In 1960, Mark was born in California an Air Force brat, but moved with his family to New England when he was still a baby. Though he started following the Red Sox in 1967, their Impossible Dream season, he didn’t become obsessed until ’68. And by the time Mark made his first visit to Fenway Park in 1969, he knew everybody on the Red Sox and everybody on the other team—the Yankees, by the way—and upon first seeing the diamond, he was filled with “goosebumps and tingles.” Mark’s favorite player was Carl Yastrzemski, “which is sort of boring,” he says, “but I have to be honest. I used to imitate his batting stance in front of a plate-glass window.”

Mark turned 15 during Game Five of the 1975 World Series. Not long after, he wrote an essay for his English class, “some boring story about my dog or something.” Mark’s teacher gave him a wonderful piece of advice: “Write about something you care about.” So Mark’s next essay was about the World Series, and he has been writing about baseball ever since.

In 1978, Mark went off to college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. After graduating in 1982 with an engineering degree, he went back to New England and, over the next 11 years, saw 20-odd Red Sox games at Fenway Park per year. Also in 1982, Mark joined SABR after seeing a note about the organization in The Bill James Baseball Abstract. When he joined, Mark received a signed letter from Cliff Kachline. “I was already nerdy enough,” Mark says, “to know who that was, but I didn’t know a single person who would be impressed.” Mark attended his first national convention in 1984 and his second in ’89. The 2013 convention in Philadelphia was his twentieth.

When SABR got involved with the Internet, Mark began to really get involved with SABR. With e-mail and SABR-L facilitating communication among members, Mark began attending conventions regularly, and his first published article was about franchise and league continuity, in the 2000 Baseball Research Journal. Since then he has published many articles in various SABR publications, roughly one every couple of years. In 2003 and 2004, Mark served as head of SABR’s Northwest Chapter, and has twice served as vice president.

And then there’s the BioProject. With SABR ramping up its website in the early aughts, Mark was inspired by Retrosheet and by SABR’s anthology of profiles of Deadball Era Stars, edited by Tom Simon. Why not (Mark thought) use Simon’s template for a much larger project: biographies of every person ever connected with organized baseball? “I was somewhat surprised,” he says, “when people said, ‘Yeah, you should do that.’”

Of course the rest is history, both literally and literally. At this writing (early March 2014) Mark has written and published more than 60 biographical articles for the BioProject, along with articles about other subjects, including integration of Major League Baseball, the seminal book Ball Four, and — as part of another sub-project — that first game Mark attended at Fenway Park back in 1969.

But as Mark says, “My most important contribution to the BioProject, aside from having the idea, is fairly boring, in that what I created was a process, and that process is what has served us so well. Everyone has a small part, and something big has come out of that. Once we actually had material that people could see, a surprising number of people volunteered to write biographies, and our editors have been extraordinary.” Indeed, Armour’s 60-some articles pale next to the total: At press time, nearly 2,700 articles had been published under the BioProject’s rubric.

Mark had moved to Oregon in 1993. One day he was talking to a friend of a friend who said, “Did you know there’s a woman in town whose father pitched for the Indians in 1915?” Mark was skeptical — if people know you’re a baseball aficionado, you’ll hear these stories every so often — but he followed up, and discovered that the daughter of Oscar Harstad, who really had pitched for the Indians for one season, lived only four blocks away. Arrangements were made, and Mark arrived one afternoon to discover that Harstad’s now-elderly daughter not only had a collection of clippings and scrapbooks, but also had interviewed her father late in his life. Armed with all these materials, Mark penned a detailed biographical article that Oscar’s daughter was then delighted to read and share with her extended family.

All of which goes a long way toward explaining what makes the BioProject such a beautiful thing.

Mark received SABR’s Bob Davids Award in 2008, and he has written two books: Paths to Glory with co-author Dan Levitt and Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball, which was a finalist for SABR’s Seymour Medal in 2011. Today, Mark lives in Corvallis, Oregon, with his wife, Jane, and children, Maya and Drew. And of course his baseball work continues, most notably a follow-up to Paths to Glory (again with Levitt), due in 2015.

To learn more about the Henry Chadwick Award, click here.

