Interviews with sabermetric pioneers added to SABR Oral History Collection
JUNE 15, 2022 — SABR is pleased to add nine new interviews with baseball’s sabermetric pioneers to its Oral History Collection.
The interviews were conducted by SABR member Brian Hall, who will deliver a presentation on “When Big Data was Small: A Story Told By the Pioneers of Sabermetrics” at the upcoming SABR 50 convention in Baltimore. Their conversations focused on the evolution of baseball data, modeling and computing, and how this began to change — and inspire — the baseball analytics and thinking prevalent in the game today.
Click on a link below to listen to these SABR Oral History interviews:
- Dick Cramer, co-founder of STATS, Inc.
- John Dewan, principal owner of Sports Info Solutions
- Sean Forman, founder of Baseball-Reference.com
- Gary Gillette, co-editor of the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia and Negro Leagues historian
- Bill James, author, historian, and former Boston Red Sox executive
- Steve Mann, former Houston Astros executive and fantasy baseball author
- David Neft, driving force behind Macmillan’s The Baseball Encyclopedia
- Pete Palmer, co-editor of Total Baseball and co-author of The Hidden Game of Baseball
- David W. Smith, founder and president of Retrosheet.org
Hall is an adjunct instructor in the NYU Tisch Institute for Global Sport, focusing on artificial intelligence, machine learning and their application to the sports world.
The SABR Oral History Collection includes more than 700 interviews conducted with ballplayers (Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, Negro Leagues, AAGBBL), executives, scouts, authors, writers, broadcasters, and other figures of historical baseball significance. Learn more at SABR.org/oralhistory.
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering research and disseminating the history and record of baseball. Founded in 1971, SABR has more than 7,000 members worldwide and has established itself as a vibrant baseball community and a premier distributor of ground-breaking baseball information. SABR features 80+ chapters and 30+ research committees, and produces three annual publications — two editions of The Baseball Research Journal and The National Pastime — in addition to other print and e-books. SABR also hosts annual events, including the National Convention each summer, and the SABR Analytics Conference in March in Phoenix.
Originally published: June 15, 2022. Last Updated: March 9, 2024.