This Week in SABR: August 14, 2020

August 14, 2020/in This Week in SABR /by Jacob Pomrenke

Welcome to “This Week in SABR!” Click here to view this week’s newsletter on the web. Here’s what we’ve been up to as of August 14, 2020:

Register now for 2020 SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference

Registration is now open for the second annual SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference on September 11-13, 2020. All baseball fans are welcome to attend!

This year’s conference — co-sponsored by SABR and the International Women’s Baseball Center, and hosted by Rockford University — will be a virtual event centered around the theme “Celebrating African American Women in Baseball.” Presentations and panels will take place on Zoom.

In addition to learning about topics such as the Dolly Vardens, Maud Nelson, Tillie Ford, the Hagerstown Mollys, and much more, there will also be a celebration of the Negro Leagues Centennial on Saturday night, with a special design unveiling for an outdoor pylon.

Register now: Click here to register for this event at SABR.org. The All-Inclusive Package is $50, and includes access to all presentations and panels, Negro Leagues Centennial Celebration on Saturday night, 2 raffle tickets, and a commemorative program booklet. Regular registration is $25 for all baseball fans.
Schedule: Click here to view the complete schedule, along with presenter bios and abstracts.
Raffle: Purchase a raffle ticket ($5 each) when you register for a chance to win baseball memorabilia prizes, including autographed baseballs, caps, and books from IWBC authors, SPoRT Makeup kits, Rockford Peaches apparel, and the grand prize — a personal phone call from AAGPBL legend and IWBC founder Maybelle Blair!

If you have any questions, please contact Leslie Heaphy at lheaphy@kent.edu.

Visit SABR.org/women-in-baseball-conference to learn more.

SABR Century Committee: 100th Anniversary Panel on Ray Chapman

SABR’s Century Committee will host a special panel discussion on the 100th anniversary of the death of Ray Chapman at 12:00 p.m. EDT on Sunday, August 16, 2020. All SABR members are invited to attend this free virtual event on Zoom.

Our guest speakers are expected to include: Mike Sowell, author of The Pitch That Killed; Don Jensen, editor of Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game; Kevin Trusty, who writes on baseball history at RadbournsRevenant.com; and moderator Sharon Hamilton, co-chair of SABR’s Century Committee.

Chapman, the popular Cleveland Indians shortstop, suffered a fatal blow after he was hit in the head by a pitch from New York’s Carl Mays on August 16, 1920. He died hours later from his injuries. Chapman’s death remains the only on-field fatality in major-league history.

To RSVP for this Zoom event, please contact Bill Nowlin or Sharon Hamilton.

Students: Apply for a Fall 2020 internship with SABR

The Society for American Baseball Research is seeking remote interns to work during the Fall 2020 semester.

An internship with SABR will involve responsibilities across a variety of disciplines, possibly including:

Working with the Director of Editorial Content or Publications Director to help publish and/or produce content for our website at SABR.org
Working during a virtual SABR event, such as the SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference
Working with other SABR staff members on organizational duties, membership renewal drives, customer service

Interested candidates should be able to demonstrate basic office-related computer skills and have a reliable Internet connection for remote working. Experience with WordPress (or other content management systems) and Zoom (or other virtual-conference platforms) is a plus. A working knowledge of baseball — and an awareness of the game’s general history and basic statistics — is required.

The internship is an educational opportunity that may count toward college credit, covering 15-20 hours per week with a flexible schedule. The internship will be for a fixed period of time and is designed to provide the intern with skills and training that may be applicable to working in a nonprofit research environment or in other research-based organizations.

Please send a resume and cover letter in PDF form to jpomrenke@sabr.org by 5:00 p.m. MST Monday, August 31, 2020.

SABR Editorial Board seeks new baseball research project proposals

For the past 50 years, SABR’s mission has always been to publish and promote member research. That research has taken many forms, from the early days of committee newsletters and pamphlets to today’s collaborative model of printed and electronic books, themed research journals, and multimedia web projects.

