This Week in SABR: August 9, 2013

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Welcome to “This Week in SABR!” Here’s what we’ve been up to as of August 9, 2013:

Full coverage of SABR 43 in Philadelphia

Couldn’t make it to Philadelphia for SABR 43? Check out complete coverage of our 43rd annual convention in the City of Brotherly Love!

SABR 43 was held last week at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, just blocks from City Hall, Independence Hall, the Reading Terminal Market and many other Philadelphia landmarks.

For more coverage of SABR 43, click on a link below. We’ll post more stories, photos and clips online at SABR.org/convention next week.

Wednesday, July 31

Thursday, August 1

Friday, August 2

Saturday, August 3

Around the Web

For more coverage of SABR 43, visit SABR.org/convention. 

The National Pastime: From Swampoodle to South Philly now available in expanded e-edition

The National Pastime, SABR’s annual convention journal, is now larger than ever — and we’re also making it available as a free e-book for your computer or e-reading device.

The 2013 TNP, From Swampoodle to South Philly, edited by Morris Levin, tells a comprehensive story of baseball in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley — the site of SABR 43. SABR’s Connie Mack Chapter received well over 50 submissions in response to the call for papers, in addition to suggestions for reprints. The full electronic edition, which you can download here in PDF, EPUB (iPad/Nook) or Kindle formats, is over 160,000 words reflecting the strength and scope of the articles received.

You can read articles from the The National Pastime online by clicking on the link below:

http://sabr.org/research/2013-national-pastime

Starting this year, the print edition of the TNP — which does not include the extra articles in the expanded e-edition — is being offered as a souvenir to SABR members attending the annual convention as part of our expanded Publications program led by editor Cecilia Tan. By publishing larger versions of the TNP online and in e-book format, more SABR members will have a chance to have their work published and SABR members will have the opportunity to read more top-level articles every summer.

Since 2009, The National Pastime has served as SABR’s convention-focused publication. Published annually, this research journal provides in-depth articles focused on the respective geographic region where the national convention is taking place in a given year.

For more coverage of SABR 43, visit SABR.org/convention.

SABR 43: Gennaro, Bingham win 2013 research presentation awards

SABR President Vince Gennaro has won the 2013 Doug Pappas Award for the best oral research presentation and Brendan Bingham, a medical research scientist, has won the USA Today Sports Weekly Award for the best poster presentation at SABR 43 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Gennaro, the author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball and a consultant to major league teams, won the Pappas Award for his presentation, “Analyzing Batter Performance Against Pitcher Clusters,” which he delivered Saturday during SABR 43 at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown.

Gennaro also won the Pappas Award in 2008 at SABR 38 in Cleveland for “What Factors Influence Free Agent Salaries?”

The Doug Pappas Award — originally established as the USA Today Sports Weekly Award in 1992 and renamed in 2004 to honor the late baseball researcher — includes a $250 cash prize with a matching amount donated to SABR.

Bingham, of Newtown, Pennsylvania, won the USA Today Sports Weekly Award for his poster, “The Uncertain Relationship Between Stolen Bases And Runs Scored.”

The USA Today Sports Weekly Award — first presented in 1990 as the John W. Cox Award — includes a $125 cash prize with a matching donation to SABR.

Honorable mentions for the oral presentation were:

  • Geri Strecker, “Blurring Color Lines: The “Integrated” Interstate League of 1926”
  • Amy Tetlow Smith and David W. Smith, “Scorecard Advertisements as Social History”

Honorable mentions for the poster presentation were:

  • Heather O’Neill, “Do MLB Hitters Boost Performance in Their Contract Year?”
  • Dobb Mayo and John Weitzel, “The Outfield Sign: Past, Present, Future”

For more coverage of SABR 43, visit SABR.org/convention.

SABR 43: Mike Caragliano wins record 4th SABR Trivia Contest individual championship

One year after his historic double victory in the SABR Trivia Contest in Minneapolis, Mike Caragliano, a radio engineer from Flushing, New York, put his name in the record books once again on Saturday night at SABR 43 in Philadelphia.

Caragliano became the first four-time individual winner in SABR Trivia Contest history after defeating Bill Carle of Lee’s Summit, Missouri — a fellow three-time champion —  in a battle of trivia titans.

