Sabermetrics research began in the middle of the 20th century with the writings of Earnshaw Cook, one of the earliest sabermetricians. Cook's 1964 book "Percentage Baseball" was one of the first of its kind. At first, most organized baseball teams and professionals dismissed Cook's work as meaningless. The idea of a science of baseball statistics began to achieve legitimacy in 1977 when Bill James began releasing "Baseball Abstracts", his annual compendium of baseball data. However, James's ideas were slow to find widespread acceptance.