Since the SABR Digital Library program was established in 2011, SABR has published more than 70 original books, averaging nearly one book per month in recent years. It has become clear that members will always have more ideas and more research than we can keep up with publishing in our current model. Committees, chapters, and members are working on more projects now than at any other time in SABR’s history. The newly redesigned SABR.org website, with a growing audience of nearly 2.5 million annual visitors, affords members even more opportunities to publish their work online and take advantage of digital publishing technologies.

SABR’s new Editorial Board — which includes Scott Bush, Christina Kahrl, Bill Nowlin, Jacob Pomrenke, Anthony Salazar, Cecilia Tan, and Sarah Wexler — was established to evaluate proposals for publication. The Board welcomes new project proposals from members to be considered for publication through the Digital Library, SABR.org, or any other multimedia formats. We strongly encourage new proposals that have no intention of being published as a book.

Visit https://bit.ly/sabr-editorial-board-proposals to submit a SABR project proposal online

Proposals will be graded using the following criteria: Significance, Interest, Marketability, Intersectionality, Originality, and Likelihood of Completion. SABR seeks to publish about four web-based multimedia projects and 6-8 books per year. Book projects should be of a scope that can fit in a single volume, typically between 100,000 and 200,000 total words. Two sample project proposals can be downloaded by clicking here.

Click here to read the full announcement at SABR.org.

Join us for more Stay Home With SABR virtual events

SABR chapters and committees are encouraged to set up virtual meetings to stay engaged with our members throughout the world at SABR.org, as part of our Stay Home With SABR initiative to assist in limiting the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

This week, we heard from Now Taking the Field author Thomas Stone with the Casey Stengel (NYC) Chapter.

Here are some more upcoming virtual events you can attend online:

August 15: Latino Baseball Committee meeting with Lou Hernández (11:30 a.m. PDT)
August 15: Educational Resources Committee meeting (4:00 p.m. EDT)
August 16: Century Committee: Ray Chapman 100th anniversary panel discussion with Mike Sowell, Don Jensen, Kevin Trusty, and Sharon Hamilton (12:00 p.m. EDT)
August 17: Bob Broeg St. Louis Chapter meeting with Jacob Pomrenke and Meg Rowley (6:30 p.m. CDT)
August 17: Larry Dierker (Houston) Chapter meeting (8:00 p.m. CDT)
August 18: Sacramento / Bay Area Chapter joint meeting with John Shea and Marty Lurie (7:00 p.m. PDT)
August 19: Baltimore Babe Ruth Chapter meeting with Frank Amoroso (12:00 p.m. EDT)
August 19: Rocky Mountain Chapter meeting with Todd Zolecki (12:00 p.m. MDT)
August 19: Northwest Ohio Chapter book club meeting (4:00 p.m. EDT)
August 20: Goose Goslin (N.J.) Chapter meeting with John Thorn (7:00 p.m. EDT)
August 20: Ken Keltner (Wis.) Chapter meeting with Maxwell Kates (7:00 p.m. CDT)
August 22: Hank Gowdy (Ohio) Chapter book club (9:30 a.m. EDT)
August 22: Emil Rothe Chicago Chapter meeting with Thomas Stone (12:00 p.m. CDT)
August 23: Detroit Chapter meeting with Thomas Stone (7:00 p.m. EDT)

Find more upcoming virtual meetings and watch replays of past events on our SABR Virtual Calendar page.

SABR 50, Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference to swap dates in 2021

SABR is pleased to announce a trade — between the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference and the 50th annual National Convention.

Two of SABR’s signature events will switch dates in the summer of 2021 to enhance the experience for everyone involved. The SABR 50 convention will now take place on June 16-20, 2021, at the Hyatt Regency Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. The Malloy Conference will be held on July 29-31, 2021, at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel in Birmingham, Alabama.