“The Society for American Baseball Research may well consider Ernie Lanigan as its patron saint or guardian angel,” wrote Henry Chadwick Award honoree Fred Lieb. According to Lieb, no one had ever done as much for baseball research as the diligent, untiring, ever-searching Lanigan. He was a pioneer at gathering information about baseball statistics and about the players themselves.

“I really don’t care much about baseball, or looking at ball games, major or minor,” Lanigan once said. “All my interest in baseball is in its statistics. I want to know something about every major league ball player, not only what he is hitting, but his full name with all middle names and initials, where they were born, and where they now live.”

“Lanigan actually was a nut on baseball statistics,” wrote Lieb, “and chased down any odd item on baseball with the zeal of a scientist coming up with a new plant, bug, million-year old human bone, or any early caveman’s artifact.”

Ernest John Lanigan, known to all as Ernie, was born in Chicago on January 4, 1873. His father, George T. Lanigan, was a newspaper reporter-editor and poet. His mother, Bertha Spink Lanigan, was an early editor of the Ladies Home Journal. Bertha’s brother Albert H. Spink started The Sporting News in St. Louis in 1886, where another brother, Charles C. Spink, later joined him.

At age 15, Ernie began his career in baseball when he went to work for his uncles at The Sporting News. When he was eighteen, he went to work in a bank, but left after eight years and spent the rest of his life in baseball.

As a young man, Lanigan came down with a lung infection that affected his health for the remainder of his life. He constantly battled pulmonary illnesses, which made it necessary for him to spend time in various health sanitaria. It was during a two-year convalescence in the Adirondack Mountains that he began compiling new statistics. He recorded runs batted in for 1907–19 and caught stealing data for 1912–19 in the National League, at a time when no was else was doing so. The major leagues eventually adopted them both as official statistics.

During his career, Lanigan served as a reporter for the New York Press, and later as the sports editor for the Cleveland Leader. He was the official scorer for some of the early World Series and was the secretary and information director of the International League, under its president, Ed Barrow, when they were transforming from the old Eastern League. He found Barrow demanded almost servile service from him, and so he left. He returned later when Frank Shaughnessy became president. At one time, Lanigan was also the business manager of St. Louis Cardinals farm teams in Dayton, Ohio, and Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Lanigan was an early supporter for a national organization of the major league baseball writers, which became a reality when the Baseball Writers Association of America was formed in December 1908. He wrote for Baseball Magazine, and in 1922 published the first titular baseball encyclopedia. The Baseball Cyclopedia, as Lanigan called it, claimed to be “a review of Professional Baseball, the history of all Major League Clubs, playing records and unique events, the batting, pitching and base running champions, World’s Series’ statistics and a carefully arranged alphabetical list of the records of more than 3,500 Major League ball players, a feature never before attempted in print.” Lanigan updated it annually through 1933.

From 1946, until his retirement in 1959, Lanigan served as the curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, and later as its historian. He died in Philadelphia, at age 89, on February 6, 1962.

To learn more about the Henry Chadwick Award, click here.

Born and raised in Muskegon, Michigan, Okkonen graduated from Muskegon High school in 1951. Over the years he maintained a strong connection to his hometown, publishing several booklets on its history. A publications consultant, freelance artist, and writer professionally, Okkonen waited until later in life to get his college degree, graduating from the University of Michigan–Dearborn in 1970. As a long time Tigers fan, Okkonen had a special interest in the various Detroit baseball stadiums that stood at Michigan and Trumbull Avenues, the only twentieth century location at which the Tigers played until the coming of Comerica Park.

In 1984 when his Tigers won a World Championship, seeing Bernard Malamud’s novel The Natural get turned into a movie helped catalyze Okkonen’s interest in investigating baseball uniforms. “I knew some of them were wrong. I think that was the spark that sent me on my research,” Okkonen told Marty Appel.

Okkonen’s investigations took him to a sports library in Los Angeles, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. To facilitate his work he moved to upstate New York for a time to be closer to the Hall. Okkonen’s artistic ability vividly enhanced his findings. He envisioned a two-dimensional faceless manikin on which to illustrate each uniform: standing, left hand on hip, right hand holding the bat a couple inches above the knob and slung over the shoulder. This pose allowed the entire uniform to be highlighted and compared to others, from the cap to the socks.

