This Week in SABR: March 1, 2013

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Welcome to “This Week in SABR!” Here’s what we’ve been up to as of March 1, 2013:

Download the 2013 SABR Analytics Conference digital program

We’re excited for the second annual SABR Analytics Conference, presented by Major League Baseball and Bloomberg Sports, on Thursday, March 7 through Saturday, March 9, 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Thursday’s programming will be held at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, 555 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85004.

Friday and Saturday’s programming will be held at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown, 340 North 3rd Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004.

The full schedule is  available online at http://sabr.org/analytics/schedule.

Highlights of the 2013 SABR Analytics Conference schedule include:

Conference registration is still available at the SABR Store. Click here to register.

Our room block at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown is now sold out. SABR has set up a special rate of $149/night (plus tax) at the nearby Renaissance Phoenix Downtown, 50 East Adams Street in Phoenix.

The rooms at the Renaissance are only available for the nights of March 6 through March 9 (checking out on March 10). Rooms may still be available at both the Sheraton and Renaissance after Tuesday, February 19, but not necessarily at our special SABR rate of $149/night (plus tax.) Spring training is peak season for all Phoenix-area hotels, so the market rate may be much higher.

SABR announces 2013 Chadwick Award recipients

SABR is pleased to announce the 2013 recipients of the Henry Chadwick Award, established to honor the game’s great researchers—historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists—for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America’s present with its past.

The 2013 recipients of the Henry Chadwick Award are:

  • Bill Carle (1955-  ) has been a SABR member since 1977 and has served as chairman of SABR’s Biographical Research Committee since 1988. Carle has attended every National Convention since 1979, when he was inspired by Cliff Kachline’s and Joe Simenic’s discussion of tracking down accurate birth and death data for major league players. Carle grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and has been a diehard Royals fan for many years. His work on biographical data continues, and the Biographical Research Committee regularly announces new discoveries.
  • Paul Dickson (1939-  ), the author of more than 55 books, is best known in the baseball research community for The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, now in its third edition. First published in 1989 when it won the Macmillan-SABR Baseball Research Award, the dictionary has grown to nearly a thousand pages, and it has its own website at baseballdictionary.com. Dickson has also written several other key baseball books, including The Unwritten Rules of Baseball, The Hidden Language of Baseball, The Joy of Keeping Score, Baseball: The Presidents’ Game (with William B. Mead), and most recently, Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick.
  • Fred Lieb (1888-1980) started writing for Baseball Magazine in 1909 and was still contributing to The Baseball Research Journal 67 years later. In between he was one of baseball’s top New York sportswriters and a key correspondent for The Sporting News. At mid-century Lieb packaged his extensive knowledge into a half-dozen team histories, bolstered with input from front office executives, players, other sportswriters and The Sporting News archives. Lieb’s books are invaluable to anyone researching the game behind the scenes over the first half of the twentieth century.
  • Francis C. Richter (1854-1926) was the founder and editor of Sporting Life for its entire existence, from 1883 until 1917. He was also the first editor of the American League Reach Guide, which he edited until he died 25 years later. His book Richter’s History and Records of Baseball, published in 1914, is one of the seminal works in baseball history. It is the first record book arranged topically rather than chronologically, and the first book to list the record-setting achievements of individuals and teams throughout professional baseball. Richter was a longtime sportswriter, who helped form the Base Ball Reporters Association of America.
  • John Thorn (1947-  ) is the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, an honor that reflects his incomparable contributions to baseball history. In partnership with Pete Palmer, he created The Hidden Game of Baseball and Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, not only a complete record of the game’s statistical history, but one that included sabermetric analysis. Thorn served as senior creative consultant to Ken Burns’s Baseball, and in 2011, he published Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, tracing baseball’s American origins back to the 18th century.

By honoring individuals for the length and breadth of their contribution to the study and enjoyment of baseball, the Chadwick Award will educate the baseball community about sometimes little known but vastly important contributions from the game’s past and thus encourage the next generation of researchers.

The criteria for the award reads in part: The contributions of nominees must have had public impact. This may be demonstrated by publication of research in any of a variety of formats: books, magazine articles, websites, etc. The compilation of a significant database or archive that has facilitated the published research of others will also be considered in the realm of public impact.

For a complete list of Chadwick Award winners, click here.

Get 25% discount on a new MLB.TV subscription for entire 2013 season

SABR members, you have the opportunity to take advantage of a special offer from MLB Advanced Media for the 2013 season:

The link above allows you access to purchase a new 2013 MLB.TV subscription at a special price for SABR members only. Please keep this link confidential.

This 25% discount is valid for each month of the 2013 season.

If you already have an MLB.com account, please sign in on the next page. If you do not, you will create a new MLB.com account as you purchase.