“The Jerry Malloy Negro League Committee has decided to trade conference dates with SABR’s 50th National Convention in Baltimore next season,” said Larry Lester, chair of SABR’s Negro League Committee. “The trade will provide us with more time to develop incoming rookies as the Malloy Conference reboots after a three-year hiatus. We promise to put a solid team of presenters at the podium en route to another championship season.”

The switch also ensures SABR 50 attendees will be able to attend a Baltimore Orioles game at Camden Yards. The Orioles are scheduled to play the Toronto Blue Jays in a weekend series at home on June 18-20, 2021.

“I didn’t expect SABR to make a trade before Jerry Dipoto this summer, but we’re receiving tremendous value from the Malloy Conference in the month of June,” SABR CEO Scott Bush said. “We are excited for the return of our National Convention in 2021!”

Stay tuned for more information on registration and hotel availability for SABR 50 and the Malloy Conference in early 2021 at SABR.org/events.

SABR Digital Library: Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords

Add a new baseball book to your collection from the SABR Digital Library:

Pride of Smoketown: The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords
Edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin
Associate editors Len Levin and Carl Riechers
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-970159-25-7, $34.95
ISBN (e-book): 978-1-970159-24-0, $9.99
8.5” x 11”, 349 pages

Click here to read the full description of this book at SABR.org.

SABR members, get this e-book for FREE!

E-book: Click here to download the e-book version of Pride of Smoketown for FREE from the SABR Store. Available in PDF, Kindle/MOBI and EPUB formats.
Paperback: Get a 50% discount on the Pride of Smoketown paperback edition from the SABR Store ($17.95 includes shipping/tax; delivery via Kindle Direct Publishing can take up to 4-6 weeks.)

SABR members can download all Digital Library e-books for free or save 50% off the paperback editions. To find all titles, visit SABR.org/ebooks.

Having trouble downloading our e-books? To view PDF files on your computer, click here to download the free Adobe Reader software. Having trouble downloading e-books to your Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader or iPad? Click here for additional help.

SABR office continuing to work remotely

The SABR office, housed at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, Arizona, has been closed indefinitely due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) situation. Staff members will work remotely until it is advisable to resume normal operations on-site.

Please contact a member of the SABR staff by email or phone with any questions.

SABRcast with Rob Neyer: Listen to an interview with J.J. Cooper of Baseball America

Baseball fans, tune in this season to SABRcast with Rob Neyer, a weekly podcast hosted by award-winning author and longtime SABR member Rob Neyer.

Episode #72 on Monday, August 10 featured J.J. Cooper, Executive Editor at Baseball America, where he has covered baseball at all levels since 2002. He has written recently about the cancellation of Minor League Baseball’s season, MLB’s ongoing negotiations with MiLB, and the only Black majority owner in professional baseball. His first assignment covering baseball was “a lucky one,” he says — he followed the 1995 Macon Braves, where he watched Andruw Jones, a two-time Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year, play every day. Cooper holds a journalism degree from the University of Georgia and previously was a sports writer and editor at the Macon Telegraph. He was also a SABRcast guest for Episode #22 in August 2019.

Visit SABR.org/sabrcast to listen to the full episode.

Subscribe to SABRcast on your favorite podcast networks, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play, and listen to each episode as soon as it’s released on Mondays. To learn more, visit SABR.org/sabrcast.

3 new SABR biographies published

Three new biographies were posted this week as part of the SABR Baseball Biography Project. Here are the new bios published this week:

Warren G. Harding, by Chris Rainey
Ezra Lincoln, by Bill Lamb
Stan Royer, by Kevin Bley

All new biographies can be found here: SABR.org/bioproject

Find any SABR biography: You can visit sabr.org/bioproject to search for any player — or manager, executive, scout, spouse, broadcaster, or umpire — who appears in the SABR BioProject. In addition, we have pages for Ballparks, Broadcasters, Executives, Games, Managers, Scouts, Spouses, Umpires, Writers, people who were Famous Outside Baseball, and a lot more.

