This Week in SABR: September 25, 2020

September 25, 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 September 25, 2020:

Scott Carter joins SABR staff as Executive Vice President

SABR is pleased to welcome Scott Carter as its new Executive Vice President. In this role, which begins on September 28 and is based at the SABR office in Phoenix, Arizona, he will have a variety of responsibilities ranging from membership development and event marketing to fundraising and corporate partnerships.

Carter brings more than 15 years of experience in the business of baseball to SABR. Most recently, he served as the Director of Marketing and Corporate Partnerships at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona, the spring training home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox. His career also includes lead marketing and event planning roles with decorated Minor League Baseball clubs, where his creative and collaborative strengths drove increased attendance and revenues for the Durham Bulls, Fresno Grizzlies, and Rancho Cucamonga Quakes.

A graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Carter now resides in Gilbert, Arizona, with his wife, Kianey, and two sons.

SABR Digital Library: Baseball’s Biggest Blowout Games

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

Baseball’s Biggest Blowout Games
Edited by Bill Nowlin
Associate editors: Len Levin and Carl Riechers
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-9701-5943-1, $24.95
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-9701-5942-4, $9.99
8.5″ x 11″, 396 pages

Baseball’s Biggest Blowout Games tells the story of the most lopsided games in major-league baseball history.

Since the American League was established in 1901, the biggest blowout game in major-league history was on August 22, 2007, when the Texas Rangers beat the Baltimore Orioles, 30-3. That’s a 27-run differential. It eclipsed the 25 runs between the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Browns on June 8, 1950, at Fenway Park, a game that ended up 29-4. And that game had followed a blowout from the very day before: Red Sox 20, Browns 4. That’s a back-to-back blowout total of 49-8.

If you’re an Orioles fan, you might not want to revisit that 30-3 game but you can revel in the September 28, 2000, game in which the O’s beat the Blue Jays, 23-1.

We have included the top four games for each franchise, so every fan can have a chance to read about his or her team winning big. Then we snuck in the six biggest blowout games from postseason history, too.

This project is the collaborative work of 77 members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). These 126 game accounts are part of SABR’s Games Project.

Contributors include: Steve Behnke, Gary Belleville, Stephen D. Boren, Thomas J. Brown Jr., Robert Brustad, Frederick C. (Rick) Bush, Ralph Caola, Gabriella Carr, Ken Carrano, Alan Cohen, Richard Cuicchi, Daniel J. DiNardo, Bruce G. Enos, Greg Erion, Scott Fletcher, Adam Foldes, Brian Frank, Adrian Fung, Gordon J. Gattie, Steven Glassman, Tom Hawthorn, Brent Heutmaker, John Paul Hill, Paul Hofmann, Mike Huber, Chuck Johnson, Chris Jones, Jeff Kallman, Zach Kleiman, Anders Koskinen, Justin Krueger, Jeff Laing, Kevin Larkin, Bob LeMoine, Len Levin, Mike Lynch, Diane MacLennan, Andrew Milner, Lea Moss, Jeff Nayadley, Bill Nowlin, Mark Panuthos, Laura Peebles, Jacob Pomrenke, David W. Pugh, Alan Raylesberg, Carmen Reale, Dave Rickard, Carl Riechers, Joel Rippel, Benjamin Sabin, Louis H. Schiff, Harry Schoger, Thomas E. Schott, Joe Schuster, Peter Seidel, Andrew Sharp, Blake W. Sherry, Mark S. Sternman, Creg Stephenson, Andy Terrick, Stew Thornley, Bob Timmermann, Tony Valley, Joseph Wancho, Darin Watson, Bob Webster, Steven C. Weiner, Steve West, Herb Wilson, Daniel Winkler, Jim Wohlenhaus, Gregory H. Wolf, Graham Womack, Brian Wood, Brian Wright, and Jack Zerby.

SABR members, get this e-book for FREE!

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

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 members can download all of our Digital Library e-books for free or get 50% off the paperback edition. Find all past titles at SABR.org/ebooks.

IWBC unveils memorial dedicated to African American women in baseball

The International Women’s Baseball Center unveiled a historical marker designed to honor the contributions of African American women in baseball during the second annual SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference.

The second of nine planned pylons for the IWBC’s future outdoor museum in Rockford, Illinois, the memorial was presented following the Negro Leagues Centennial Celebration on Saturday, September 12.