Caragliano also won the individual Trivia Contest championship in 2002, 2009 and 2012, tying him with Carle and David Fleitz for most all-time in SABR convention history. Carle won in 2000, 2010 and 2011.

The victory also gave Caragliano sole possession of the No. 1 spot on the all-time leaderboard for most total SABR Trivia Contest victories with nine, breaking a tie with Mark Kanter. Caragliano was a member of winning trivia teams at the SABR conventions in 2001, 2003, 2004, 2011 and 2012.

Caragliano opened up a 19-4 lead over Carle after the first half of the individual final, then made good on a “daily double” wager on a question about Bob Feller: Who lived the longest after being inducted into the Hall of Fame? Feller was inducted in 1962, and died 48 years later in 2010. (Sandy Koufax was inducted 41 years ago in 1972.)

In the team final, a star-studded lineup of Cooperstown’s finest who called themselves The Researchers’ Wing held off the Musial Men to win, 31-21. The Researchers’ Wing consisted of Tom Shieber, a Senior Curator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library; Bill Deane, a former Senior Research Associate at the Hall of Fame Library; Gabriel Schechter, a former Hall of Fame employee who lives in Cherry Valley, New York; and Trent McCotter, an attorney from Washington, D.C.

Deane was part of a winning Trivia team in 2002, while McCotter also won a team title in 2008. This was the first Trivia Contest championship for Shieber and Schechter.

The SABR Trivia Contest was moderated by D. Bruce Brown, co-chair of Horsehide Trivia with T. Scott Brandon and president of the Bob Davids Chapter in Washington/Baltimore. The questions were written and edited by Brown and Brandon, and the contest was proctored by Barb Mantegani with assistance from Mark Topley, David Lippman and Damian Begley. Brandon also assembled the game boards, illustration and animation of the semifinal and final rounds. Thanks also to Gregg Gaylord, Clem Comly, David Matchett and Ken Auerbach for their contributions.

To view a list of previous SABR Trivia Contest winners, click here.

Test your baseball knowledge! Click here to download question and answer keys from all rounds of the SABR 43 Trivia Contest.

For more coverage of SABR 43, visit SABR.org/convention.

The Sporting News donates two special resource collections to SABR

At the SABR 43 Annual Business Meeting on Thursday, August 1, Executive Director Marc Appleman announced that The Sporting News has donated two special collections to SABR:

  • The Sporting News Contract Cards: This 60-box collection consists of 214,000 index cards that The Sporting News maintained on virtually every professional baseball player from the early 1900s through the mid-1990s. The cards contain player biographical data, as well as details of year-by-year contract signings, player trades and assignments.
  • The Leonard Gettelson Baseball Record Collection: This 36-box collection consists of 129,000 index cards with miscellaneous baseball statistical data that was kept by Mr. Gettelson. This material was the basis of several reference books that Mr. Gettelson compiled for The Sporting News between the 1930s and 1977, including The Sporting News Baseball Record Book and The World Series Record Book.

The SABR Board of Directors will determine how best to digitize the collections and make them available to all baseball researchers.

“These collections will be valuable resources for SABR members, as well as the general public, in conducting historial baseball research,” Appleman said.

For more coverage of SABR 43, visit SABR.org/convention.

Join us for Negro Leaguer Ted Page’s grave marker installation ceremony on August 17

The public is invited to a grave marker dedication that will be held on Saturday, August 17 at Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh in honor of Negro Leagues baseball player Theodore Page.

“Terrible Ted” played on 12 teams in the Negro Leagues during his 14-season career. A solid hitter and tough competitor, it has been said that Page “could beat you at the plate, on the bases or in the field.” As one of the fastest, most feared and intense base runners in the Negro Leagues, he played for two of the greatest teams of all time: the 1931 Homestead Grays and the 1932-34 Pittsburgh Crawfords.

