Halsey Hall Chapter Annual Report - 2012

SABR 42
Stew Thornley, Committee Chair
Our chapter has been working on hosting the SABR convention from prior to our bid acceptance in 2010. Dan Levitt was appointed to start working on the convention publication.  With others, Dan has done an exceptional job on this project.  Our convention committee has been meeting regularly since 2010.  In the last year, the committee got to meet with Deb Jayne in November 2011 and with Marc Appleman and Vince Gennaro in April 2012.  We have the active support of the Minnesota Twins, and the entire process has been pretty smooth.

Membership
Brenda Himrich, Chapter President for
Stew Thornley, Committee Chair
Because of a flaw in the SABR website, the Chapter doesn’t know how many new members we got over the past year.  In the past we could get a member list anytime and see who was new.  We’d write to that person with a greeting and invitation to upcoming events and then introduced them in our newsletter.  The new SABR website made this difficult, but it still could be done.  Late in 2011, however, we learned that we couldn’t get a member list of any kind. Thornley expressed frustration with this in an e-mail to the SABR board.  After a follow-up e-mail to Vince Gennaro, Vince called and explained the problems they were having with the new website.  Thornley asked about workarounds, including having someone from the SABR office notify chapter leaders of new members. 

Events
Howard Luloff, Committee Chair
The Halsey Hall Chapter held its Fall Chapter Meeting October 15, with former Twins infielder Ron Coomer as the guest speaker.  There were two research presentations: Rex Hamann looked back at the American Association pennants won by the Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints and Bob Tholkes talked about The Birth of Baseball Statistics.  Twenty-four members and guests attended.  

April 21st was the date of the chapter's Spring Meeting.  Former Minnesota Twins executive Clark Griffith was the guest speaker.  There were four research presentations: Scott Cummings presented his college thesis on Sabermetric Defense in Baseball, Terry Bohn looked back at early Dakota baseball, Mendal Mearkle took members back to 1894 and the Worst Day in Boston Baseball History and Gene Gomes profiled former 19th century pitcher turned minor league owner Abner Powell.  Attendance was 24.

Newsletter
Stew Thornley, Editor
We produced monthly newsletters, which are on-line at http://www.halseyhall.org/pubs.  The newsletters were posted on our website and a notice sent, through the SABR website, to chapter members to let them know a new newsletter was posted.  Because of problems with the SABR website, we had problems with the notices not going through.  Jacob Pomrenke of the SABR office sent duplicate notices in case it would work better coming straight from the office.  It has been working better in recent month.

Treasurer
Jerry Janzen, Treasurer