Because of the high cost of production for a book with numerous color photos and images, it took longer than he hoped to find a publisher. While Okkonen searched for a publisher, he worked with several teams on anniversary-type projects that included his uniform research. Finally, in 1991, the fruits of his efforts were rewarded, and Okkonen’s masterpiece was released by the Sterling Publishing company. Two years later he published a revised, paperback edition.

Okkonen also authored the first book on the Federal League, an achievement and resource that stands the test of time with a matchless collection of photographs, ballpark information and drawings, and front office and roster information. Similarly, Okkonen produced a series of books titled Baseball Memories that incorporates a comprehensive and distinctive collection of photographs and illustrations in conjunction with well-researched text to chronicle various decades in the twentieth century. Likewise, Okkonen applied his distinctive style to Tiger legend Ty Cobb in The Ty Cobb Scrapbook: An Illustrated Chronology of Significant Dates in the 24-Year Career of the Fabled Georgia Peach—Over 800 Games From 1905–1928. Okkonen also created 2000 Cups of Coffee, which contains images of players whose major league careers lasted for ten or fewer games during the 1900–1949 era. For his home state, Okkonen put together another pictorial and overview gem, Minor League Baseball Towns of Michigan: Adrian to Ypsilanti, the teams & the ballparks of the Wolverine State from the 1880s to the present.

By turning his artistic eye to baseball and pursuing his passion, Marc Okkonen left baseball researchers with a singular legacy. He created several books that captured baseball’s eras and leagues, enhanced and made indispensable by the numerous photos and illustrations he unearthed. But most importantly, Okkonen’s research delivered a comprehensive and visually appealing illustration of baseball uniforms from the twentieth century.

To learn more about the Henry Chadwick Award, click here.

“We cover baseball year-round,” Schwartz observes, “from spring training all the way through the conclusion of the winter leagues—so every game and every day brings something different, and we also have to keep up with emerging technology and evolving business demands. The basic functions of our department have remained the same over 13 seasons: capture data, make sure [the feed] is timely, accurate, and detailed, and get it into the hands of fans and consumers in the best way possible… but the specifics of the job change every day, every season.”

Such reliable staples have become critical to the everyday fan experience, but his group at MLBAM also operates the PitchF/X system, which provides pitch trajectory, velocity, and location data for all games played in MLB venues. Open access to the data the PitchF/X system collects has provided information beyond anything any of us dreamed up a decade ago, and it has proven to be the irreplaceable source of the most revolutionary and evolutionary work going on in sabermetrics today. MLBAM’s readiness to share that information has fueled sabermetric innovation into a third or even fourth generation of fans.

Schwartz deflects taking much credit for his team’s commitment to provide data. “From the growth of live play-by-play products, to the availability of live video on mobile devices, to the introduction of PitchF/X and its proliferation throughout the research community, I think it’s inarguable that MLBAM has fueled increased availability, interest, and enjoyment of the game. I’m old enough to remember when we had to wait two days to find West Coast box scores in the newspaper, and wait until the Monday and Tuesday editions of USA Today … MLBAM has made things available within seconds that we used to only dream about.”

The impact of that cannot be understated in terms of its importance to fans while simultaneously changing the nature of our everyday conversations about the game. “More detailed information about the players has contributed to the ongoing Age of Enlightenment among fans.”

The extent to which Schwartz takes that mission to heart is reflected in his philosophy towards his work and the importance of having it be readily available to consumers and researchers alike. “The game was here before us and will long outlast us,” he notes, “so we are its custodians for now and therefore have an obligation to contribute to its success during our part of its history. As that relates to data, we must be mindful that we are creating the records that will inform future generations about the players of today, so we treat it as a sacred obligation and take it very seriously. Data, in and of itself, has no intrinsic meaning or value… only when it’s put into the hands of those who can organize and interpret it in ways that tell stories that help fans learn more about players or games or seasons, does it take on its true purpose.”

Schwartz represents MLBAM’s organizational ethic to pursue that mission into the future, across new frontiers of sabermetrics. His team is also working on the development and eventual roll-out of another new frontier: a system to track all moving objects on the field—fielders, runners, even umpires. Unveiled at the 2014 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the yetto-be-named system figures to revolutionize our understanding of fielding and baserunning.

