FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) -- In the days before Baseball Reference featured every stat imaginable of the National Pastime, a Fort Wayne man pioneered keeping records of the sport through a company he founded 115 years ago. Old Fort Baseball Co., an apparel company that aims to preserve and promote the history of baseball in Fort Wayne, recently obtained copies of books published by the now-defunct Heilbroner Baseball Bureau. A 1953 edition of the Heilbroner Baseball Bureau's "Blue Book," which contains a record of stats and other baseball information. (Photo provided by Logan Wiening, Old Fort Baseball Co.) Louis Heilbroner, a Fort Wayne native who managed the St. Louis Cardinals for one year in 1900, founded the company in the Summit City in 1909. Heilbroner Baseball Bureau featured an annual "Blue Book" logging everything from player stats to team contact information and stadium addresses. The company is widely considered the be the first commercial statistics service for baseball, and according to an excerpt from the University of Illinois, the publication was treated as "an essential source for information on all things" related to baseball at the time. "These books were truly like almost -- you call them the 'Yellow Pages of Baseball" -- in the early 1900s through the 50s," said Logan Wiening, founder of Old Fort Baseball Co. According to a 1989 book chronicling notable Fort Wayne figures who are buried in Lindenwood Cemetery, Heilbroner even received recognition as the "greatest authority in the world" on baseball statistics by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first commissioner of Major League Baseball. Wiening hopes to use the book to document another piece of Fort Wayne's ties to baseball that is not well-known. "You hit a certain point and if people aren't telling the stories ... they'll kind of start to fade away as the people with firsthand experience kind of move on and pass on," Wiening said. "So, being able to keep telling that story and keep those parts of Fort Wayne history alive ... I think that's -- for me -- the important part of it. I've had to do a lot of digging and research to find that stuff, so knowing how difficult it is and knowing that I can play a part and our company can play a part ... that's kind of what it's all about." He also plans to showcase the book he obtained on the company's social media pages over the next few months to have content available while MLB is in the middle of the offseason.