SABRcast with Rob Neyer: Mark Armour (Episode #41)
Baseball fans, tune in this season to SABRcast with Rob Neyer, a new weekly podcast hosted by award-winning author and longtime SABR member Rob Neyer. SABRcast will feature insights and analysis of what’s happening in modern baseball on and off the field, plus compelling interviews with figures from around the game — and music from The Baseball Project.
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Neyer is a longtime baseball writer and editor for ESPN.com, SB Nation, and FoxSports.com. He began his career as a research assistant for groundbreaking baseball author Bill James and later worked for STATS, Inc. He has also written or co-written seven baseball books, including The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (with Bill James), winner of the Sporting News/SABR Baseball Research Award, and most recently Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, winner of this year’s CASEY Award.
Episode #41: January 6, 2020
Our guest this week is SABR Board President Mark Armour, who is the author of many baseball articles and several books, including most recently In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball (with Dan Levitt) and Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball. In 2002, he spearheaded the formation of SABR’s Baseball Biography Project — which has now contributed more than 5,000 biographical articles and a number of books to the game’s literature — and he served as the BioProject’s director until 2016. He was the recipient of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest individual honor, in 2008, and the Henry Chadwick Award in 2014.
Click here or press play below to listen to Episode #41:
What’s Rob reading this week?
“Don Larsen Became an Unlikely Legend in 9 Perfect Innings”
By Tyler Kepner, New York Times
“The ultimate pitching achievement comes with no warning. For a while, even as a perfect game unfolds, nobody suspects a thing. On Oct. 8, 1956, the fifth game of the World Series was halfway over before the visiting team at Yankee Stadium realized that Don Larsen, of all people, had a chance. … Larsen, who died on Wednesday at age 90, was hardly the greatest pitcher ever. He played for seven teams in 14 seasons, with 81 victories and 91 defeats. A year after his perfect game, he lost Game 7 of the World Series to the Milwaukee Braves.”
- Also reading: Antonio Matheus: “Sanctioned Baseball Goes On” (Caracas Chronicles)
- Also reading: Robert Whiting: “Clandestine campaign led to Valentine’s demise” (Japan Times)
- Read more: Click here to check out Rob’s full list of book recommendations on Goodreads.com
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Episode #39: Craig Wright (December 23, 2019)
Episode #38: F.X. Flinn (December 16, 2019)
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Episode #36: John Thorn (December 2, 2019)
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Episode #26: Jane Leavy (September 23, 2019)
Episode #25: Steve Hofstetter (September 16, 2019)
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Episode #16: David W. Smith (July 15, 2019)
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Episode #13: Hannah Keyser (June 24, 2019)
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Episode #11: Jerry Cohen (June 10, 2019)
Episode #10: Paul Goldberger (June 3, 2019)
Episode #9: Ben Lindbergh (May 27, 2019)
Episode #8: David Cone (May 20, 2019)
Episode #7: Meg Rowley (May 13, 2019)
Episode #6: Jon “Boog” Sciambi (May 6, 2019)
Episode #5: Mark Armour (April 29, 2019)
Episode #4: Meredith Wills and Rob Arthur (April 22, 2019)
Episode #3: Art Chou and Dr. Steven Cadavid (April 15, 2019)
Episode #2: Tyler Kepner (April 8, 2019)
Episode #1: Brian Kenny and Scott Bush (April 1, 2019)
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