From A (Anderson, Kelvin) to Z (Zubedi, Farwan), it’s all there.

In between, there are all the players with colourful nicknames such as Thumper, Steaky, Sugarfoot, Rattler, Porky, Granny and Ham Hands.

The wins and losses, the championships and the heartbreak, the touchdown passes, the field goals, the interceptions and the sacks are all included, too.

All told, there are 274 pages covering 70 years of professional football in Calgary in a book called Stampeders . . . The Years of the Horse. The amazing publication, which will be officially launched and available for sale at Fanfest on May 30 at McMahon Stadium, is a labour of love — heavy emphasis on both “labour” and “love” — for author Daryl Slade.

“I’d say since I started in January of last year, which is 16 months, I’m estimating I’ve spent between 1,200 and 1,500 hours working on the book,” said Slade.

“A lot of the time involved sitting at the public library, the Herald, the university library, going through microfilm and recording every statistic and every roster player back from 1936 (when the Bronks, the Stampeders’ professional predecessors, joined the WIFU) to 1963, when stats and rosters started to be more complete. There was so much information in there that, to me, had been lost. The history of the team, the first 25 or 30 years, was basically on microfilm.

“From ’36 to ’49, the Bronks and the early years of the Stampeders, there were no stats at all. Nothing. You had to find all that in the papers. It was almost like a kid opening up a whole box of bubble-gum cards. Every article you look at, there’s more information. It was so interesting. At the start of this, I thought I knew a lot about the team history but compared to now, I knew nothing a year-and-a-half ago.”

By pouring through every line of newspaper accounts from publications in Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Regina, Slade was able to build a statistical database for years that no official records exist. The original intent was to come up with a few leaders in each major category but instead he ended up accounting for almost every rushing yard, punt and interception.

A mammoth undertaking to be sure, but Slade was well suited to tackle the task.

“I’ve been writing for more than 30 years for the Herald,” he said, “I’ve been doing statistics for more than 30 years for junior, university and CFL and I have done some design for things like yearbooks for junior football.”

Slade is also armed with the historian’s hunger for unearthing and preserving information.

“You’re sitting there in the library,” he said, “and you’re looking at microfilm until your eyes get buggy and you’ve got another eight or 10 months before your deadline to get the project done. But you’re thinking to yourself that you can’t wait until this thing is done because I’m confident this project is worthwhile. Bringing back this history is important. Yeah, there were times when it was frustrating and I didn’t know if I should quit, but I never did seriously consider quitting.

“I’ve added it all up. If you count each category such as rushing with carries, yards, average, longest gain and touchdowns as five categories, there are over 60,000 stats in the book. There are around 3,000 roster names with the number, position and games played.”

In addition to all those numbers, there are more than 800 pictures and graphics including some terrific vintage photos and reproductions of the covers of rare game programs, magazines and other publications.

“The photos are what may make it more interesting to the public,” remarked Slade, “because a book with just statistics and names won’t sell.”

Along the way, there was joy in discovery for the author.

“In doing the research, I realized that Harvey Wylie ran a kickoff back for a touchdown five consecutive years,” he said. “I just found that out in going through the stats and I thought, ‘Wow, this is really interesting.’ I told some of the players from his time in the ’50s and ’60s and they said, ‘Oh yeah, we knew that.’ But as far as the public goes, that’s a significant fact that’s never been known. These returns were all around 100 yards and nobody’s ever come close to doing that again.

“There were a lot of things where it just didn’t add up. For example, the completions by the quarterback and the receptions by all the receivers didn’t add up in 1971. We were out by two completions on Jerry Keeling’s (stats). We finally found the scoresheet at the league office buried in some basement files and discovered that somebody had recorded it wrong, so we corrected those.

“Even the score of the 1945 Western final was wrong, which we’ve now corrected. The satisfaction of correcting something that has been recorded wrong for more than 60 years was great.”

One achievement gives Slade particular satisfaction.

“I think the thing that is most important is that there never were statistics for the ’48 and ’49 Grey Cup games, which featured two of Calgary’s greatest teams ever,” he said. “In contact with other sources — I found somebody in Ontario who had compiled them through the Toronto Telegram. Virtually every play was recorded in those stories from those two years. I took that and took what I found in the Herald and the Albertan . . . and I was able to come up with what I believe are complete statistics from the ’48 and ’49 Grey Cup games.”

The finished product is a must for old-time fans wishing to stroll down Memory Lane or for any Stamps fan who wants to learn more about the club’s past.

“You have to believe in a project,” he said, “and I believe this was worth a little more than a year of my life. It’s dedicated to all the players and coaches and staff and fans. That’s really who it belongs to.

“I certainly didn’t do it just for myself,” he added with a chuckle, “or else I would have quit a long time ago.”

“Stampeders . . . The Years of the Horse” costs $20 and is being sold at the Stamps Store at McMahon Stadium. Copies are also available at The Right Stuff sports cards and collectibles store on 16th Avenue and Nick’s Steakhouse & Pizza on Crowchild Trail North.