The Smoky Joe Wood Chapter of SABR will journey to Flushing for a 1:10 PM game between the Amazins and the reigning NL Champion Dodgers on Sunday Sept. 15.

Our seats are in Section 107, rows 16-18 and the cost per ticket is $55.

Alan has secured 15 tickets.  Reserve the number of tickets you want by emailing Alan at adc0317@comcast.net.  Checks should be made out to CT SABR and mailed to:

Alan D. Cohen, 7 Longlane Rd, West Hartford, CT 06117

The WAR-laden Dodgers and the rebuilt Mets should make for an exciting trip to the ballpark.

And where else can you eat a pizza cupcake while viewing 1969 Mets artifacts (in the Robinson Rotunda) including Casey Stengel’s 1968 Christmas card predicting a great season for the ’69 Mets?

For anyone wishing to take the train as a group, we will take Metro North from West Haven to Grand Central.  The 7 train will then take us to Citi Field.

See you there!

Karl

Hats off to Jacob Pomrenke and David Scrivines for helping the Waterbury Republican with bat experts who are quoted in today’s article by Harrison Connery.

The next meeting of the Rabbit Maranville Springfield (MA) Chapter of SABR will feature special speakers of great interest:  Dan Duquette and Gordon Edes.

DAN DUQUETTE is the former GM of the Red Sox, Expos and Orioles.  He was twice named the Sporting News MLB Executive of the Year when with the 1992 Expos and 2014 Orioles.  He is widely recognized as having created the foundation of the 2004 curse busting BoSox by bringing Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez, Tim Wakefield, Johnny Damon, Jason Veritek, Derek Lowe and Kevin Youkilis to Boston.

GORDON EDES has been the Boston Red Sox team historian since 2015.  Prior to joining the Sox he covered the team for 18 years, initially with the Boston Globe, and then with ESPN Boston.  Gordon is an award winning, well respected journalist.  He is the author of Marlins Mania: the 1993 Inaugural Season.  He is a contributor to Boston Red Sox: Every Picture Tells a Story (Skybox, 2014) and The Rivals: Red Sox vs. Yankees, an Inside history. (St. Martins, 2004).

Refreshments will be served and there will be a selection of baseball books, hats and other related items for sale.  All are welcome.  Registration fee: $5.

Meeting Details:

Mon., April 22, 2019

7:00 to 9:00 PM

Bears Den – Lower Level of the Campus Center

Western New England University

1215 Wilbraham Rd.

Springfield, MA 01119

For more details contact Jim Winston, 413-584-1110, james@jameswinstonlaw.com or Steve Manioudakis at 413-427-4681, stavkim@charter.net

The Black Sox panel is not the only thing scheduled for the March 23 meeting at Middlesex.

Paul Hensler will talk about the creation of Reggie Jackson’s legacy as he moved from Oakland to New York, his trial and tribulations in the Bronx, and attaining the star power that makes his an enduring name.  Paul’s presentation leverages his study of Reggie in the upcoming book, The New York Yankees in Popular Culture: Critical Essays. (McFarland, June 2019)  In addition to Jackson’s transformation, the book explores why Joe DiMaggio’s nickname changed from “Deadpan Joe” to “Joltin Joe and how Seinfeld affected public perception of George Steinbrenner – and more fresh analyses that explore the Yankee mystique in film, television, theater, music and advertising.

Paul is the author of The American League in Transition, 1965-1975. (McFarland, 2012), and The New Boys of Summer: Baseball’s Radical Transformation in the Late Sixties. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018).  Paul has been a frequent speaker at baseball and cultural conferences.  His writing has appeared in Nine: a Journey of Baseball History and Culture, as well as many SABR books and publications.  Despite the fact that, as a young man, he once hung out with Thurman Munson, Paul became – and remains – an Angels fans.

Mark Kanter will present on the 1919 Cincinnati Reds, a team seldom recognized for its excellence and always overshadowed by its 1919 World Series opponent.  These Reds featured 2x batting champ Jake Daubert, a former MVP who batted .303; Heinie Groh, who batted .310 and led the NL in OPS in ’19; HOF’er Edd Roush, who sported a .321 BA that year; three front line starters (Eller, Ruether and Sallee) that combined to go 59-22, and Dolf Luque out of the pen, with 10-3, 2.63.  These Reds went 96-44.  The Black Sox were 88-52, albeit in a tougher league.

