Great Baseball Program in NYC January 27

1/18/2018

Tyler Kepner, light blue shirt in center, before Stephen Strasburg's first game 2010. Courtesy of Vanderbillt University,

Need a baseball fix? Here’s one, right in the heart of Manhattan on Jan. 27 – a day-long festival of the summer sport, from SABR, the baseball research organization.

The speakers include many experts in baseball and/or research, including a librarian, a major-league umpire, a scout who played for the Philadelphia A's in 1953, and an outfielder who helped win the 1969 World Series.

Another speaker will be Tyler Kepner of the New York Times, who has been writing (excellently) about baseball since he was, I think, 3 years old.

Speaking of precocity, if you know a youthful baseball fan who follows all the trade rumors and knows the new analytics like WAR (I have no clue what that is, but I hear it all the time), this conference might make the young savant happy on a Saturday in January.

I spoke at this conference five years or so ago, and one of the highlights for me was a young fan who asked a good question and seemed to know just as much as the predominant geezers who had witnessed Carl Furillo and Monte Irvin and Whitey Ford in this city. (The rate for “students” is $20 as opposed to the rate of $35, still reasonable.)

Sometimes a young pheenom of a fan actually grows up to be Tyler Kepner. I witnessed that not long ago when a kid in Philadelphia started putting out an occasional baseball magazine, with features by him, drawings by him, layouts by him, headlines by him, circulation by him, marketing by him. The occasional journal was Phillie-centric, and it was charming.

The very same Tyler Kepner is now a great baseball writer for The Times, old enough to have four children.

Back in the day, Tyler produced his baseball magazine irregularly, to allow him to honor other commitments, like kindergarten. The late and lamented Robert McG Thomas, Jr., of the NYT wrote a feature about him in 1989:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/13/sports/sports-world-specials-baseball-pitcher-outfielder-publisher.html.

Nowadays, in the time of the Web, when sportswriters are lashed to the 24-hour hamster wheel, Tyler keeps typing away, brilliantly. I recently heard how at the seventh game of the 2016 World Series he wrote an early column and then late in the game wrote a new column on Rajai Davis when it appeared Davis’s homer would win won the Series.

However, the Davis column never made the paper or the Web because, well, the Cubs won while Tyler was typing. So he started all over again, and then woke up the next morning and fed a few more columns to the beast – five columns within 18 hours, by the office's count.

The program for the SABR event does not specify Tyler’s subject on Jan. 27th but notes that he is currently writing a book. Oddly enough, about baseball.

The program will take place Jan. 27, 2018, from 10 AM to 3 PM at the New York Public Library, at 42nd St. and Fifth Avenue (you know, the one with the lions.) It will be held in the Celeste Auditorium, lower level of the South Court, of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

The event is officially the New York City Casey Stengel Chapter’s annual meeting, as part of the Society for American Baseball Research.

The participants, recruited and moderated by Ernestine Miller, are:
Virginia Bartow, the Senior Rare Book Cataloger in the Special Collections at the New York Public Library, whose illustrated presentation includes photos, graphs, trade cards, newspaper features and other memorabilia of baseball in New York.

Ed Randall, moderator of a panel on: “Standouts of the Game”-- author and on-air personality for WFAN, Sirius and ESPN

Phil Cuzzi, Major League umpire who has worked for 22 years in 2,428 games including three MLB no-hitters.

Tom Giordano, age 92, long-time scout and official who scouted Cal Ripken, Jr., and in 1953 played 11 games for the 1953 Philadelphia Athletics under manager Jimmy Dykes.

Art Shamsky, who platooned with Ron Swoboda on the 1969 Miracle Mets, and remains the only player in MLB history to hit three home runs in a game in which he was not in the starting lineup.

Jon Springer, SABR research presentation on Edward "The Only" Nolan, the star pitcher of the 1884 Quicksteps, a team that played a role in the first battle of the Reserve Clause war, the establishment of post-season play, and the evolution of playing rules and equipment. Nolan was recognized for his unique pitches as well as his notorious behavior which led to fines, suspensions, being kicked off a team, and eventually, his being blacklisted from the league.

