David Neft
David S. Neft is an American writer and historian who creates sports encyclopedias.
Early career
Neft was born in New York City, received a BA, MBA, and PhD from Columbia University, and worked as chief statistician for the polling company Louis Harris & Associates from 1963 to 1965.Big Mac
In 1965, he was the treasurer and director of research for a company formed by S. Paul Funkhouser, Jr. called Information Concepts, Inc. and headed the first effort to compile a computerized database of baseball statistics. The task took more than three years, as Neft and a team of researchers travelled across the country to fill the gaping holes in baseball's statistical and biographical records. The resulting work was published in 1969 by the Macmillan Publishing Company. Although the official title was The Baseball Encyclopedia, the massive book was generally referred to as "Big Mac". It was a quantum leap from early baseball encyclopedias, with a breadth and depth that far exceeded anything that had come before it.Sports Encyclopedia series
Neft left ICI in 1970, spending the next few years developing dice-based sports games for Sports Illustrated Enterprises. He returned to the sports reference field when he founded Sports Products, Inc. with partner Richard M. Cohen. The company produced a new baseball encyclopedia in 1974 called "The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball". That same year, they published groundbreaking new encyclopedias for football and basketball.The baseball encyclopedia has been updated each spring, with the 27th edition appearing in 2007. Seventeen editions of the football encyclopedia were published. The basketball encyclopedia was published until 1992, a total of five editions.
Beside this line of encyclopedias, Neft edited more than a dozen other sports books.