Womack: An interview with Pete Palmer
From SABR member Graham Womack at Baseball Past and Present on April 1, 2015, with SABR member Pete Palmer:
In researching recently for Veterans Committee ballots, I emailed official MLB historian and longtime baseball author John Thorn to see if he might know anything. Thorn replied, “Pete Palmer would know if anyone would” and put me in contact with him.
For more than 40 years, Palmer has been the person to go to for baseball questions even other researchers might not know. He is the researchers’ researcher, one of the wise old men of the Society for American Baseball Research, which he joined a month after its founding in 1971. Tom Tango, one of the co-authors of the influential 2007 work on sabermetrics, The Book, told me via Twitter, “Pete Palmer was our Yoda.”
At 77, Palmer remains active in baseball research and is father to three school-aged children, as he remarried after being widowed.
Truth be told, I’ve long wanted to talk to Palmer, and shortly after we began emailing about Hall of Fame voting, I asked if he’d be up for a phone interview. He was. Highlights of our hour and 40 minute conversation from Monday are as follows.
Read the full article here: http://baseballpastandpresent.com/2015/04/01/interview-pete-palmer/
Originally published: April 1, 2015. Last Updated: April 1, 2015.