After an injury forced his retirement in 1935, he eventually became an owner of Hillview Lanes and later a partner in Meadow Lanes in Pittsburgh. For years, he wrote a bowling column for the Pittsburgh Courier. He later worked as a public relations consultant for the Gulf Oil Corporation. Page was inducted to the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 1977. Retired, he was brutally beaten to death by a handyman in his home, at age 81, in 1984. He was interred at Allegheny Cemetery in an unmarked location — not far from Hall of Famer Josh Gibson’s final resting place in the same cemetery. In 1975, Page and Pedrin “Pete” Zorrilla located Gibson’s unmarked burial plot at Allegheny Cemetery and, with help from Pirates star Willie Stargell and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, purchased a red granite headstone that reads “Josh Gibson, 1911-1947, Legendary Baseball Player.” 

Since 2004, the Negro Leagues Grave Marker Project has worked to identify the graves of Negro Leagues Baseball players, and raise funds to place markers on those discovered unmarked. As a section of the Negro Leagues Committee of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), this marker is the fourth placed in the Pittsburgh area.

Attendees should gather at 10:30 a.m. on August 17 at the Allegheny Cemetery office, 4734 Butler Street in Pittsburgh, and will be directed to Page’s grave by cemetery staff.

Any questions can be directed to project leader Jeremy L. Krock. For more information on the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, visit LarryLester42.com.

To make a tax-deductible donation to help the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project, click here.

L.A. warehouse of baseball memories could be left stranded

From Billy Witz at the New York Times on August 7, on SABR member Gary Cypres’s collection of sports memorabilia:

It is an overwhelming chore to process all that the eyes can see in the brightly lighted, 30,000-square-foot warehouse that is home to the Sports Museum of Los Angeles: thousands of old uniforms, pieces of equipment, trophies, plaques, newspapers, photographs and other artifacts. And not just because there is so much of it, but because it seems so out of place, this Brooklyn Dodgers and Yankees-centric collection being housed across the country from its ancestral home.

But for Gary Cypres, who built most of the collection bit by bit — often bid by bid — over the last 20 years, there is a bigger chore than grasping its size and location: what to do with it all.

Cypres turns 70 in October, and if there is something eternally youthful about collecting sports memorabilia, it has not obscured the realization that he will not be around forever.

And so, rather than one day leaving his wife and five children with the burden of dispersing his collection, Cypres is looking for a good home for it.

“The reality has finally caught up with me,” he said. “There is a realization when you get to my age that you’ve sort of had your fun. But it’s very hard for collectors to sell. It’s like giving up a tangible piece of your life, especially when you have a collection like my Dodger collection. When you take a piece here and a piece there, it destroys the continuity.”

But Cypres may be forced to do just that. The Dodgers are not interested in taking the entire collection, and he plans to see whether someplace in Brooklyn like Barclays Center or the Brooklyn Museum would be interested in a long-term loan akin to those made to museums by private art collectors.

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/sports/baseball/warehouse-of-baseball-memories-could-be-left-stranded.html

In Memoriam: Lew Cady

With his mountain man beard, magnetic gaze and outsize personality, Lew Cady operated at full tilt nearly all his life, pulling family and countless friends along in his wake. He died Aug. 4 at age 76. He was a SABR member since 1979 and active in the Rocky Mountain Chapter.

Lewis Carter Cady was 8 years old when his family moved to Colorado, igniting eclectic interests.

Among his most legendary projects was his journal of Firsts and Lasts, that began with himself (first child born to his parents, 1937), first shot at the Wynkoop Brew Pub’s pool hall (1992), first to drink everything on the Wynkoop tap (2001), first purchase of SPAM ($1 in 1985 at a Safeway on South Colorado Boulevard), first to check out a book from the Denver Public Library’s new flagship (1995), and one of the first four people to drink a beer in every open bar on Colfax on Aug. 11, 1994 .

Beer was important to Cady. He had a craft beer in 50 brew pubs in 50 states, ordered Coors at the National Western Stock Show’s Cowboy Bar, and was livid when the Cowboy Bar added cosmopolitans to the menu.

Cady was a celebrated creative marketing director in Colorado and, for a few years in the 1960s, in New York, a city that matched his relentless drive.

Even there, Cady remained a mountain man. He once persuaded a half-dozen or so of his New York friends to fly to Denver, where everybody bought Levi’s and cowboy boots, and then drove to Central City, where Cady, in 1965, bought a house.

