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SABR
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a membership organization dedicated to fostering the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball primarily through the use of statistics. Established in Cooperstown, New York, on August 10, 1971, by sportswriter Bob Davids, it is based in Phoenix, Arizona. Its membership as of June 1, 2019, is 5,367. Membership While the acronym "SABR" was used to coin the word sabermetrics (for the use of sophisticated mathematical tools to analyze baseball), the Society is about much more than statistics. Well-known figures in the baseball world such as Bob Costas, Keith Olbermann, Craig R. Wright, and Rollie Hemond are members, along with highly regarded "sabermetricians" such as Bill James and Rob Neyer. Among Major League players Jeff Bajenaru was believed to have been (until 2006) the only active player with a SABR membership; Elden Auker, Larry Dierker, and Andy Seminick also have been involved. Some prominent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Lester
George Lawrence Lester (born 1949 in Charleston, Arkansas) is a Negro league baseball author, historian, statistical researcher, and lecturer. Biography Larry Lester is the current chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research's Negro League Committee, which hosts the annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, a symposium dedicated exclusively to the examination and promotion of black baseball history. He co-founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City, Missouri, and served as its Research Director, Senior Editor, and Treasurer from 1991 to 1995. He was described as "a driving force in the NLBM's licensing program" that generated $1.4 million in its start-up years. Through using available black and white photographs as guides, doing research of archival newspapers, and conducting interviews of former players, Lester discovered the authentic Negro league colors and designs, allowing apparel manufacturers to reproduce retro-vintage caps, jerseys, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Smith (baseball Historian)
David W. Smith (born March 17, 1948) is an American baseball historian and analyst. He is best known as the founder of Retrosheet, a volunteer organization whose mission is to collect, digitize, and distribute play-by-play accounts from every game in Major League Baseball history. Smith's work has been widely praised as a huge boon to baseball research and he has received a number of awards for his work, several from SABR. Smith has also done original baseball research on topics such as: * ''Maury Wills and the Value of a Stolen Base'' * ''The 1951 National League Pennant Race'' * ''The Effect of Batting Order on Scoring'' * ''Why do Home Teams Score so Much in the First Inning?'' * ''The Myth of the Closer'' * ''Why Do Games Take so Long?'' Smith was a contributor to ''Total Baseball'' and was co-author of the book ''The Midsummer Classic: The Complete History of Baseball's All-Star Game'' (with David W. Vincent and Lyle Spatz). That book received The Sporting News-SABR Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob Davids
Leonard Davids (March 19, 1926February 10, 2002), known as Bob Davids or L. Robert Davids, was an American baseball researcher and writer and the founder of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. He wrote numerous freelance articles on baseball for ''The Sporting News'' between 1951 and 1965. When ''TSN'' cut its baseball coverage, Davids began his own short-lived baseball publication, ''Baseball Briefs''. He contributed baseball fact boxes to several newspapers, including ''The Washington Post'' and ''Chicago Sun-Times''. In 1971, Davids identified approximately 35 others with similar interests in baseball statistics and history – he called them "stathistorians" – and invited them to meet in Cooperstown, New York at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Sixteen attended the meeting, and agreed to the formation of SABR. Davids was elected the group's first president, an office he held on two other occasions. He also served two 5-year terms on SABR's board of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bob McConnell
Robert Churchill McConnell (January 18, 1925 – March 18, 2012) was a founding member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), serving as its secretary and treasurer. In 1985, he won the first Bob Davids Award, SABR's highest honor. Early life McConnell was born on January 18, 1925, in Seattle, Washington, though he moved around continuously throughout his youth. His family settled in Newark, New Jersey, in 1935. He joined the Navy in 1942, serving on the U.S.S. Whitman and U.S.S. Mifflin during his first three years in the service. He was sent for officer training at Vanderbilt University in July 1945, whence he earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering in 1949. Baseball research endeavors McConnell is credited with finding, filling in and fixing considerable amounts of missing, incomplete or incorrect historical baseball information, especially that concerning home runs. His work largely included seeking out old box scores, gleaning statistics and det ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland Hemond
Roland A. Hemond (October 26, 1929 – December 12, 2021) was an American professional baseball executive who worked in Major League Baseball. He served as the scouting director of the California Angels, general manager of the Chicago White Sox and Baltimore Orioles, senior executive vice president of the Arizona Diamondbacks, executive advisor to the general manager of the White Sox, and special assistant to the president for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Career After graduating from high school, Hemond served in the United States Coast Guard for four years from 1947 to 1951 and was stationed at Brooklyn Navy Yard for three of those years. In 1951, he took a job with the Hartford Chiefs, a Minor League Baseball team. After two months, he was hired by the Boston Braves, and stayed with the team when it relocated to Milwaukee. In 1961, the Los Angeles Angels hired him as their scouting director. Both Hemond and Chuck Tanner joined the Chicago White Sox from the Angels on September ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Thorn