“In most written history, most stories that are re-told, and most movies that are made, women of color have simply been ignored or given a cursory nod,” IWBC president Kat Williams said in a pre-recorded video that aired during the virtual conference. “That stops now. What they did, what they do, matters. Their legacy is our legacy. And until women of color are given the acknowledgment and the honor they deserve in the game of baseball, what we think we know about the game of baseball and girls and women’s participation in it is simply wrong.”

The pylon features the photographs of 13 different African American women who have made an impact in baseball.

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

— Peter Warren

Watch more highlights from the 2020 SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference

The second annual Women in Baseball Conference, sponsored by SABR and the International Women’s Baseball Center, and hosted by Rockford University, was held on September 11-13, 2020.

This year’s conference was a virtual event centered around the theme “Celebrating African American Women in Baseball.”

Watch highlights from the Being a Black Woman is My Superpower panel, with agent Lonnie Murray, Maacah Scott of the Chicago White Sox, and Jacara Ware of the Arizona Diamondbacks
Watch highlights from the Player Panel, with MLB’s Elizabeth Benn, Rachel Folden of the Chicago Cubs, Team Canada’s Marika Lyszczyk, Bianca Smith from Carroll University, and Madison Femia
Watch highlights from our keynote speaker, Lauren Meyer, director of The Other Boys of Summer
Click here to watch highlights from more panels and presentations on YouTube

In addition to learning about topics such as the Dolly Vardens, Maud Nelson, Tillie Ford, the Hagerstown Mollys, and much more, there was a celebration of the Negro Leagues Centennial on Saturday night, with a special design unveiling for an outdoor pylon in Rockford. The celebration was followed by the announcement of Effa Manley as the 2020 Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

Visit SABR.org/women-in-baseball-conference for more highlights, stories, and clips from this exciting event.

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 Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City; Wisconsin baseball historians Lee Kluck and Matt Bednarski; Yogi author Jon Pessah, Kings of Queens author Erik Sherman, and SABR First Games Back project co-editor Alan Cohen; Stealing Home author Eric Nusbaum and former Miami Orioles star Scott Christopher.

Here are some more upcoming virtual events you can attend online; check the Events Calendar for complete details:

September 29: IBWAA: Baseball History and Trivia with Ray Doswell (8:00 p.m. EDT)
September 30: Northeast Florida Chapter meeting with Jeanne Glazer (7:00 p.m. EDT)
September 30: “Say It Ain’t Contagious” panel discussion with Adrian Burgos Jr., Craig Calcaterra, Steven Goldman, Frank Guridy, Lincoln Mitchell, and Tova Wang (7:00 p.m. EDT)
September 30: Elysian Fields (N.J.) Chapter meeting (9:00 p.m. EDT)
October 3: Talkin’ Baseball: Dennis Hetrick (9:00 a.m. EDT)
October 3: Halsey Hall (Minn.) Chapter book club (9:30 a.m. CDT)
October 3: Pee Wee Reese (Ky.) Chapter meeting with Jacob Pomrenke (1:00 p.m. EDT)
October 3: Baseball Reminiscence virtual meeting (4:00 p.m. EDT)
October 5: Northwest Ohio Chapter book club meeting (6:30 p.m. EDT)
October 7: Baltimore Babe Ruth Chapter meeting with Ted Knorr (7:00 p.m. EDT)
October 8: Ken Keltner (Wis.) Chapter book club meeting (7:00 p.m. CDT)

Find more upcoming virtual meetings on our SABR Events Calendar page.

Click here to view replays of any SABR virtual event in 2020.

SABR welcomes Pandemic Baseball Book Club as new chartered community

SABR is pleased to welcome the Pandemic Baseball Book Club as an online chartered community. All SABR members are invited to sign up for email announcements and attend upcoming virtual events with baseball authors.

The Pandemic Baseball Book Club, established in the spring of 2020, is a forum for baseball authors to discuss our books, our processes, and our high adventures in the world of baseball journalism through one-on-one author interviews, panel discussions, and the occasional Quarantined Author Happy Hour. With an emphasis on diversity and quality, the PBBC is committed to maintaining a supportive, inclusive, and collaborative platform for discussion, content creation, and author promotion.

Chapter and committee leaders, you can also submit a request for a Pandemic Baseball Book Club author to speak at your next SABR meeting. Or follow the Pandemic Baseball Book Club on Twitter at @Pandemicbaseba1 for more updates.

