Judges Announce This Year’s McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Awards

Cleveland, OH – The judges for the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award are pleased to announce this year’s winners:  Richard Bak for “Bat Out of Hell” and Ken Fenster for “Earl Mann, Nat Peeples and the Failed Attempt of Integration in the Southern Association.”  Both are SABR members. 

The McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award honors the authors of the best articles or papers, published or unpublished, on baseball history or biography comple

Cleveland, OH – The judges for the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award are pleased to announce this year’s winners:  Richard Bak for “Bat Out of Hell” and Ken Fenster for “Earl Mann, Nat Peeples and the Failed Attempt of Integration in the Southern Association.”  Both are SABR members. 

The McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award honors the authors of the best articles or papers, published or unpublished, on baseball history or biography completed during the preceding calendar year. 

Regarding “Bat Out of Hell,” one judge wrote, “Richard Bak provided a useful corrective to the usual view of Ty Cobb,” adding, “Bak has presented new interpretations, particularly relating to Al Stump, whose book has been accepted for a long time as primary source about Cobb.  I was ready to ask why we need another piece about Cobb and his demons, but I’m wrong.  I learned from it, and was impressed with its conclusions.”

“Earl Mann, Nat Peeples and the Failed Attempt of Integration in the Southern Association,” said a judge, “was well-researched, well-written, and well-referenced. It provided a valuable overview of a period in time, and the ironic way that progress on other fronts may actually have held back changes in others. It is my selection as the essay of the year.”

The judges were Len Levin, chairman, Phil Bergen, Fred Ivor-Campbell and Bill Humber.

Bak’s award-winning article is featured in his recently published book, Peach: Ty Cobb in His Time and Ours.  Fenster’s article is available in the 2004 issue of Nine, Vol. 12, No. 2.

Works eligible for the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award  include magazine and journal articles, previously unpublished chapters or articles in anthologies or other books with multiple authors, unpublished research papers and written versions of oral presentations.  Authors honored for unpublished work may not later receive a SABR research award for that work (or work that is substantially the same) in published form.