Q&A with SABR Web Content Editor Jacob Pomrenke

From Paul Ciullo at Paulyard20.com on January 3, 2012:

The Society for America Baseball Research, or SABR, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering research and disseminating the history and record of baseball.  Founded in 1971, SABR continues to grow and currently has over 6,000 members worldwide.  Anyone with an interest in America’s pastime is welcome to join.  SABR members include some of the most knowledgeable people involved in the game of baseball, and through its various research committees, magazine publications, and conferences, they are continually providing the public with new and exciting information.

I recently interviewed Jacob Pomrenke, who is the Web Content Editor at SABR and has been building content for the Society’s website (http://sabr.org/).  We discussed all the great research presently being performed by SABR members, along with the history of how the organization established itself as a premier distributor of groundbreaking baseball information.

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Q:  SABR has various research committees (i.e. Black Sox Scandal Research Committee).  Can you give a high level overview of these committees and how particular issues are selected?   Do members find it difficult to research topics that in some cases pertain to subjects that go back over 100 years?

A:  It can be, but the internet has really changed the game when it comes to baseball research over the last 10-15 years.  There is a lot more information that is available than their used to be.  When SABR was formed back in 1971, members had to go back through a lot of handwritten sources, old newspapers, and it was very tough to find information.  Fortunately these guys were dedicated and over time they were able to build the databases and build the research.  So now today you can go and look up every stat from 1871 when the first professional league started up until present day and call it up instantly on Baseball-reference.com or Retrosheet.org, both of which are run by SABR members.  The reason you can find this information on the internet so quickly is because of SABR members’ research.  We have something called the Home Run Encyclopedia, and all that information is now on Baseball-reference.com, so you can look up every home run that has ever been hit in the Major Leagues since 1876.  The research committees have been able to do the research and get the research out there so that everyone can access it. As I said, that’s our mission: to circulate the best research and get it out there for public consumption.  The more information people can access and the more people know, the more we can appreciate baseball and the more we can learn about it.

Read the full article here: http://paulyard20.com/2012/01/03/interview-with-jacob-pomrenke-of-sabr.aspx



Originally published: January 4, 2012. Last Updated: January 4, 2012.