I was once addicted to the Baseball Encyclopedia, but Total Baseball is even better. As with the former, Total Baseball provides the complete annual and career pitching and batting statistics of every man that ever played in a major league contest; from ancients like Cap Anson and the Delahanty brothers, to stars like Babe Ruth, DiMaggio and Aaron, to great no-names like Yam Yaryan, midget Eddie Gaedel, and Archibald "Moonlight" Graham of the 1905 NY Giants (and the movie "Field of Dreams"). But Total Baseball goes much further. First, it presents a lot of sabermetrics, the science of baseball stats developed by guru's like Bill James and Rod Thorn. Thus we get a host of scientific statistics like on-base percentages and OPS (on-base plus slugging). There are also seasonal attendance figures, post-season play, plus the starting lineups of every big league squad from the Cleveland Spiders of the late 1800's, to the 1904 New York Highlanders (Yankees), 1922 St. Louis Browns, 2003 Pittsburgh Pirates, etc. Then there are the all-time records, like most doubles in a career (Tris Speaker, 792) and a season (Earl Webb, 67), most strikeouts (Nolan Ryan, 5714 career, 383 season), etc. At 2,500 pages this is a rather massive book; you'll probably end up placing it on a table and pulling up a chair to read it (they probably should have divided it into two volumes). Still, this is an excellent reference and great reading for everybody from casual fans and to hardcore baseball addicts.
I was sorry to see that Total Baseball has apparently been discontinued, although increasingly such information is available on the internet. Still, this large and wonderful book is a treasure.