Richard Malatzky
Richard Malatzky (1956-2018), a lifelong resident of the Bronx, New York, was a key contributor to SABR’s Biographical Research Committee for nearly 40 years, a “supersleuth in genealogical research,” according to MLB Official Historian John Thorn. Malatzky first joined SABR in 1975 and worked closely with founding member Bill Haber to fill in the gaps of missing biographical information for baseball players of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Peter Morris, Malatzky’s frequent collaborator and co-conspirator in solving baseball mysteries, once wrote, “There is a very long list of major league players whose identity and/or final resting place stumped generations of legendary baseball researchers, but who are now correctly identified in the baseball encyclopedias because of Richard Malatzky’s resourcefulness at ferreting information from the sporting presses, city directories, censuses, vital records, military records, websites, and a wide range of other documents and sources.” Malatzky contributed to thousands of articles and books, and generously assisted on the work of many researchers, but his name rarely appeared in print outside of the Acknowledgments section. The first book with his name on the cover, Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870: The Clubs and Players Who Spread the Sport Nationwide, won a SABR Baseball Research Award in 2013. He was buried with a copy of it.
Related links:
- In Memoriam: Richard Malatzky (Our Game)
- Read “Canadian-Born Major Leaguers,” by Richard Malatzky and Peter Morris (Dominionball)
- Read “The Quest for Dick McBride,” by Peter Morris (SABR 50 at 50)
- Read “Old Fashioned SABR Metrics,” by John Thorn (Our Game)
- Get a copy of the award-winning Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 (McFarland Books)