To learn more, or to access our backlog of author interviews and much more, visit pbbclub.com.

Seeking volunteers for new SABR Publications Marketing Committee

SABR’s new Publications Marketing Committee is up and running, but we are still actively recruiting new members. This committee is tasked with promoting SABR’s latest publications by building relationships with different chapters and local, regional, and national media connections.

Even if you have no background in this area, but want to develop practical experience working on a marketing effort, contact committee chair Bill Pearch via email at marketing@sabr.org.

Read articles from The National Pastime: A Bird’s Eye View of Baltimore

Thank you to all the donors and sustainability benefactors who made the publication of The National Pastime: A Bird’s-Eye View of Baltimore possible.

You can read all of the articles from this journal online now at SABR.org or download the e-book edition for free!

Read online: Click here to read articles from The National Pastime online at SABR.org
Download the e-book: Click here to download a free e-book edition of The National Pastime at the SABR Store
Purchase the print edition: Click here to pre-order the print edition of The National Pastime from University of Nebraska Press

The National Pastime serves as SABR’s convention-focused publication. Published annually, this research journal provides in-depth articles focused on the respective geographic region where the national convention is taking place in a given year.

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 artist Anika Orrock

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 #78 on Monday, September 21 featured Anika Orrock, author of The Incredible Women of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She is an illustrator, writer, designer, cartoonist, humorist, and baseball devotee from the Bay Area, and a co-founding member of the Pandemic Baseball Book Club. Her work has been commissioned by The National Pastime Museum, Merrill Lynch, American Express, the International Women’s Baseball Center, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association, and Major League Baseball organizations.

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.

9 new SABR biographies published

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

Don Aase, by Bill Nowlin
William C. Bryan, by Paul Winter
Rap Dixon, by Ted Knorr and Chris Rainey
George Elder, by Chris Rainey
John Flinn, by Malcolm Allen
Tom Gastall, by Malcolm Allen
Bill Lattimore, by Bill Lamb
Wayne “Rasty” Wright, by Steve Leppert
J.B. Young, by Bill Lamb

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.
Sign up to view Trello submission pipeline: Chief Editor Rory Costello has made the BioProject submission pipeline visible to project contributors using the signboard app Trello. If you would like to see the pipeline — to know where your story stands in the review process or how many articles we have in the system — e-mail Rory for an invitation to become an observer.

14 new stories published by the SABR Games Project

Fourteen new game stories were posted this week as part of the SABR Games Project. Here are the new game stories:

September 4, 1916: Pitching legends Mordecai Brown, Christy Mathewson duel for the final time, by Sharon Hamilton (first-time author)
July 3, 1958: Phillies’ Ed Bouchee returns to baseball after arrest, by Kurt Blumenau
July 19, 1960: Juan Marichal shines in Giants debut with one-hit shutout and 12 strikeouts, by Thomas E. Merrick
May 24, 1961: Roberto Clemente, the ‘College’ Cubs, and an incident in Mississippi, by Jack Zerby
April 22, 1964: Yankees’ Whitey Ford wins his 200th game in the Windy City, by Jeff Allen Howard
May 23, 1967: Dave Vineyard earns posterity, and revenge, with no-hitter for Toronto Maple Leafs, by Kurt Blumenau
October 5, 1969: Mets score 11 runs to beat Braves in Game 2 of NLCS, by Thomas J. Brown Jr.
October 6, 1969: Miracle Mets clinch their first National League pennant, by Thomas J. Brown Jr.
August 3, 1972: Brewers farmhand Tom Deidel records no-hitter but no win for Newark, by Kurt Blumenau
July 18, 1975: Mets’ Cleon Jones clashes with manager Yogi Berra in ‘The Fray at Shea’, by David Krell
September 3, 1984: Olympian John Hoover has a golden day in season finale for Rochester, by Kurt Blumenau
April 21, 1991: Down five runs twice, Pirates rally for victory in 11th over Cubs in record-setting comeback, by Preston Salisbury
August 17, 2004: Rangers’ Mark Teixeira drives in 7 runs, hits for the cycle, by Mike Huber
October 7, 2016: Corey Kluber, Indians shut out Boston in Game 2 of ALDS, by Joseph Wancho

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.

