Dusty Baker-Sacramento Chapter hot stove dinner recap – 1/18/2018
From SABR member Graham Womack at the Granite Bay Press on January 28, 2018:
Speaking at a dinner Jan. 18 in Granite Bay hosted by the Society for American Baseball Research, Dusty Baker acknowledged the obvious.
The society’s name shortens to SABR. In 1982, analyst Bill James paid tribute to SABR by defining advanced baseball statistics as sabermetrics. So even while many SABR members don’t use sabermetrics, preferring historical research, some people think of stats when they hear SABR.
One of these people might have been Baker, 68, a Granite Bay resident who’s had a consistently successful career as a Major League Baseball manager and was a fine player, too, but has excelled with an old-school approach, seeming not to rely much on sabermetrics.
Baker agreed to speak at the dinner — hosted by SABR’s Sacramento chapter, which renamed itself after Baker in 2016 — at the invitation of his friend and chapter member Clay Sigg after some misgivings.
“Clay asked me to come here tonight. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was coming into,” Baker said.
But a night that might have been awkward proved enchanting, as Baker cast aside inhibitions about his audience, telling stories of his career and taking questions for 45 minutes.
Read the full article here: http://www.thepresstribune.com/article/1/24/18/mlb-star%E2%80%99s-dinner-granite-bay