SABR 45: ESPN presents “1927: The Diary of Myles Thomas”

At SABR 45 in Chicago, we’re pleased to host a special presentation by SABR member Steve Wulf of ESPN, along with MLB Official Historian John Thorn, and Emmy Award-winning producer Douglas Alden.

“1927: The Diary of Myles Thomas”
10:00-11:00 a.m., Friday, June 26
Grand Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton
 

The 1927 Yankees. Murderers Row. Winners of 110 games in the regular season. Sweepers of the Pirates in the World Series. Babe Ruth hit a record 60 homers, Lou Gehrig drove in a staggering 173 runs and Waite Hoyt won 22 games. Six of the Yankees would go on to the Hall of Fame, and all of them would go down as the greatest baseball team ever assembled.

Starting next spring, ESPN will relive that epic season through a work of historical fiction in the form of a diary of one of the ’27 Yankees, and letters by a Yankee beat writer.

ESPN’s project will explore the largely unexamined nexus of baseball, Jazz and Prohibition: What was it like living in the Jazz Age — a time when money and gin flowed endlessly, and the Babe, Charles Lindbergh, Barbara Stanwyck, Louis Armstrong, and Al Capone ran in the same circles?

Speakers include:

  • SABR member Steve Wulf is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine. In a career that pre-dates the designated hitter, he has also written for Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, the Fort Lauderdale News and the Norwich (New York) Evening Sun. He and his wife, Jane Bachman Wulf, live in Larchmont, New York, where they raised four wonderful pitchers. If you walk a certain way, their home is 2,130 steps away from where Eleanor and Lou Gehrig lived.
  • John Thorn is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball. The longtime SABR member is often visible on TV and the web as a sports authority and commentator: John was also a major on-screen presence in and chief consultant to Ken Burns’ PBS film, Baseball, and is reprising that role for Burns’ Race Man: The Life and Times of Jackie Robinson (PBS, 2016). Along with co-creating Total Baseball with Pete Palmer, John is the co-author of The Hidden Game of Baseball (which established alternative statistics later recognized and adopted as official by Major League Baseball, notably OPS), among other books, and countless articles for national newspapers. Much more about John can be found at ourgame.mlblogs.com.
  • SABR member Douglas Alden is the Myles Thomas project’s creator, head writer, and executive producer. He began his media career as an intern for Dick Schaap at Sport Magazine. Since then he’s been a multiple Emmy Award-winning writer/producer/director, covering both sports and politics at ABC News, ABC Sports, NBC Sports & Olympics and ESPN. Douglas was a founding member of Classic Sports Network (now ESPN Classic), where he oversaw the network’s programing and production, the co-founder of one of the first online video sharing companies (now a part of HP) and a contributing feature writer at Fortune Magazine, writing about media and social trends. Much of his past can been seen, read, and heard at TheAldenCurve.com.

For more information on SABR 45 or to register, visit SABR.org/convention.



Originally published: June 19, 2015. Last Updated: July 27, 2020.