“Lew was not interested in being normal,” said his daughter, Jane Cady. “He was a collector of things. Beer cans. Songs about beer. Baseball trivia — not stats, but interesting, weird baseball trivia. …

Survivors include his wife Leslie Cady of Denver; daughters Jane Cady of Belfast, Maine and Sue Cady of Fairfax, Calif.; a brother, Steve Cady of Kingwood, Texas; and three grandchildren.

A celebration of his life will be held later in Central City.

Read the full obituary here: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23799982/lew-cady-publisher-little-kingdom-come-legendary-creative

— Claire Smith, Denver Post

ICYMI: Highlights from last week’s This Week in SABR

We’ve heard your feedback: Some of you have said you look forward to “This Week in SABR” every Friday, but sometimes there are just too many compelling articles and announcements to read every week. We’re not complaining — hey, keep up the great work! — but we know the feeling. So in an effort to make the length of this newsletter more manageable to read, we’ll summarize some of the repeating/recurring announcements in a special “In Case You Missed It (ICYMI)” section of “This Week in SABR”.

Here are some major headlines from recent weeks that we don’t want you to miss:

All previous editions of This Week in SABR can be found here: http://sabr.org/content/this-week-in-sabr-archives.

Welcome, new members!

We’d like to welcome all of our new SABR members who have joined this week. You can find all Members-Only resources at members.sabr.org and the New Member Handbook can be downloaded here. 

Please give these new members a warm welcome and help them make the most of their membership by giving them the opportunity to get involved in their local chapter or a research committee.

Name Hometown     Name Hometown
John Cairney Ridgeville, ON     Steven Moretti Jr. Cranston, RI
T.E. Cauthorn Marietta, GA     Zachary Moser Antioch, IL
Harlan Chase Waynesboro, VA     Wayne Olmsted Santa Ana, CA
Chris Chrisman Denver, CO     Stuart Oxenhorn Three Bridges, NJ
Paul Doyle Scarsdale, NY     Jim Roberts Brandon, MS
Jim Gallagher Somerville, MA     Louis Rodriguez Williamstown, NJ
Alex Griffel Great Neck, NY     Marc Ross Philadelphia, PA
Matthew Haycook Columbus, OH     Randall Smith Ripley, OH
J.P. Hoornstra Los Angeles, CA     Aidan Suiter Salem, NJ
Aviva Kempner Washington, DC     William Tierney Medina, NY
Brian Marshall Barrie, ON     David Yoken Concord, MA
Daryl McPherson Aiken, SC        

 

Research committee newsletters

Here are the new SABR research committee newsletters published this week:

  • Project Protoball: August 2013 
  • Statistical Analysis Committee: We’d like to give a warm welcome to Phil Birnbaum, who was approved by SABR’s Board of Directors last week as the new chair for the Statistical Analysis Committee. Phil is the longtime editor of “By The Numbers,” the committee’s acclaimed periodical newsletter, and the author of SABR’s “A Guide to Sabermetric Research,” which can be found at SABR.org/sabermetrics. He has made several presentations at past SABR conventions and can be found writing on various topics at his blog, Sabermetric Research.

Find all SABR research committee newsletters at SABR.org/research.

Chapter meeting news

Here are the new chapter meeting recaps published this week:

Visit SABR.org/chapters for more information on SABR regional chapters.

SABR Events Calendar

Here is a list of upcoming SABR events:

All SABR meetings and events are open to the public. Feel free to bring a baseball-loving friend … and make many new ones! Check out the SABR Events Calendar at SABR.org/events.

Around the Web

Here are some recent articles published by and about SABR members:

Read these articles and more at SABR.org/latest.

This Week in SABR is compiled by Jacob Pomrenke, and sent out to all SABR members on Fridays. All previous editions of This Week in SABR can be found here: http://sabr.org/content/this-week-in-sabr-archives. If you would like us to include an upcoming event, article or any other information in “This Week in SABR”, e-mail jpomrenke@sabr.org.

Find exclusive Members’ Only resources and information here: http://members.sabr.org

Did you know you can renew your membership at any time? 1- and 3-year SABR memberships are available by clicking “Renew” at http://members.sabr.org. Please also consider a donation to SABR to support baseball research at SABR.org/donate.

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Replying to this e-mail goes to an undeliverable address. If you would like to contact the SABR office, please visit: http://sabr.org/about/contact-sabr


Originally published: August 9, 2013. Last Updated: April 3, 2020.

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