Mark is a life-long Philadelphia Phillies fan. He got the itch watching the last few outs of Jim Bunning’s perfect game against the Mets on Father’s Day in 1964.  He has made numerous presentations at SABR meetings and SABR conventions, and has written for The Baseball Research Journal, The Northern Game and Beyond and The National Pastime 43: From Swampoodle to South Philly, and the SABR BioProject. Retired from working 31+ years as a US Navy engineer, he and his wife live in the idyllic seaside community of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

I expect to have copies of the Jeff Bagwell book on hand, available for purchase, and will take 10 minutes to wrap up the project.

Meeting Details are:  11 A.M., Sat., March 23, Middlesex Community College, Chapman Hall, Room 605, 100 Training Hill Rd., Middletown, CT 06457

See you there!

Best,

Karl

Baseball history has endured its share of myths.  Here is a popular one:

The 1919 White Sox threw the World Series because they were poorly paid and mistreated by their miserly owner, Charles Comiskey.

The truth:  The White Sox had one of the highest payrolls in baseball and most players were paid better than their peers in the American League.  The Hall of Fame has the player contract cards to prove it.  The myth could not be further from the truth.

The next general meeting of the Smoky Joe Wood (CT) Chapter of SABR will host a panel of highly regarded Black Sox experts for a discussion that will start with Black Sox Mythology (Eight Myths Out) and potentially identify the direction for future discoveries.

Our All Star panel includes the following historians:

JIM MARGALUS has been writing about the White Sox since 2006, first at SoxMachine.com, then at SB Nation’s SouthSideSox.com. He wrote a series of White Sox annuals, White Sox Outsider, from 2009 through 2013. In 2017, Jim marked the 1917 White Sox-Giants world barnstorming tour by writing a stop-by-stop account. That same year, he wrote a daily recap of the White Sox’ second championship season of 1917 – back before throwing World Series became a good idea to some of them. Jim grew up in the Thomas-Ventura-McDonald era in Chicagoland, and thinks highly of Harold Baines.  He now lives in Troy, New York, where he’s an online producer for the Albany Times Union.

BILL LAMB spent more than 30 years as a state/county prosecutor in New Jersey. Now retired, he serves as editor of The Inside Game, the newsletter of the Deadball Era Committee, and is the author of Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation (McFarland, 2013).   Once a Yankee-hater, Jim reversed course when he was won over by the magnetic Bombers of the 1990’s. He lives with his wife Barbara in Meredith, NH.

JACOB POMRENKE is SABR’s Director of Editorial Content. He is the chairman and newsletter editor for the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. He is the editor of Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox.  (SABR, 2015). He has moderated panel discussions on Shoeless Joe Jackson and on the 50^th anniversary of Eight Men Out.  Jacob has written for the Hall of Fame’s Memories and Dreams magazine, The National Pastime Museum, Seamheads.com and has appeared on the MLB Network. Raised in Atlanta, Jacob was present for the Braves renaissance that commenced in 1991. His team is looking pretty good these days, too.  He currently lives and works near Phoenix, AZ.

More details to come to you soon on plans for this meeting.

It’s sure to be a special one.  Steve, Stan, Alan and I hope to see you there.

11 A.M.

Sat., March 23

Middlesex Community College

Chapman Hall

Room 605

100 Training Hill Rd.

Middletown, CT 06457

Best,

Karl

Hi, SABR Friends.  Tune in Channel 8 WTNH this Friday, Feb. 22 at 9:15 AM and watch the local news segment called Destination Location, which is part of the Good Morning CT program.  The segment will feature how Casey Stengel and his Boston Braves held spring training in Wallingford, CT at the Choate School in 1943.  One of the experts interviewed for this program was our own Stan Dziurgot.  Congrats to Stan, who can now add on-air talent to his baseball resume.

In the January 2019 issue of the Wood Pile, Stan’s research on the 1943 Braves spring training was published.  WTNH was made aware of that article by a member of the Boston Braves Historical Society. That led to the development of the segment.

To my knowledge, this is the second time that a Wood Pile article has been noticed by the media.  Last year I received a call from the Farmer’s Almanac looking for an author recommendation after their editor read Paul Hensler’s feature on Claire Smith.  Turned out they were actually looking for help persuading Claire to write the article.  (Even so, it’s still nice to know there is an audience out there for TWP.)

