Feschuk: Seymour Siwoff, Elias has had our numbers all these years
From Dave Feschuk at the Toronto Star on April 1, 2019, on SABR member Seymour Siwoff:
That the moment passed without much fanfare shouldn’t diminish its significance: A few weeks back one of the longest-tenured owners in the history of North American sports sold off his ancient stake.
Seymour Siwoff didn’t own a franchise in one of the big four pro leagues, but he presided over an institution that served them all. For some 67 years Siwoff (pronounced SEA-woff) was the owner and president of the Elias Sports Bureau, the most famous stats keepers in sports. It was announced March 21 that Siwoff, at age 98, had sold the company to his 32-year-old grandson, Joe Gilston, who’d previously worked for Elias.
A handshake between the generations was all that marked this handing down of legacy. Siwoff, a World War II veteran who built Elias into the longtime official statistician of Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA and NHL, is a man of disciplined routine. And mostly every day since the sale, Siwoff has been keeping to his — still showing up to Elias’s offices on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and getting down to business.
Read the full article here: https://www.thestar.com/sports/2019/03/29/the-98-year-old-man-who-has-had-our-numbers-all-these-years-sold-elias-sports-bureau-this-month.html
Originally published: April 1, 2019. Last Updated: April 1, 2019.