10 new stories published by the SABR Games Project

Ten new game stories were posted this week as part of the SABR Games Project — including a few as part of our brand-new First Games Back project. Here are the new game stories:

June 21, 1900: Republicans witness a pennant race turn in Philadelphia, by Phil Williams
September 28, 1914: Buffalo, Kansas City tie 10-10 in ‘a freak contest’, by Rob Nee (first-time author)
October 9, 1914: Buffalo’s Russ Ford throws 16-inning shutout to beat Pittsburgh, by Brian Frank
May 9, 1919: Pete Alexander’s return from World War I spoiled by Ray Fisher, Reds, by Jan Finkel
May 16, 1945: Rookie Jack Creel’s extended one-hit relief not enough for Cardinals to top Braves, by Jack Zerby
August 24, 1945: Bob Feller returns to baseball after World War II, by C. Paul Rogers III
June 28, 1949: Joe DiMaggio returns to Yankees after missing first 65 games, by Lawrence Baldassaro
July 25-26, 1952: Tigers’ Bud Souchock stuns Yankees with consecutive walk-off home runs, by Stephen V. Rice
October 3, 2000: Cardinals’ Rick Ankiel ties record with five wild pitches in his playoff debut, by Richard Bray
June 19, 2019: Gerardo Parra brings the Baby Shark to rally Washington Nationals, by Laura H. Peebles

New Games Project stories can be found at SABR.org/gamesproject.

Get involved: Have memories of a game you attended? Or a game you watched that caught your interest? Write about it! Writing for the Games Project is an easy way to get involved as a SABR member. Find out how by reading the Games Project FAQs section or checking out the Authors’ Guidelines. We have editors and fact checkers who are willing to help you write your first article.
Social media: Follow the SABR Games Project on Twitter or Facebook to keep up with new stories and updates.

Listen to recent episodes of Behind the Numbers: Baseball SABR Style on SiriusXM on Saturdays

Behind the Numbers: Baseball SABR Style on SiriusXM, a radio show hosted by former SABR Board President Vince Gennaro, is back at a new time. Listen to new episodes at 5:00-6:00 p.m. ET on Saturdays on MLB Network Radio.

You can also listen to archives of recent episodes on-demand on the SiriusXM Internet Radio app.

Behind the Numbers: Baseball SABR Style on SiriusXM focuses on examining and interpreting the statistical analysis that plays a critical role in baseball today. It airs weekly throughout the year on MLB Network Radio, available to subscribers nationwide on XM channel 89, Sirius channel 209, and on the SiriusXM Internet Radio App.

July 11-13 Board minutes posted

Minutes from the Board of Directors virtual meetings on July 11 and July 13, 2020, have now been posted on the SABR website.

You can view all past minutes of SABR Board meetings by going to the page below:

https://profile.sabr.org/board-minutes

Or you can go to the Members’ Info page and click on “Org. files”, then “Board Minutes” to view the minutes.

ICYMI: Highlights from last week’s This Week in SABR

We’ve heard your feedback: Some of you have said you look forward to “This Week in SABR” every Friday, but sometimes there are just too many compelling articles and announcements to read every week. We’re not complaining — hey, keep up the great work! — but we know the feeling. So in an effort to make the length of this newsletter more manageable to read, we’ll summarize some of the repeating/recurring announcements in a special “In Case You Missed It (ICYMI)” section of “This Week in SABR”.

Here are some major headlines from recent weeks that we don’t want you to miss:

All previous editions of This Week in SABR can be found here: https://sabr.org/content/this-week-in-sabr-archives.

Welcome, new members!

We’d like to welcome all of our new SABR members who have joined this week. You can find all Members-Only resources at members.sabr.org and the Membership Handbook can be downloaded here.

Please give these new members a warm welcome and help them make the most of their membership by giving them the opportunity to get involved in their local chapter or a research committee.

You can find contact information for any SABR member in the online Membership Directory.