I hope you will have time to tune in for the show, which will certainly be educational.

If you’d like to read Stan’s article from TWP, please click this link and scroll to page 9.

https://smokyjoewooddotcom.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/sabr-newsletter-winter-2019-v3-20190103.pdf

I’ll try to get a video link on our Facebook page after the broadcast.

Best,

Karl

Please save March 23 on your calendar for a general meeting of CT SABR.  Among the segments will be a panel discussion on the 1919 Black Sox scandal featuring Jacob Pomrenke, Jim Margalus and Bill Lamb.  Jacob is the chairman and newsletter editor for the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee.  Bill is the author of Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation.   Jim is the managing editor of southsidesox.com.  We are truly fortunate to have these three experts traveling from New York, New Hampshire and Arizona to join us.

Additionally, Mark Kanter will speak about the 1919 Cincinnati Reds, a team seldom recognized for its excellence.

Author Erik Sherman is unable to attend.  We’re setting up an additional presenter and details are TBA.

There will be refreshments and a book sale.

The meeting will commence at 11:00 AM. Sat., March 23, 2019 at Chapman Hall, Room 605, Middlesex Community College, 100 Training Hill Rd., Middletown, CT 06457.  For more information contact Steve at SKrevisky@mxcc.commnet.edu.

The event details can be found at www.smokyjoewood.com/events and on Facebook.

Thank you so much!

-Karl

The next Strat-O-Matic Game Day gathering is coming up fast!

Attendees will “manage” baseball teams of the past against other long-gone teams in a well known board game named Strat-O-Matic. ‘Managers’ have the opportunity to lead, for example, the 1927 Yankees versus the 1967 Red Sox, or the 1948 Braves versus the 1955 Dodgers.

No experience required.  Newbies welcome.  Public welcome.  Anyone interested in participating need not own Strat-O-Matic and should contact Karl at kcicitto@cox.net.

When:  10 am, Sat. Feb. 16

Where: Durham Library, 7 Maple Ave., Durham, CT

The January 2019 issue of The Wood Pile, newsletter of the Smoky Joe Wood CT chapter of S.A.B.R. is out.  Here’s the link…

sabr newsletter winter 2019 v3 20190103

This issue includes…

-Greeting, Hearts & Darts by Steve Krevisky

-A Californian’s tribute to George H.W. Bush by Michael Ego

-Deep base ball questions by Ezra Counts

-Five MLB ballparks in five days by Ray Sikora

-Bob Feller Act of Valor Awards by Doug Kern

-Wrap-ups for the Holiday Luncheon, General Meeting and Strat-O-Matic Game Day

-Current CT players in MLB by Stan Osowiecki

-1943: Braves train in Wallingford, CT by Stan Dziurgot

-Umpires and exotic dancers by Bill Ryczek

-CT vintage base ball 2019 by Mike Driemiller

-Frank Observations by M Frank

-The East-West Negro League All Star Games by Alan Cohen

-Cliff notes on last issue from Cliff Blau

Please send comments and Q’s to me at kcicitto@cox.net

Have a great day!

-Karl

The CT SABR Holiday Luncheon will take place on Saturday, December 22, from 12 to 3 p.m., at Portofino’s Italian Restaurant, 246 New Britain Road, Kensington, CT, 06037.

There will be a buffet lunch costing $30 per person. Family and friends are welcome.

Mark Kanter will speak about his 16 day trip to Japan, which included 8 days with tour operator, Japan Ball.  Mark observed local baseball fetishes and culture while traveling 15,000+ miles in all.  Among cities visited were Osaka, Yokohama, Hiroshima and Tokyo.  There are no less than 6 major league teams in the Tokyo Metro alone!

By experiencing baseball in Japan, the worldwide wandering Kanter has added to his list of diamond destinations which includes Cuba and Puerto Rico — not to mention the overseas SABR member connections Mark has made while in England and Australia.

Expect a good time, good fellowship, great food and an interesting program at this event!

To reserve your seat(s) please email Alan at adc0317@comcast.net as soon as possible.  Checks should be made out to CT SABR and mailed to Alan Cohen, 7 Longlane Rd., West Hartford, CT. 06117. Please mail your check when you make your reservation. For more info, please contact Stan at stanyank7@yahoo.com.

Best,

Karl