Help writing this query (joining three tables)

[JohnJSal]

Hi everyone. I'm fairly comfortable with the basics of MySQL, but I'm a little stumped on how to join three tables. First off, let me explain the table structures (from a baseball database):

Master | playerID, nameFirst, nameLast
Schools | schoolID, schoolName
SchoolsPlayers | playerID, schoolID

So the first name in each row is the table name (Master, etc.) and the following names are entries in that table. What I'd like to do is write  a query that will display a player's name and the school he went to. This is what I've come up with so far, but I don't know if it works yet because my script isn't working properly (a separate issue).

select Master.nameFirst, Master.nameLast, Schools.schoolName
from Master, Schools, SchoolsPlayers
where Master.playerID = SchoolsPlayers.playerID and Schools.schoolID = SchoolsPlayers.schoolID

I did a little searching and came across the use of a left or right join as another way to work with more than two tables, but I've never used that before, so I don't know if it's necessary or how it works. It seems like a join is what I need, which the above is not, and I'd like to learn how to write one that uses three (or more) tables. (I can handle two!)

Thanks!
John

Quick note: This does work, but is it better to use joins in a case like this?

[fenway]

If you know how to do it with 2, you can do it with N -- but try rewriting it in proper JOIN syntax, and the ON clauses will make life simpler for you.