Watch every 2013 Regular Season out-of-market game LIVE or on-demand in HD Quality. Choose home or away broadcasts. MLB.TV is on your favorite devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android phones, Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation and more. Watch up to four games at once with Mosaic. DVR functionality lets you pause or rewind live games. PLUS watch select 2013 Spring Training games LIVE online.

Last call: 2013 SABR Election Nominations

The SABR Nominating Committee seeks nominations for candidates for the Spring 2013 elections. All candidates for the Board of Directors must have been members of the Society for at least the preceding four years to be eligible for election. Deadline for nominations is March 1, 2013 (that’s today!) Nominees must prepare a Candidate Statement Form following guidelines that will be available from any Nominating Committee member.

The Candidate Statement Form, which will be available for download from the SABR website soon, must be received by the Nominating Committee chair no later than March 15, 2013.

The offices to be filled:

  • President (2-year term; currently Vince Gennaro)
  • Director (3-year term; currently Leslie Heaphy)
  • Director (3-year term; no incumbent)

The Nominating Committee also seeks your input. Members are asked to submit office-specific questions for each of the offices open in this election. We also seek input on general questions for every nominee. Candidates will answer selected questions on the Candidate Statement Form. Regional Chapter Leaders and Research Committee Chairs are especially encouraged to pass along this request to their respective members to better address member needs.

Self-nominations are welcome. If you would like to nominate yourself or another candidate or suggest a question for the candidates, contact a member of the Nominating Committee: chair Barry Mednick, Rick Schabowski, and Barry Deutsch.

Reviewers needed for SABR 43 research presentation abstracts

Reviewers are needed for SABR 43 research presentation abstracts.

The abstracts will be reviewed blindly (identifying information removed). Each reviewer will evaluate approximately 10 abstracts, assessing them on importance, originality, clarity, and organization. The reviews will be done during March. Potential reviewers need not be “experts” in particular topics, though they are encouraged to indicate the types of abstracts they would welcome and/or wish to avoid. If you’re interested, send a message to the Research Presentations email at either sabr2013-presentations@comcast.net or sabr43-presentations@comcast.net.

Through on-site judging, the most highly-regarded presentations will receive the Doug Pappas Award for best oral presentation and the USA Today Sports Weekly Award for best poster presentation.

SABR 43 will be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from July 31-August 4, 2013. Registration and hotel information can be found at SABR.org/convention.

4 new biographies published by the SABR BioProject

Four new biographies were posted as part of the SABR Baseball Biography Project, which brings us to a total of 2,251 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 SABR.org/BioProject.

Bios on more than just ballplayers: The ambitious goal of the SABR Baseball Biography Project is to publish a full-life biography of every major league player in history. But SABR members write about a lot more than just ballplayers. In addition, we have pages for Ballparks, Broadcasters, Executives, Managers, Scouts, Spouses, Umpires and a lot more on the BioProject website. You can browse all of these categories at http://sabr.org/bioproj/browse. So if you’ve ever thought, “Hey, that person (or ballpark) should get the full BioProject treatment” — write the story and we’ll publish it!

Check out the new Baseball Ballparks Project: The SABR Baseball Biography Project has been accepting/publishing “biographies” of Ballparks for a few years, and we have 39 of them on our website at http://sabr.org/bioproj/parks. However, this thing just got real. Ballparks are now its very own PROJECT — the Baseball Ballparks Project, our first official spin-off. The project leader is Scott Ferkovich, who is now in charge of recruiting ballparks articles and publicizing them. Learn more by clicking here.

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.

Pre-order SABR’s new “Memorable Teams in Baseball History” books

SABR continues its longstanding partnership with the University of Nebraska Press in 2013 with two new titles in the “Memorable Teams in Baseball History” series, which focuses on iconic teams with an unquestionable legacy in baseball history.

Each book focuses on a team’s memorable single season and collects essays detailing the players, moments, and games that define these teams. The essays bring together contributions of many SABR writers and devoted fans who share passions for these teams and wish to relive those exceptional seasons.

You can now pre-order our two new books, to be published on April 1, 2013:

Drama and Pride in the Gateway City: The 1964 St. Louis Cardinals
Edited by John Harry Stahl and Bill Nowlin
Associate Editors: Tom Heinlein, Russell Lake, and Leonard Levin

By 1964 the storied St. Louis Cardinals had gone seventeen years without so much as a pennant. Things began to turn around in 1953, when August A. Busch Jr. bought the team and famously asked where all the black players were. Under the leadership of men like Bing Devine and Johnny Keane, the Cardinals began signing talented players regardless of color, and slowly their star started to rise again.

