Kevin Cook’s ‘Electric October’ wins 2018 SABR Ron Gabriel Award

SABR is pleased to announce that Kevin Cook’s Electric October: Seven World Series Games, Six Lives, Five Minutes of Fame That Lasted Forever, published by Henry Holt & Co., has been selected as the winner of the Ron Gabriel Award in 2018.

Cook is a former senior editor at Sports Illustrated and the author of Tommy’s Honor, Titanic Thompson, Kitty Genovese, and The Dad Report: Fathers, Sons and Baseball Families. He will be honored at the SABR 48 convention, June 20-24, 2018, in Pittsburgh.

The Ron Gabriel Award annually honors the author(s) of the best research, published or unpublished, on the subject of the Brooklyn Dodgers completed during the preceding calendar year. Eligible works include but are not limited to magazine and journal articles, previously unpublished chapters or articles in anthologies or other books with multiple authors, unpublished research papers, written versions of oral presentations, books, databases and websites.

Honorable mention was given to the following:

  • Paul Dickson, Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son (Bloomsbury)
  • Lyle Spatz, Hugh Casey: The Triumphs and Tragedies of a Brooklyn Dodger (Rowman & Littlefield)
  • Rob Edelman, “Gladys Goodding, Ebbets Field Organ Queen,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2017

The award subcommittee included: Gary Sarnoff (chair), Rich Applegate, Thomas Bradley, Gary Cieradkowski, Ben Klein, Andy McCue, and John McMurray.

Ron Gabriel (1941-2009), a native of Brooklyn, New York, and longtime resident of Bethesda, Maryland, was a former Vice President of SABR and instrumental in establishing the Bob Davids Chapter, which serves the Washington-Baltimore region. He was founder and president of the Brooklyn Dodger Fan Club, and a charter elected member of the Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Fame. Gabriel, who earned his Ph.D. in Human Resource Management from American University, was a retired U.S. Government executive, having served with the Postal Service Management Institute, the Department of Defense and the General Services Administration.

For a list of past award winners, click here.

 



Originally published: March 19, 2018. Last Updated: March 19, 2018.