John A. Thorn (born April 17, 1947) is a German-born sports historian, author, publisher, and cultural commentator. Since March 1, 2011, he has been the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball. Personal profile Thorn was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in a displaced person's camp to which his Polish Jewish parents had come as refugees. Less than two years after Thorn was born, his family emigrated to the United States, and settled in The Bronx, New York City. "I fell in love with aseballcards before I loved the game, when I discovered that baseball was something that all the kids on my street corner cared about," Thorn said in a 2013 profile. "I was an immigrant kid and was looking for a way into America. With my background I saw myself as an underdog, and so Brooklyn had to be my team. I began watching the game seriously when I was eight, in 1955, on my Admiral television, but I had already begun to follow their exploits in the daily newspapers my father brought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Retrosheet
Retrosheet is a nonprofit organization whose website features box scores of Major League Baseball (MLB) games from 1906 to the present, and play-by-play narratives for almost every contest since the 1930s. It also includes scores from every major league game played since the 1871 season (the inception of organized professional baseball), as well as all All-Star Games and postseason games, including the World Series. History Retrosheet informally began in 1989, through the efforts of Dr. David Smith, a biology professor at the University of Delaware, and fellow baseball enthusiasts. Building on momentum begun by writer Bill James' Project Scoresheet in 1984, Smith brought together a host of like-minded individuals to compile an accessible database of statistical information previously unavailable to the general public. Smith originally contacted teams and sportswriters in order to gain access to their scorebooks, while other contributors researched old newspapers for play-by-pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baseball Analytics
Sabermetrics, or originally SABRmetrics, is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific questions. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research, founded in 1971. The term "sabermetrics" was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face. Early history Henry Chadwick, a sportswriter in New York, developed the box score in 1858. This was the first way statisticians were able to describe the sport of baseball by numerically tracking various aspects of game play. The creation of the box score has given baseball statisticians a summary of the individual and team performances for a given game. Sabermetrics research began in the middle of the 20th century with the writings of Earnshaw Cook, one of the earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Larry Dierker
Lawrence Edward Dierker (born September 22, 1946) is a former Major League Baseball pitcher, manager, and broadcaster. During a 14-year baseball career as a pitcher, he pitched from 1964 to 1977 for the Houston Colt .45s/Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals. After many years as a broadcaster for the Astros, he was hired to manage the team in 1997, managing them for five seasons. He was the first Astro manager to lead the team to three consecutive playoff seasons (all through winning the Central division), and in total he led the Astros to four division titles in five years until he stepped down in 2001. Early life Dierker was born in Hollywood, California. The Dierkers lived in Reseda near the San Fernando Valley before moving to Woodland Hills (a neighborhood of Los Angeles) when Dierker was in the 7th grade. He honed his baseball in the West Valley Little League before playing on the varsity team of William Howard Taft Charter High School. Dierker had a good arm in high school ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sabermetrics
Sabermetrics, or originally SABRmetrics, is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific questions. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research, founded in 1971. The term "sabermetrics" was coined by Bill James, who is one of its pioneers and is often considered its most prominent advocate and public face. Early history Henry Chadwick, a sportswriter in New York, developed the box score in 1858. This was the first way statisticians were able to describe the sport of baseball by numerically tracking various aspects of game play. The creation of the box score has given baseball statisticians a summary of the individual and team performances for a given game. Sabermetrics research began in the middle of the 20th century with the writings of Earnshaw Cook, one of the earl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andy Seminick
Andrew Wasal Seminick (September 12, 1920 – February 22, 2004) was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a catcher for the Philadelphia Phillies between 1943 and 1951, and the Cincinnati Reds/Redlegs from 1952 through part of 1955, when he rejoined the Phillies for the rest of his career until his release at the end of the 1957 season. Seminick was an integral part of the 1950 "Whiz Kids" Phillies team that won their first pennant since .''Seminick-Key Man of Phils'', by Charles Dexter, Baseball Digest November 1950, Vol. 9, No. 11 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. The NL and AL were formed in 1876 and 1901, respectively. Beginning in 1903, the two leagues signed the National Agreement and cooperated but remained legally separate entities until 2000, when they merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball. MLB is headquartered in Midtown Manhattan. It is also included as one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. Baseball's first all-professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was founded in 1869. Before that, some teams had secretly paid certain players. The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
