some cases cutting and pasting them together, and flagging those that are incomplete.

Since the Raiders understand what I am trying to do here, they are very generously working with me to try to get the best possible quality copies of game books that are available, which a lot of teams are unwilling to do. I realize that a majority of these 22 game books (most are from the 1960's) I will be getting from the Raiders over the next couple months will the same exact ones I already have, but I am not always 100 percent sure which team produced these game books in the first place, such as in the case with the above 1962 Patriots game book.

Another reason I did not presume that these game books came directly from the Raiders archives is because these were not posted online. In the case of the Dolphins, or Patriots game books, I know exactly where all of their game books came from, but these, I did not know for certain where they came from, and I would rather err on the side of caution. And sometimes, it never hurts to ask. I downloaded all the game books at the 49ers website and found there was a game book they did not have on their site for a 9/7/1980 game against the Saints, and I asked them if they had it in their archives. Sure enough, they had it and I got a copy of it.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
TodMaher
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Re: Game books update

Post by TodMaher »

It's always good to have a second pair of eyes to look at these things.

Thank you for all your hard work and effort!
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