This Week in SABR: August 31, 2012

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Here’s what we’ve been up to as of August 31, 2012:

SABR tips: Research committee newsletters

Last week, we 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.

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

Today, we want to highlight a feature that’s one of our favorite benefits of SABR membership: research committee newsletters.

SABR members have a variety of interests, and this is reflected in the diversity of our 26 research committees — from Baseball and the Arts, to Statistical Analysis, to the Deadball Era, to Women in Baseball.

All SABR members are eligible to sign up for — or contribute to — newsletters from any research committee. Committee newsletters are another outlet SABR offers for publication of your research articles, and also a respository for news and notes, pertinent announcements, and updates about committee goings-on.

The publication schedule varies by committee. Some newsletters come out once a month while most are published quarterly or bi-annually. So while you’re waiting for the next Baseball Research Journal or The National Pastime to show up in your mailbox, these newsletters are a great source to read new baseball research from SABR members.

These recent committee newsletters have produced a few gems that we encourage you to read:

You can view all past committee newsletters by going to any Research Committe page here and selecting “Newsletters”.

To sign up to receive a committee’s newsletter, just go to members.sabr.org and select the “Join a committee” button.

And most importantly: To contribute an article to any committee newsletter, because none of these newsletters could be published without your efforts, contact a committee leader to discuss your ideas and learn how to submit a story.

SABR Bookshelf listings: Summer 2012

Periodically throughout the year, SABR.org publishes listings of new books that are received at the SABR office. This feature is called the SABR Bookshelf.

Here are the SABR Bookshelf listings for Summer 2012:

http://sabr.org/content/sabr-bookshelf-summer-2012

To get your NEW book listed on The SABR Bookshelf, make sure a review copy is sent to: The SABR Bookshelf, Society for American Baseball Research, 4455 E. Camelback Rd., Ste. D-140, Phoenix, AZ 85018.

To ensure a listing in The Baseball Index — SABR’s online catalog of baseball research materials at www.baseballindex.org — make sure a review copy is sent to The Baseball Index, 4025 Beechwood Pl., Riverside, CA 92506.

Bolded names indicates that the author(s) is a SABR member. Click here for a list of publishers found in the SABR Bookshelf, along with their contact information.

All new SABR Bookshelf listings can be purchased at the SABR Bookstore, powered by Amazon.com.

Click here for more detailed information on each of these books:

  • Baseball’s Starry Night: Reliving Major League Baseball’s 2011 Wild Card Night of Shock and Awe, by Paul Kocak
  • ‘The Deacon’s’ Daughter, by Carol McKechnie Montgomery with Jerry Hanks 
  • Legal Decisions that Shaped Modern Baseball, by Patrick K. Thornton 
  • Packaging Baseball: How Marketing Embellishes the Cultural Experience, by Mathew J. Bartkowiak and Yuya Kiuchi 
  • Addie Joss on Baseball, edited by Rich Blevins 
  • Ty Cobb: Two Biographies, by H.G. Salsinger, edited by William R. Cobb 
  • John Tortes “Chief” Meyers: A Baseball Biography, by William A. Young 
  • Steve Carlton and the 1972 Phillies, by Bruce Morgan 
  • Base Ball Pioneers 1850-1879: The Clubs and Players Who Spread the Sport Nationwide, edited by Peter Morris, Bill Ryczek, Jan Finkel, Len Levin and Richard Malatzky 
  • Buck Ewing: A Baseball Biography, by Roy Kerr 
  • Of Monarchs and Black Barons: Essays on Baseball’s Negro Leagues, by James A. Riley 
  • Baseball State by State: Major and Negro League Players, Ballparks, Museums and Historical Sites, by Chris Jensen 
  • Bluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life, by Katya Cengel 
  • The Glory Years of the Detroit Tigers: 1920-1950, by William M. Anderson 
  • “If You Were Only White”: The Life of Leroy “Satchel” Paige, by Donald Spivey 
  • Dick Siebert: A Life In Baseball, by Joel Rippel 
  • Diamonds and Diplomas: How to Get Recruited to Play College Baseball, by Bill Ballew 
  • Ron Santo: A Perfect 10, by Pat Hughes and Rich Wolfe 
  • Baseball’s Rare Triple Crown, by Michael Francis Mann
  • Knuckleball: The Uncertainties of (a) life, by Ken Beckley
  • My Baseball Journey: A Broadcaster’s Memoir, by Bill Brown and Tim Gregg
  • World Series Winners: What it Takes to Claim Baseball’s Ultimate Prize, by Ross Bernstein
  • They Call Me Oil Can, by Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd with Mike Shalin
  • Harmon Killebrew: Ultimate Slugger, by Steve Aschburner
  • Connie Mack: Grand Old Man of Baseball, by Frederick G. Lieb
  • You Stink! Terrible Teams & Pathetic Players, by Eric J. Wittenberg and Michael Aubrecht
  • The Man in the Crowd: A Fan’s Notes on Four Generations of New York Baseball, by Stanley Cohen
  • Season of ’42: Joe D, Teddy Ballgame, and Baseball’s First Fight to Survive a Turbulent First Year of War, by Jack Cavanaugh
  • Nine Aces and a Joker: Defining Seasons from British Baseball’s Standout Pitchers, by Joe Gray
  • The Hall of Nearly Great, edited by Jason Wojciechowski & Marc Normandin

