Bob Broeg St. Louis Chapter meeting recap – 4/20/2015
Seventeen members and guests of the Bob Broeg St. Louis Chapter gathered at The Original Crusoe’s Restaurant in South St. Louis on Monday, April 20, 2015.
Chapter president Brian Flaspohler called the meeting to order.
The date for the Jim Rygelski Research Conference has been set for August 22, however the venue has not been fully determined yet.
Kris Lokemoen presented a book review on “The Closer: My Story”, by Mariano Rivera with Wayne Coffey.
Allison Levin, who recently presented at the 2015 SABR Analytics Conference, gave a research presentation on “A Failing Relationship: An Examination of the Media Coverage of Baseball From 1994 to Present”. She spoke mainly on the differences in how the Mark McGwire Andros situation in 1998 and the Ryan Braun link to Biogenesis and his subsequent suspension were handled by their individual ballclubs. She also spoke briefly, of the spikes on Twitter, over the obstruction call in game 3 of the 2013 World Series and Madison Bumgarner initially being erroneously credited with the win in game 7 of last year’s World Series.
Items noted in ‘Today in Baseball History’ were the opening of Fenway Park in 1912, the Chicago Cubs playing their first game at Weeghman Park (eventually Wrigley Field) in 1916, the major league debut of Ted Williams in 1939, the 1982 Atlanta Braves starting the season with 12 straight wins, which reached 13 the following day, and the 1988 Baltimore Orioles who fell to 0-14 on this date, eventually falling to 0-21 before winning their first game of the season.
John Schoon shared some anecdotes from the 2012 book “Sparky and Me” by Dan Ewald.
Bob Tiemann’s trivia topic this month was Cardinals Home Openers. Jim Leefers was the winner with a perfect score of 21 and received a ticket to an upcoming Cardinals game.
The next chapter meeting will be Tuesday, May 19th at Crusoe’s.
— Jim Leefers, Secretary