(I have never heard of Nolan. This is what SABR does so well: telling about fascinating players from long-ago times.)

Diane Firstman will make a SABR research presentation, “The Three True Outcomes,” shedding light on the relationships among walks, strikeouts, and homers from her research on “three true outcomes” (TTO). She will highlight trends comparing Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Aaron Judge in those categories.

After this warmup it will soon be time for that glorious annual event called Pitchers and Catchers. It’s coming, honest, it’s coming.

Please pre-register if possible, with David Lippman at:
kiwiwriter47@gmail.com

He really existed: Columbus Buckeyes, 1876; Edward (The Only) Nolan stands second from right; credit, Tracy Martin. Nolan sounds like quite a piece of work. To learn about him, check out the SABR conference on Jan. 27 in NYC

bruce

1/19/2018 01:34:56 pm

george,

one of the great advantages to living in nyc, or most other large cities, is access to events like the SABR get together.

won't be long now before we start to get our baseball fix.

could be a long season for my localish team.

and speaking of judge....do you know that if he strikes out as much this season as he did last that he'll pass yogi berra in career strikeouts? that doesn't include his short 2016 season.

i still maintain berra's 1950 season of 12 Ks in 656 plate appearances is one record that will never be broken.

and he had 28 homers and 124 ribbies.

beyond incredible.

bruce

George Vecsey

1/19/2018 02:26:50 pm

I once heard Frank Robinson say, when he was managing Baltimore, that the baseball record that floored him was Joe D's 361 homers against 369 strikeouts. He just shook his head in respect.
It's a different game today. Players are rewarded, essentially, for swinging for homers. Strikeouts are breakage, not an embarrassment.
Then again, high HR totals are not as impressive -- witness Lukas Duda and somebody else, unsigned in mid-Jan.
GV

bruce

1/19/2018 04:46:47 pm

George,

i remember you mentioning that to me before.

it's a very impressive career record.

the other thing was that yogi was considered a free swinger with a liberal view of the strike zone, wasn't he?

different game too since robinson entered the majors.

bruce

George Vecsey

1/20/2018 02:23:55 pm

Bruce, absolutely different. There was a discipline.
Yogi could do it because he was Yogi, and he had his own discipline. So did Clemente. You know my friend Big Al? He'll send me a note when I least expect it, asking "Just curious but how good was Yoggalah?" It hurts.
Robinson and the under-rated Vada Pinson set a tone on a great Cincinnati team -- urged Pete Rose and Hal McRae to play hard, and smart. I used to call it National League Ball -- more black players, more ingenuity and desire, minus the Yankee dominance in the other league. DH and time changed that.
GV

George Vecsey

1/20/2018 02:29:46 pm

Bruce, just looked it up. FRobby and McRae did not overlap, Pinson and McRae one year, but they set the tone of the team, Rose being the prime example spanning those eras. And Joe Morgan when he came over, in 72, fit into that savvy tradition. .I was living in Louisville 70-72 and saw a lot of Reds; great team. GV

bruce

1/20/2018 03:42:08 pm

George,

ah. big al.....

clemente.....what a man he was.

pinson is forgotten.

could be your next musialish book.

i remember the 1961 series and robinson winning the national league mvp so i looked up his totals.

very nice season with only 62 Ks which is a very low number for his power stats.

i loved robinson. the way he played the game--never gave an inch-- and the way he LOOKED in uniform.

probably the coolest looking guy in my lifetime.

and managed to win the triple crown and mvp when he was an old 30 or however old he was when he was traded.

i remember national league ball and the preponderance of black players compared to the American league which gave a completely different look and way of playing the game.

when i used to care about those things, the national league used kick the hell out of the AL in the star game when i was a kid. sometimes twice a year.

when it's hockey season, i think hockey is the greatest sport; when it's baseball season i seem to change my mind.

nothing like the feeling of flying down the ice on a pair of blades on hyslop's pond or hitting the ball on that sweet spot--and you don't feel a thing.

seems like yesterday, but it's not.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Great Baseball Program in NYC January 27

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