Your best bet for starting point when it comes to baseball and football is to start with the year after what is printed on the stat line. If the last year of stats is 1984 then you are probably looking at a 1985 set. Not always a perfect solution, but in the 80s and 90s when they did what barfan discussed, it's sometime easer tha tway than relying on the copyright.
When the sky is coming down
When you feel like you're going to drown
When you know the end is all that you've been looking for
When the pain is too much to bear
When there's no one who will care