Oscar Charleston Chapter meeting recap – 10/30/2021
The Oscar Charleston SABR Chapter held a meeting on Saturday, October 30, 2021, at the Haughville Branch of the Indianapolis Public Library.
First, Walter Biskupski detailed his early baseball card collecting adventures with the 1962 Topps set. Relying on this set’s photography and the poignant nostalgia that card-collecting sparks—he noted that “we always remember our first set”—Walter crafted poems about players appearing in the 1962 set. The attached folder includes the poems juxtaposed against each corresponding card. This link also connects to the August 2021 edition of the academic journal NINE, which featured five of Walter’s poems.
Second, Andy Heckroth presented an intimate take on Game 1 of the 1951 World Series. Among other details, Andy described the peculiar pitching rotation strategy that Giants’ manager Leo Durocher needed to use, based on the top Giants pitchers’ recent, significant workloads, along with Monte Irvin’s spectacular home plate theft, which was the first in a World Series game in over thirty years.
Finally, I brought the meeting home with an informal presentation—think of it as a conversation starter—about how baseball fans, journalists, and statisticians have tried to define, and have changed their view of what comprises, individual greatness in baseball over the past few decades.
Thank you to all who attended and participated. Please pencil in Saturday, January 29, 2022, for our next Chapter meeting. This is SABR Day, so it’s our main event! If you haven’t already, please let me know if you or anyone you know would like to speak at the meeting.
— Trenton Morton