But Schwartz is no more defined by duty alone than any other fan with an admittedly enviable day job. His fandom goes back to watching the 1976 World Series with his dad, in which he took a quick interest. “Without really knowing much about either team, or baseball in general, I still decided to bet with him that the Yankees would win the Series, with the loser having to accept the punishment of single-handedly cleaning up our basement playroom.” Of course the Big Red Machine swept the Yankees and he lost the best, but, “Despite that setback, I started watching baseball more regularly… seeing the players on TV, then learning more about them through the backs of 1977 and 1978 Topps cards—that really got me hooked.”

Making the leap into sabermetrics proved to be short. “Like many of my generation I was tremendously influenced and enlightened by the Bill James Abstracts, and as a teen and young adult by fantasy baseball pioneers like John Benson, who applied basic analytic approaches towards fantasy baseball strategy. By 1999 I had discovered Baseball Prospectus, and have been a regular reader of theirs since.”

That experience as a fan informs Schwartz to this day, but it also informs his teammates. Since joining MLBAM in 2001, Schwartz credits the guidance of CEO Bob Bowman for reminding everyone in-house to “think like a fan as we do our jobs, and that inspires us in everything we do.”

The reality of his balance of responsibilities, to fans and to researchers, reflects the changing dynamic of how we all consume baseball information. “It’s hard to say I landed my dream job,” Schwartz observes, “because I’ve been fortunate enough to have a job that I never could have dreamed of even 15 or 20 years ago, and have an opportunity to participate in the game in ways I never would’ve imagined. So really, it’s even better than my dream job.”

To learn more about the Henry Chadwick Award, click here.

John C. Tattersall

Tattersall first gained national attention for his baseball research in 1953 when The Sporting News ran his story on the correction of Nap Lajoie’s 1901 batting average from .405 to .422. (In that same year he self-published Home Run Parade, “a complete exposition of the home run production of all active major league baseball players.”) Lajoie had originally been credited with a .422 average, with 220 hits in 543 at bats. After a number of years, someone noticed that if you take these at bats and hits, the average comes out only to .405, so his average was changed. Turkin–Thompson gave Nap a mark of .409 in its first edition, in 1951. Later in the 1950s, Tattersall had his doubts and decided to go through his newspaper collection of box scores. He found 229 hits for Lajoie, not 220—the error had been in the figure for hits, not in the figure for batting average. Thus his average was restored to .422, which happened to be the highest in American League history. ICI/Macmillan research in this area came up with a .426 mark (232 for 544, based on newspaper accounts), which was his average as published in the 1969 Baseball Encyclopedia.

Tattersall also found disputed hits in Anson’s record for 1879; he compiled pinch-hit, Hit by Pitcher, and Batters Facing Pitcher records where none had existed before, and established the home run log, which SABR purchased and maintains. The home run log was digitized and has been licensed for use by BaseballReference.com.

Tattersall was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1910. He attended Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC, receiving a BS in 1933 and a Masters the next year.

His interest in baseball had been stimulated by visits to Ponce de Leon Park in Atlanta to see the Crackers play in 1922–23. He saw his first major league game in Boston on June 16, 1926, and remembered Pirates pitcher Vic Aldridge stealing one of only two bases in his career. His interest in home runs developed from watching the Yankees and Babe Ruth, his particular favorite. He became fascinated by statistical research and stole time from his studies at Georgetown to do baseball research at the Library of Congress.

He went to work in the shipbuilding industry in 1935 in New York, later moving to Boston and then Philadelphia (with time out for work with the War Shipbuilding Administration in WWII). In Boston in 1941 he purchased from the Boston Transcript, which was going out of business, a large number of baseball scrapbooks and sports pages dating back to 1876 when the National League was founded with Boston as a charter member. He soon found himself in possession of a very large amount of material which, after years of cataloging and filing, gave him almost every box score in major league history.

After joining SABR in 1971, shortly after it was formed, Tattersall began organizing his home run material for publication. He supplied several interesting articles for the Baseball Research Journal and in 1975 published on his own Home Run Handbook, now scarce. The following year he published The First Season, a centennial reproduction by photocopy of all the box scores of the NL in its initial season of 1876. In 1977 he reconstructed The Early World Series, 1884–1890.

It was in 1977 that he retired as vice president of his shipbuilding company in Philadelphia and moved to Del Ray Beach, Florida. He passed away in Boca Raton on May 29, 1981.

For more information on the Henry Chadwick Award, click here.