This Week in SABR: August 24, 2012

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Here’s what we’ve been up to as of August 24, 2012:

New membership profile system launched

You all should have received an e-mail on Wednesday with the news that we’ve launched SABR’s new back-end membership profile system at http://members.sabr.org.

The new system, powered by YourMembership.com, includes an upgraded search directory (featuring a field for research interests and expertise), more streamlined event registration, a simpler process for renewing your membership and a “single sign-on” functionality, as well as a more reliable communication system for chapter and committee leaders.

All SABR members can access the new functions by signing in now at http://members.sabr.org.

You can find out more about the features in the new system by clicking here: http://sabr.org/latest/sabr-launches-new-membership-profile-system

So if you’ve had trouble logging in or accessing the Directory over the past year, we hope you’ll give this new system a try. We’re pleased to report that hundreds of members have already logged in to update their profile information since Wednesday.

Thanks go out to Peter Garver, Deb Jayne and Jeff Schatzki for helping to fully implement this new system, and a special thanks to all the chapter and committee leaders who provided valuable input during beta-testing over the past few weeks. We appreciate your patience as we’ve transitioned to the new back-end membership system.

If you have any questions, we’ve prepared a Frequently Asked Questions page at http://sabr.org/content/frequently-asked-questions. If you can’t find your answer there, please contact jpomrenke@sabr.org or djayne@sabr.org.

In the coming weeks, we’ll highlight some of the new features and offer tips on how best to use them. Today, we’ll start with the Directory …

Tips: How to use the new SABR Directory

For your convenience, the online SABR membership directory can be found at http://sabr.org/directory. Most of you will probably access it by clicking the “Directory” button on the Members-Only page at members.sabr.org, but links to the Directory can also be found throughout the SABR website (including in the bottom footer of every page.)

The SABR Directory includes contact information for all of our 6,000+ active members, and it’s searchable by name, location, chapter, committee or research interests/expertise. Lapsed members and non-active members are not included in the Directory, so if you can’t find someone who you know used to be a SABR member that could be the reason why.

Here are some quick tips on using the SABR Directory so you can easily find who you’re searching for:

  • Use last names only: If you are just trying to look up a phone number or e-mail address for a single member, by far the easiest way to find that person is to enter in their last name in the Name field. First names do work, too, but if you’re searching for “Joe Jackson” and he has registered under the name “Joseph Jackson”, the Directory is going to look for someone with the name “Joe”, not “Jos—“. So just search for “Jackson” instead and then scroll down to the J’s to find him. (For the record, Shoeless Joe has never been a SABR member … but you will find the Shoeless Joe Jackson Museum and Baseball Library.)
  • To cross-reference a search: Say you are looking for anyone in the Baseball Records Committee who lives in California or is a member of a California-based chapter. In the Location field, select “United States” then “California”. In the Groups field, check the box for the “Baseball Records Committee”. Scroll down to the bottom and select the green Continue button. That will give you a list of people who are in both groups. Note: Checking two or more boxes in the Groups field will not work. You must use two separate fields. So you might also try the Location field for “California” and the Research Interests/Expertise field for “baseball records” or “statistics” to get a similar result.)
  • To search for Research Interests/Expertise: Type in any team name (“Red Sox”), year (“1968”) or topic (“Negro Leagues”) in the Research Interests and Expertise field, then select the green Continue button. An important function of the SABR Directory is that members can find others who share their interests or who are knowledgeable about a particular subject. SABR members are often a great resource, and someone can usually point you in the right direction to help your research. We encourage all of you to add your own research interests or subjects of expertise to your profile by clicking on the “Profile” button at members.sabr.org.
  • Enter in only what you know for sure: If you are not sure of a name or spelling, just enter in what you know. For instance, if you are looking for Mike Smith but aren’t sure if his first name is registered under Mike or Michael, just type in “Smith” under the “Name” field and scroll down to the M’s. The Directory can only search for what you enter — but it’s also going to search for exactly what you enter. In most cases, typing in only a person’s last name should pull up the result you’re looking for.

Oh, and here’s one more tip: In order to make yourself easier to find in the Directory, we encourage you to edit your own profile to reflect the name that you are commonly called. So if your name is “Stephen” but everyone knows you (and more important: will search for you) as “Steve”, please consider listing yourself that way instead. You can edit your profile at any time by going to http://profile.sabr.org/members/edit.asp or clicking the “Profile” button on the Members-Only page.

2013 “The National Pastime”: Call for Papers

The 2013 issue of The National Pastime, our annual convention journal, will be published at SABR 43 in Philadelphia next summer.

Our theme will be baseball in the Philadelphia area (the Tri-State area of Southeast Pennsylvania, South Jersey and Delaware.) We are looking for submissions dealing with various levels of baseball from Little League and sandlot ball to all levels of professional leagues. Philly has a rich tradition of baseball from its early beginnings in the 1830s, to the National League and American Association Athletics, to Connie Mack’s A’s, the Hilldale Daisies, the Philadelphia Bobbies, the Philadelphia Stars and, of course, the Phillies. We are looking to provide a broad perspective of Philadelphia baseball from its early years to the present day.

If you are interested in submitting an article, please send an abstract to Morris Levin. Please include not only your topic, but why it interests you, and how you are qualified to research it. What sources do you plan to use? A typical article in The National Pastime runs 2,000 to 5,000 words. Upon receipt of your abstract, we will forward a copy of the SABR guidelines for submission of papers.

All interested authors should make sure their SABR membership is up to date. It is longstanding SABR policy that only the work of SABR members is published in our journals. You can renew your membership online at members.sabr.org before you submit your paper.

