Bob Broeg St. Louis Chapter meeting recap – 7/22/2013
The monthly roundtable of the Bob Broeg St. Louis SABR Chapter drew 21 people to its July 22, 2013, meeting at its usual location, the Original Crusoe’s in South St. Louis.
Kris Lokemoen reported favorably on the book Color Blind by Tom Dunkel. The tome tells the story of a racially integrated baseball team in Bismarck, N.D., in the 1930s.
The life of longtime baseball executive William O. DeWitt, Sr., father of Cardinals’ current majority owner William DeWitt, was covered in a presentation by Dwayne Isgrig. William O. DeWitt, a St. Louis native, had a baseball career that spanned more than six decades and saw him involved with several teams, including the Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, New York Yankees and Cincinnati Reds. Dwayne included photos of DeWitt in his presentation.
Jim Rygelski, in a presentation titled “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” discussed whether the colorized photo of the original black and white shot of Stan Musial’s 3,000th hit as published in the current issue of the Cardinals’ Gameday magazine accurately reproduced the team’s uniform colors of the season (it does, though on first glance it appears it doesn’t).
Bud Kane showed a replica scorecard from the 1951 game in which midget Eddie Gaedel pinch hit for the St. Louis Browns on a day all American League teams celebrated the Junior Circuit’s 50th anniversary. Scorecards of that era featured the printed lineups with up to date batting and pitching averages for the listed players. It led to a discussion of some of the players of that era, including one who regularly attended Bob Broeg Chapter meetings – the late Bill Jennings, a Browns shortstop that season.
The membership discussed several possible player transactions the Cardinals could make as the July 31 trading deadline approaches. The consensus was that the Cardinals should not make a foolish trade and certainly should not give up any of their fine pitching prospects for questionable players, especially high-priced ones.
The chapter has discussed having a fund-raising trivia night. Burton Boxerman suggested that to draw a bigger crowd, the questions at such a trivia night be of a general nature and not be limited to baseball.
Kris Lokemoen won the monthly trivia quiz assembled by Bob Tiemann. This month’s was about the 2003 Cubs and Royals.
Norm Richards presented won-lost records for current Cardinals manager Mike Matheny and the four most recent Cardinals managers after their first 255 games (which is how many games Matheny had managed going into the July 16 All Star Game. The records show: Matheny, 145-110; Whitey Herzog, 144-111; Tony LaRussa, 133-122; Joe Torre, 129-126; and Red Schoendienst, 128-127.
The next Bob Broeg Chapter roundtable is Tuesday, August 20, also at Crusoe’s.
Submitted by Jim Rygelski, chapter recording secretary.