SABRcast with Rob Neyer

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. SABRcast features insights and analysis of what’s happening in modern baseball on and off the field, plus compelling interviews with figures from around the game — and music from The Baseball Project.

Subscribe to SABRcast on your favorite podcast networks, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or Stitcher, and listen to each episode as soon as it’s released.

Neyer is a longtime baseball writer and editor for ESPN.com, SB Nation, and FoxSports.com. He began his career as a research assistant for groundbreaking baseball author Bill James and later worked for STATS, Inc. He has also written or co-written seven baseball books, including The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (with Bill James), winner of the Sporting News/SABR Baseball Research Award, and most recently Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, winner of the 2019 CASEY Award.

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Current Episode

Episode #135: November 1, 2021

Mark ArmourThis week’s guest is Mark Armour, who is the author of many baseball articles and several books, including most recently In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball (with Dan Levitt) and Joe Cronin: A Life in Baseball. In 2002, he spearheaded the formation of SABR’s Baseball Biography Project — which has now contributed more than 5,000 biographical articles and a number of books to the game’s literature — and he served as the BioProject’s director until 2016. He was the recipient of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest individual honor, in 2008, and the Henry Chadwick Award in 2014. He was also the guest for SABRcast Episode #88 in November 2020.

Click here or press play below to listen to Episode #135:

What’s Rob Reading?

A baseball fan displays his displeasure with the Atlanta Braves' tomahawk chop during the 2021 World Series (Getty Images)

“The Surprising Origins of the “Tomahawk Chop” Music”
By Stefan Fatsis, Slate.com

“The “tomahawk chop,” the arm-waving gesture and faux Native American chant performed by fans of the Atlanta Braves and other teams, is the biggest story in Major League Baseball. Last week, Commissioner Rob Manfred claimed, falsely, that the “Native American community in that region” is “wholly supportive” of the chop. Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, performed it in a suite at Truist Park before Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday. And critics, as they have consistently since the chop was first performed in Atlanta 30 years ago, asserted that it, and other Native American mascots, iconography, and caricatures, are inherently racist and psychologically damaging. In Slate last week, David Pincus called the chop “a plague.” … The musical component of the chop, however, dates back much further. The drum beat being played by the Florida State band, the Marching Chiefs, when the frat brother started chanting in 1983 was likely one of its regular pieces, “Massacre.” Yes, “Massacre.”

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Episode #134: Tim Hagerty (October 25, 2021)

Episode #133: Rich Burk (October 18, 2021)

Episode #132: Joe Sheehan (October 11, 2021)

Episode #131: Tony Castro (October 4, 2021)

Episode #130: Joe Posnanski (September 27, 2021)

Episode #129: Ellen Adair and Eric Gilde (September 20, 2021)

Episode #128: Dan Evans (September 13, 2021)

Episode #127: Rob Friedman (September 6, 2021)

Episode #126: Josée Tellier (August 30, 2021)

Episode #125: Dave Parker and Dave Jordan (August 23, 2021)

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Episode #119: Hannah Keyser (July 12, 2021)

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Episode #117: Emma Baccellieri (June 28, 2021)

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Episode #105: Lauren Meyer (April 5, 2021)

Episode #104: Tom House (March 29, 2021)

Episode #103: Tony Adams and Bradford William Davis (March 22, 2021)

Episode #102: Amanda Smith (March 15, 2021)

Episode #101: Adam Richman (March 8, 2021)

Episode #100: Brandon McCarthy (March 1, 2021)

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