To see all past listings from the SABR Bookshelf, click here.

A generous gift from Baseball Pioneers, 1850-1870

Speaking of baseball books, check out this good news from SABR member David Stalker posted at Seamheads.com this week:

Some time back, to my surprise, I received an email from McFarland Publishing stating that I would be receiving half of the royalties for an upcoming baseball book. The funds that I would be receiving were to go to my baseball memorial series titled, “David Stalker’s Early Baseball and Deadball Era Memorial Series.” All I had to do was accept this generous offer.

The book, which is now available, by McFarland Publishing is titled, BASE BALL PIONEERS, 1850-1870: The Clubs and Players Who Spread the Sport Nationwide, edited by Peter Morris, William J. Ryczek, Jan Finkel, Leonard Levin and Richard Malatzky.

I first met baseball historian Peter Morris back in 2009 in Paw Paw, Michigan. He accepted an invitation to speak at the dedication for the Killefer Brothers monument, which may be viewed in beautiful downtown Paw Paw.

Peter saw first hand how much the memorial meant to the Killefer Family, the community and donors. Most importantly, he saw how the brothers Bill and Wade were being honored and remembered forever in stone.

It was Peter’s suggestion to send half the royalties to my project. The other half is going to SABR’s Negro League Baseball Grave Marker Project, which places markers at the graves of former Negro League players.

Purchasing this outstanding book is a wonderful way to donate towards two non-profit projects working hard to preserve baseball history. I know this will be a very popular book for fans of the game, and of American History in general. I hope that those ordering will take into consideration a nice donation to their local library or historical society as well.

This book contains well-researched early baseball history from a highly skilled group, for places such as Connecticut, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Maryland and The District of Columbia. Chapters also included for St. Louis, Louisville, Atlanta and the San Francisco Bay area.

I am extremely grateful and appreciative to Peter Morris and the many who joined him making this book possible, and to receive royalties in care of the Early Baseball and Deadball Era Memorial Series. I think of all the long hours put into this book, and then so generously given away for the game they love. I accepted this gift, and am extremely excited over possibilities it creates. This will help me continue unveiling beautiful baseball memorials to various communities, possibly one near you.

Related links:

Seamheads Negro Leagues Database updates with 1923 stats

SABR member Gary Ashwill and Co. are doing fantastic work over at Seamheads.com with their Negro Leagues Database, which was recently updated with stats from the 1923 Eastern Colored League:

In 1923, after three seasons of Negro National League baseball in the Midwest, the big northeastern African American clubs finally got their act together, forming the Eastern Colored League. This week we’re proud to add to the DB that first season of the ECL, compiled by Patrick Rock.

