Oklahoma Chapter meeting recap – 8/19/2018
SABR’s Oklahoma Chapter held its summer meeting in Tulsa on Sunday, August 19, 2018.
Kevin Johnson conducted an in-depth Q&A session with Garrett Totty, a native Oklahoman who in 2018 played independent minor league baseball with the California City Whiptails of the Pecos League. Mr. Totty described life in the low minors and his experiences playing college baseball in the Oklahoma/Kansas region. He grew up a Tulsa Drillers fan and served as bat boy for that AA club. That experience led to his becoming the Drillers’ bullpen catcher while still in high school. As such, he was able to establish continuing friendships with several players who passed through Tulsa.
Following the Q&A, Kal Zitterkob entertained the group with several anecdotes about early-day Oklahoma minor leaguers. Ken Fischer gave away several books as part of a trivia contest. Howard Johnson closed out the meeting with a presentation using statistics compiled from Retrosheet.com data sets to illustrate the transition of major league baseball from a game largely comprising base runner adventures (“small ball”) to the homerun/strikeout domination of today’s game.
Thanks to Kevin Johnson for organizing the meeting and for supplying us with an entertaining and informative guest.
Our next meeting will probably be in late January 2019, probably in conjunction with the annual SABR Day celebration. Member presentations are hereby solicited and would be greatly appreciated.
— Howard Johnson
oldwx@yahoo.com