Name	Hometown	Name	Hometown
Thomas Allison	Phoenix, AZ	Dave Lambert	Troy, MI
Taylor Anderson	Bellevue, WA	Gabe Nisker	Toronto, ON
Jack Donches	Wayne, PA	Adriana Poochie	Omaha, NE
Michael Faber	Parker, CO	Sebastien Rivest	Vaudreuil-Dorion, QC
Juanita Gorgona	Brooklyn, NY	Scott Rogerson	Roy, UT
Jim Halloran	Madison, GA	Benjamin Senior	Raleigh, NC
Thomas Holland	Euless, TX	Matthew Towner	Decatur, IL

Research Committee news

Here are the new research committee updates this week:

Games Project: Check out the new First Games Back project

Find all SABR research committee newsletters at SABR.org/research/committees.

Regional Chapter news

Here are the new regional chapter updates this week:

Boston Chapter: Read a new “Dispatches From the Mudville Bureau,” by Joanne Hulbert (Boston, MA)

Visit SABR.org/chapters for more information on SABR regional chapters.

SABR Events Calendar

Scroll up to the top of this newsletter to learn more about the upcoming virtual events on the SABR calendar. In addition, the following in-person meetings are scheduled on our Events Calendar:

August 15: Hot Springs Baseball Weekend (Hot Springs, AR)

We strongly recommend that all SABR chapters follow CDC public health guidelines and your local/state government regulations when scheduling any in-person meetings and events.

Find details on all upcoming meetings on our SABR Events Calendar page.

Around the Web

Here are some recent articles published by and about SABR members:

Rob Arthur: The 2020 Ball Is Less Aerodynamic (Baseball Prospectus)
Eno Sarris: Where has all the offense gone? (The Athletic)
Anika Orrock: Sounds of summer: the joy of baseball on the radio (San Francisco Chronicle)
Ben Zimmer: ‘Injured List’: Out of Action, From the Civil War to Major League Baseball (Wall Street Journal)
Emma Baccellieri: What’s the Craziest Feat We Could See in 60 Games? (Sports Illustrated)
Jeff Passan: Fernando Tatis Jr. is bringing joy back to baseball (ESPN.com)
Jay Jaffe: Despite Outbreak, Marlins Skate to the Top of the NL East (FanGraphs)
Zack Meisel: Zach Plesac, Mike Clevinger and a Cleveland Indians mess (The Athletic)
Rob Mains: What Short-Season Strategies Are Working? (Baseball Prospectus)
Rachael McDaniel: The Ball Field Blues (FanGraphs)
Jack Harris: Negro Leagues 100th anniversary: Triumph amid inequality (Los Angeles Times)
Vahe Gregorian: How a ‘bright light’ of Kansas City became a trailblazing part-owner of the KC Royals (Kansas City Star)
Richard Sandomir: Terry Cannon, Creator of an Alternative to Cooperstown, Dies at 66 (New York Times)
Steven Goldman: The Universal Horace Clarke (Baseball Prospectus)
Benjamin Hill: Lugnuts get creative with colorful in-house collegiate circuit (MiLB.com)
David Laurila: Blue Jays Farm Director Gil Kim on Pitching Prospects, and Disparate Development During a Pandemic (FanGraphs)
Sarah R. Ingber/Davy Andrews/Roger Cormier: Too Far From Town: Staten Island Yankees (Baseball Prospectus)
David A. Scott: 1920 Indians: Pennant fever in Cleveland (Medium.com)
Jeff Cohen: Baseball and BBQ interview with Jon Pessah (Baseball and BBQ Podcast)
Evan Katz: The Robbypad: How Bruce Robinson Revolutionized Catcher’s Protective Gear in 1979 (Baseball by the Sea)

Please note: Some articles may require a separate subscription to view online. SABR does not endorse, and is not responsible or liable for, any content that appears on a third-party website.

This Week in SABR is compiled by Jacob Pomrenke. If you would like us to include an upcoming event, article or any other information in “This Week in SABR,” e-mail jpomrenke@sabr.org.

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