Drama and Pride in the Gateway City commemorates the team that Bing Devine built, the 1964 team that prevailed in one of the tightest three-way pennant races of all time and then went on to win the World Series, beating the New York Yankees in the full seven games. All the men come alive in these pages—pitchers Ray Sadecki and Bob Gibson, players Lou Brock, Curt Flood, and Bobby Shantz, manager Johnny Keane, his coaches, the Cardinals’ broadcasters, and Bill White, who would one day run the entire National League—along with the dramatic events that made the 1964 Cardinals such a memorable club in a memorable year.

To pre-order Drama and Pride in the Gateway City: The 1964 St. Louis Cardinals, click here

Bridging Two Dynasties: The 1947 New York Yankees
Edited by Lyle Spatz
Associate Editors: Maurice Bouchard and Leonard Levin

Of all the New York Yankees championship teams, the 1947 club seemed the least likely. Bridging the gap between the dynasties of Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, the team, managed by Bucky Harris, was coming off three non-pennant-winning seasons and given little chance to unseat the defending American League champion Boston Red Sox. And yet, led by Joe DiMaggio, this un-Yankees-like squad of rookies, retreads, and a few solid veterans easily won the pennant over the Detroit Tigers and the heavily favored Red Sox, along the way compiling an American League–record nineteen-game winning streak. They then went on to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a dramatic seven-game World Series that was the first to be televised and the first to feature an African American player.  

Bridging Two Dynasties commemorates this historic club—the players, on the field and off, and the events surrounding their remarkable season. Along with player biographies, including those of future Hall of Famers DiMaggio, Bucky Harris, Yogi Berra, and Phil Rizzuto, the book features a seasonal timeline and covers pertinent topics such as the winning streak, the Yankees’ involvement in Leo Durocher’s suspension, and the thrilling World Series.

To pre-order Bridging Two Dynasties: The 1947 New York Yankees, click here

In 2012, SABR and UNP published the first two books in the “Memorable Teams in Baseball History” series: The Team That Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers (ed. Lyle Spatz); and Pitching, Defense, and Three-Run Homers: The 1970 Baltimore Orioles (eds. Mark Armour and Malcolm Allen.) For more information on the series, click here.

January 27 Board minutes posted

Minutes from the Board of Directors conference call on January 27, 2013, have now been posted on the SABR website.

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

http://sabr.org/content/sabr-board-minutes

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

Exclusive opportunity for SABR members from Bowman

Our partners at Bowman are giving you the chance to compete against fellow baseball fans for the chance to win Autograph Cards of top prospects in the “Bowman Prospect Challenge.” Build your roster full of MLB prospects, start your best prospects and watch them accumulate points based on their in-season performance and progression to the Majors. The better your players perform and progress toward the Majors, the more points you accumulate. The highest point earners will win autographed cards of top baseball prospects each month with a Grand Prize to be awarded at the end of the 2013 Minor League season!

Step Up To The Bowman Prospect Challenge: Visit Topps.com/BowmanGame and use this FREE CODE — PR-8YP2V — to start playing now.

Be sure to stop by Bowman’s table at the 2013 SABR Analytics Conference. They will be distributing free packs of cards to all attendees.

SABR members, get a 6-issue trial subscription to Baseball America

Our friends at Baseball America are bringing passionate fans and industry insiders the most complete coverage of the game.

SABR members can get a trial subscription of six issues of Baseball America magazine for just $9.95. Visit http://www.baseballamerica.com/6-issues/?BNWOFP for details.

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: http://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 New Member 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.

Here is a list of new members:

Name Hometown     Name Hometown
John Baragona Tempe, AZ     Joe Milazzo Fairfax, VA
Jeffrey Burd Gurnee, IL     Matthew Nadel Springfield, NJ
Danny Cahill Bristol, CT     Irwin Nahinsky Louisville, KY
Tom Carroll Hamilton, VA     Mark Perkins Rocklin, CA
Lori Ducharme Rockville, MD     Carl Rinder Oak Park, IL
Darlene Hines East Aurora, NY     Martin Rothschild San Diego, CA
Mike Krautner Frostburg, MD     Timothy Runestad Austin, TX
Ed Kravitz St. Petersburg, FL     Bob Sachs Bethesda, MD
Lester LaBov Naples, FL     Tommy Staley Frisco, TX
Mike Lukas Toronto, ON     James Turvey Jamaica Plain, MA
Todd McDorman Crawfordsville, IN     Lizz Wilkinson Ann Arbor, MI
Dennis McFall Manhattan, KS        

 

Research committee newsletters

Here are the new SABR research committee newsletters published this week:

Chapter meeting news

Here are the chapter meeting recaps published this week:

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

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

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.

Are you following us on Twitter or Facebook? Get SABR updates every day at @SABR or by searching “SABR” on Facebook.

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: March 1, 2013. Last Updated: April 3, 2020.

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