In the NNL’s first season, the club owned by the league president, Rube Foster, dominated and easily won the pennant.  The ECL followed the same pattern, with league president Ed Bolden’s Hilldale Club winning nearly twice as many games as the second-place team.  Led by player-manager John Henry Lloyd (.367), catcher and batting champ Biz Mackey (.423), center fielder George Johnson (who topped the league with 8 home runs and 46 RBI) and young lefty James “Nip” Winters (10-3, 2.36), Hilldale easily brushed aside all opposition.  The only blight on their season was the failure of the two leagues to agree to a World Series, so the “Darby Daisies” didn’t get the chance to test themselves against the NNL champion Kansas City Monarchs.

Before the season got going it might have seemed that the New York Lincoln Giants would serve as Hilldale’s most formidable opposition.  They had signed two of the NNL’s best pitchers, Dave Brown (an astonishing 43-8 with the Chicago American Giants in the NNL’s first three season) and Bill Holland (39-32 with the Detroit Stars over the same period).  Combining this duo with their ace (and manager) Cyclone Joe Williams, certainly to that point the greatest pitcher in black baseball history, and Negro Southern League lefthander Sam Streeter, the Lincolns completed one of the most impressive pitching foursomes ever seen, and supported them with a solid cast of position players (Spottswood Poles, Jules Thomas, Bill Pierce, Oliver Marcell, Robert Hudspeth)—but fell flat on their faces, finishing only 18-23, fifth in a six-team league.

Although the biggest influx of new players to the six clubs of the ECL’s inaugural class came from raiding NNL rosters, at least two notable players did make their first appearance as ECL rookies in 1923: right-handed pitcher Arthur “Rats” Henderson (10-10 with the Bacharach Giants), and the man who is still commonly considered the greatest baseball player in Cuban history, “El Inmortal,” Martín Dihigo.

We’re still working on fielding statistics for the 1923 ECL; in the meantime we do have games played at each position, and for the purposes of metrics like WAR and Win Shares, players are all currently treated as average fielders.

Next up will be the 1907 and 1924 Negro leagues, and more Cuban seasons from the 1910s.

To view the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database, visit http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/index.php

Related link:

Arizona Fall League rosters announced; join us for SABR AFL Conference

We’re busy preparing the schedule for the fourth annual SABR Arizona Fall League Conference — and we hope you’ll join us for the AFL Conference on November 1-3, 2012, in Phoenix, Arizona. Details and registration will be available soon at SABR.org/AFL.

All baseball fans are welcome to attend; the AFL Conference is usually an intimate affair centered around a few ballgames and a Flame Delhi Chapter meeting. In years past, we’ve also attended the Arizona Major League Alumni dinner, visited the “Play Ball: The Cactus League Experience” museum exhibit and toured Chase Field, home of the Diamondbacks. It’s a fun, low-key weekend with SABR friends.

In the meantime, 2012 AFL team rosters were released this week. Here’s some of the top prospects we’ll be seeing at the Rising Stars Game and other AFL Conference games this fall (via Jonathan Mayo at MLB.com):

The Arizona Fall League will be commemorating its 20th anniversary thoughout this fall’s campaign, and once again, the elite finishing school for prospects has assembled an impressive collection of Minor League talent to celebrate in style.

A total of 24 players currently on MLB.com’s Top 100 Prospect list are on the rosters announced on Wednesday, led by Minors stolen-base record holder Billy Hamilton of the Reds, Anthony Rendon of the Nationals and the Marlins’ Christian Yelich, all of whom are in the top 30.

Hamilton, who set the single-season Minor League stolen-base record this year and has 154 steals as of Tuesday, will be trying out a new position in Arizona. A shortstop up until this point as a professional, Hamilton will be seeing time in the outfield while playing for the Peoria Javelinas. Many scouts believe Hamilton is best suited for center field, and this could be the first step toward a full-time transition to the outfield for the speedster.

View the team rosters here and find out who your favorite team is sending to the Fall League: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120829&content_id=37521204&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

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.

SABR Digital Library: Nineteenth Century Stars

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 2,049 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

  • No committee newsletters were published this week

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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Originally published: August 31, 2012. Last Updated: April 3, 2020.

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