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 this newsletter more manageable to read, we’ll summarize some of the repeating/recurring announcements in the “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
George Bennett	Boynton Beach, FL	Ted Green	Indianapolis, IN
Guy Dahmen	Seattle, WA	Patrick Hansbury	Woolwich Twp., NJ
Steven Eigenberg	Piedmont, CA	Timm Higgins	Molalla, OR
Robert Fait	Sealy, TX	Tony Mollica	Athens, OH
Ethan Fisher	Grove City, PA	John Scully	Lincoln, CA
Jake Flynn	Los Angeles, CA	Jakob Siegfried	Lakewood, OH

Research Committee news

Here are the new research committee updates this week:

Nineteenth Century: Fall 2020 newsletter
Women in Baseball: Watch highlights from the SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference

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)
Larry Dierker Chapter: September 21 meeting recap (Houston, TX)

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.

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:

Bradford Davis: MLB promised free COVID-19 tests for essential workers. Still waiting. (New York Daily News)
Clinton Yates: Baseball’s power players put real money behind Black participation (The Undefeated)
WUOM: Restoration of Hamtramck’s Negro Leagues stadium shines up a historic baseball diamond (MichiganRadio.org)
J.J. Cooper: Matching Up: Luisa Gauci Develops 20-to-80 Scouting Scale For Women’s Baseball (Baseball America)
Tim Jensen: Ellington’s Claire Smith Gets African American Women In Baseball Honor (Patch.com)
Jayson Stark: Handing out my 2020 awards, from Cy Young to Cy Yuk, MVP to LVP (The Athletic)
Ben Lindbergh: Long Before WAR, Nobody Knew What MLB Players Were Worth (The Ringer)
Eno Sarris: ‘You can’t own an idea’: Attempt to patent a baseball stat surprises community (The Athletic)
Stephanie Springer: The Quality of Pitch Patent Exposes a Looming Research Battleground (Baseball Prospectus)
Tyler Kepner: Home-Field Advantage Won’t Matter This October. Did It Ever? (New York Times)
Rob Arthur: Baseball Owners’ Incomes Are Soaring (Baseball Prospectus)
Nathan Ruiz: Orioles celebrate 50th anniversary of 1970 World Series title: ‘Our one goal was to win, period’ (Baltimore Sun)
Vahe Gregorian: Jackie Robinson’s story seldom includes Kansas City’s role (Kansas City Star)
Zach Buchanan: Meet CloseCallSports, the tiny corner of the baseball internet just for umpires (The Athletic)
Emma Baccellieri: The Unbridled Joy of Being – and Watching – Fernando Tatis Jr. (Sports Illustrated)
Hannah Keyser: Philadelphia’s Phandemic Krew won’t let a baseball season pass without cheering on their team (Yahoo! Sports)
Jay Jaffe: Justin Verlander’s Tommy John Surgery Throws His Future Into Doubt (FanGraphs)
Jonathan Judge: Strike Zones in the Age of COVID-19 (Baseball Prospectus)
Steven Goldman: From the Jurassic Period to Byron Buxton in Eight Impatient Steps (Baseball Prospectus)
Craig Goldstein: The Minimal Impact of the Three-Batter-Minimum Rule (Baseball Prospectus)
Mark Simon: Rays and Athletics Have Maximized Their Rosters (ACTA Sports)
James Fegan: With Tom Seaver as a model, the White Sox were on the forefront of biomechanics (The Athletic)
Ryan Fagan: Almost impossible: MLB has only had three players named Aurelio, and they all died the same way (The Sporting News)
Brittany Ghiroli/C. Trent Rosecrans: ‘We’ve been here before’: Examining MLB’s relationship with the LGBTQ+ community (The Athletic)
Rob Mains: Defining a ‘Game’ in 2020 (Baseball Prospectus)
Eric Nusbaum: The Redemption of Norm Bass (Sports Stories)
Jerry Lee: Sonny Logan had it all, ‘he just grew up at the wrong time’ (Staten Island Advance)
Roger Cormier: A Watched Slam Still Boils (Baseball Prospectus)
Pat Rooney: Boulder Collegians seeking help to keep summer baseball program live (Boulder Daily Camera)
Brianna Radicioni: Life throws a curveball for Babson’s Jacqueline Paul (Babson Magazine)
Kurt Blumenau: At home with John Orton (SABR Baseball Cards Blog)
Jason Schwartz: Player Collection spotlight: Tim Jordan (SABR Baseball Cards Blog)
Jeff Katz: To An Athlete Dying Old (SABR Baseball Cards Blog)

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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