Andy McCue receives 2015 SABR Seymour Medal at NINE Conference banquet
2015 Seymour Medal winner Andy McCue, author of Mover & Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball’s Westward Expansion, accepted his award at the banquet of the 22nd annual NINE Spring Training Conference on Saturday, March 14, 2015 in Tempe, Arizona.
“It’s an honor to stand up here because I can see so many previous winners in the audience,” said McCue, a past SABR President, who noted the attendance of Rob Fitts (2013), Lee Lowenfish (2008), David Block (2006), Charles Alexander (2003), and Lyle Spatz (2011) — who, along with McCue, is the only other winner of both the Seymour Medal and the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor.
The Seymour Medal honors the best book of baseball history or biography published during the preceding calendar year. McCue’s Mover & Shaker was published by the University of Nebraska Press.
- Announcement: Walter O’Malley biography wins 2015 Seymour Medal
- Seymour Medal winners: To view a list of past Seymour Medal winners, click here
The Seymour Medal, named in honor of Dr. Harold Seymour and Mrs. Dorothy (Seymour) Mills, was first awarded by SABR in 1996.
“I’d like to thank Dorothy twice,” McCue said. “First, for setting up the medal, which gives all of us something to shoot for. And then for doing the kind of work she did, which also gives us something to shoot for. She set a standard for anyone who writes baseball history.”
Hosted by NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture, the NINE Spring Training Conference promotes the study of all historical aspects of baseball and centers on the cultural implications of the game wherever in the world baseball is played.
A highlight of the 22nd annual NINE Conference was keynote speaker Terry Cannon, a SABR member and founder of the Baseball Reliquary, a Southern California-based nonprofit organization that recently launched the Institute for Baseball Studies at Whittier College.
On Wednesday, March 11, Lowenfish chaired a special session on baseball scouts and player development that included panelists Roland Hemond of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Marty Lurie of the San Francisco Giants, and Don Welke of the San Diego Padres.
Research presentations at the NINE Conference included “Pat Gillick and his ‘Many Rivers’ by Dan Levitt; “Baseball Cinema Challeges the Hollywood Blacklist” by Ron Briley; “The Media and Dick Allen” by Mitchell Nathanson; “A Lady Sporting Editor: Ina Eloise Young” by Donna Halper; and “Hugh Fullerton, the Black Sox Scandal, and the Ethical Impulse in Sports Writing” by Steve Klein.
Originally published: March 15, 2015. Last Updated: March 15, 2015.