To read articles from this year’s The National Pastime, focusing on baseball in Minnesota, click here. The TNP archives can be found here.

Ozzie Guillen entertains SABR crowd at Rocky Mountain Chapter luncheon

Ozzie Guillen, manager for the Miami (nee Florida) Marlins, was the headline attraction for a SABR Rocky Mountain Chapter luncheon on August 18 in Denver, Colorado. In front of 91 SABR attendees, the colorful manager of the team with baseball’s most colorful uniforms regaled the crowd with a multitude of stories and commentary and won over a few new fans in the process.

The meeting opened with a few announcements and chapter business items as many in the audience began to enjoy a buffet meal at the Denver ChopHouse in downtown Denver. Chapter board member and past president Paul Parker emceed the affair, introducing chapter president Matthew Repplinger to handle this first part of the meeting. Announcements were made about upcoming Games of the Month (with two games in September, on the 22nd and the 27th) and upcoming dates for the Monthly Luncheons, held at the Wynkoop Brewery in Denver on the third Wednesday of each month. A note was also made about the 15th annual Rocky Mountain SABR Banquet on November 9, announcing Maury Wills as our keynote speaker and Roland Hemond as the featured speaker.

To introduce Ozzie Guillen, the emcee posed a trivia question for the crowd: Who was the last manager traded prior to Ozzie? (Answer at the end of this post). Ozzie, who attended with his son Ozzie Jr., then took to the podium and began to recall stories about how he got into baseball and what the game was like while he played, mused about what he likes and dislikes about the game today, and commented on his thoughts about aspects of modern life. The Caracas native talked about being scouted and coming to America as a 16-year-old, and compared how he had to cope compared to today’s players. He jested how when he was scouted there was one scout for 30-40 kids, whereas now there are 70 scouts for one kid, yet also noted how his parents didn’t know how he was doing until he came home in the winter and didn’t understand the hardships of trying to reach the major leagues. He lamented about the travel involved in being a baseball player and manager and how it caused him to miss a lot of moments in his children’s lives, as well as how front offices in the modern game treat baseball more as a business and lack a high level of passion for the game.

He said winning the World Series with the White Sox in 2005 was a dream come true, and expressed his appreciation for Davey Concepcion, Harold Baines and longtime SABR member Roland Hemond. He didn’t even swear once. The general impression from the crowd was that of a different man than the image  created via the sports media.

(Answer to the trivia question: Lou Piniella)

— Matt Mitchell

SABR Digital Library: Nineteenth Century Stars

In case you missed it, here’s a blast from the past — and the next book in the SABR Digital Library!

Nineteenth Century Stars: 2012 Edition
Edited by Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker
With a new preface by John Thorn  

With almost 150 years of baseball history, the stories of many players from before 1900 were long obscured. SABR first attempted to remedy this in 1989 by publishing a collection of 136 fascinating biographies of talented late-1800s players. Twenty-three years later, Nineteenth Century Stars has been updated with revised stats and re-released in both a new paperback and in e-book form.

Nineteenth Century Stars is a labor of SABR’s Nineteenth Century Committee. Founded in 1983, the committee first released the book in 1989. Since then, both SABR and the committee have grown more than ten-fold, and interest in baseball’s origins has increased. Many wonderful new books on the era are appearing, but Nineteenth Century Stars remains one of the founding works of the nineteenth century baseball canon, including the works of many writers, including Robert L. Tiemann, Mark Rucker, John Thorn, Joseph M. Overfield, Paul Adomites, Richard Puff and L. Robert Davids.

Buy the book:

SABR members:

To view all books in the SABR Digital Library, visit SABR.org/ebooks.

To learn more about SABR Publications, contact Publications Editor Cecilia Tan at ctan@sabr.org.

2 new biographies published by the SABR BioProject

Two new biographies were posted as part of the SABR Baseball Biography Project, which brings us to a total of 2,047 published biographies.

Here are the new bios:

All new biographies can be found here: http://sabr.org/bioproj/recent

You can find the SABR BioProject at its new home page: SABR.org/BioProject.

Get involved! If you’d like to help contribute to the SABR BioProject, visit our BioProject Resources page or read the FAQs section to get started. We’re also looking to expand the BioProject to include all “encyclopedic” articles on baseball-related subjects from past SABR publications or committee newsletters. If you come across an article you think should be included in the SABR “baseball repository” at the BioProject, send a copy or link to markarmour04@gmail.com or jpomrenke@sabr.org.

Research committee newsletters

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

Chapter meeting recaps

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

SABR Events Calendar

Here is a list of upcoming SABR events:

All SABR meetings and events are open to the public. Feel free to bring a baseball-loving friend … and make many new ones! Check out the SABR Events Calendar at SABR.org/events.

Around the Web

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

Read these articles and more at SABR.org/latest.

All previous editions of This Week in SABR can be found here: http://sabr.org/content/this-week-in-sabr-archives. If you would like us to include an upcoming event, article or any other information in “This Week in SABR”, e-mail Jacob Pomrenke at jpomrenke@sabr.org.

Find exclusive Members’ Only resources and information here: http://members.sabr.org

Did you know you can renew your membership at any time? 1- and 3-year SABR memberships are available by clicking “Renew” at http://members.sabr.org. Please also consider a donation to SABR to support baseball research at SABR.org/donate.

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Replying to this e-mail goes to an undeliverable address. If you would like to contact the SABR office, please visit: http://sabr.org/about/contact-sabr


Originally published: August 24, 2012. Last Updated: April 3, 2020.

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