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The Newsletter of the Halsey Hall Chapter
Society for American Baseball Research (SABR)


February 2010

SABR News
New Members
Addition to Baseball Names on The Office
Calendar
Board of Directors


SABR News

The 2010 Spring Chapter Meeting will be Saturday, May 22. The Twins play the Milwaukee Brewers at Target Field that night.

During the business meeting at the spring chapter meeting, three members will be elected to the chapter’s board of directors. Anyone interested in running for a two-year term may contact Nominating Committee Chair Art Mugalian at 612-721-2825, amugalian@comcast.net.

Members are invited to submit a proposal to make a research presentation at the meeting. Proposals must be made in writing (e-mail is fine) to Research Committee Chair Rich Arpi, 2445 Londin Lane East, Unit 410, Maplewood 55119-5547, 651-739-6986, rich.arpi@comcast.net, and should include a title and brief outline of what the presentation will consist of with emphasis on the research that will be included. Standard presentations are 20 minutes (with an additional eight minutes for questions) although the duration may be longer or shorter depending on the needs of the presenter and of the schedule. Generally, up to five presentations may be accommodated, and these will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The Research Committee (which also consists of Tom Swift, Dan Levitt, Bob Tholkes, Cary Smith, and Stew Thornley) will finalize the schedule of research presentations by May 8, two weeks before the meeting, so proposals must be submitted by then.

Other upcoming events:
The Halsey Hall chapter book club’s next selection is Lawrence S. Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times. The book club will meet on Saturday, February 6 at 9:30 a.m. at the Barnes and Noble cafe in Har Mar Mall in Roseville. Har Mar Mall is located on Snelling Avenue about a mile and a half north of the state fairgrounds. For more information, contact Tom Dolen at 651-483-8617 or Art Mugalian at 612-721-2825.

The next Hot Stove Saturday Morning, an informal breakfast gathering for the purpose of talking baseball, will be at 9:00 on March 13 at Bakers Square in Richfield (66th Street to the east of Xerxes Avenue).

SABR 40 will be held from Thursday, August 5 to Sunday, August 8 in Atlanta. The convention will be at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel (165 Courtland Street NE, 404-659-6500), which has a special convention rate of $129 per night for guest rooms. The Atlanta Braves will be playing the San Francisco Giants during the convention.

In preparation for the possibility of the SABR convention coming to the Twin Cities, the Halsey Hall Chapter Research Committee has begun planning a convention publication that will carry articles related to baseball in the Upper Midwest. Anyone interested in writing for the convention publication may submit a proposal, including a description of the subject, to Dan Levitt, 612-377-5154.

Candidates for the SABR Board of Directors include a Halsey Hall Chapter member. The candidates for vice president are Bill Nowlin and Bob Tholkes. The candidates for director are Tom Hufford and Paul Hirsch.

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New Members

John Swol was born to Polish parents in Altenstadt, Germany. The family moved to Taylors Falls, Minnesota, in May of 1952.

John started following baseball in 1957 when the Milwaukee Braves beat the New York Yankees. His school brought a television to the gym, and the students with good grades who weren’t in trouble were allowed to watch the games. John became a Braves fan and fell asleep listening to their games with a transistor radio next to him. John became a Twins fan when the team moved here in 1961. The first game he attended was the 1965 All-Star Game at Met Stadium. “A couple of us just showed up prior the game with no tickets and were able to get standing room tickets under the left field stands,” John recalls. “The number of Hall of Famers in that game was incredible.”

John missed the World Series because he went into the U. S. Navy in August 1965, serving as a radar man about the U. S. S. Shangri-La and specializing in electronic countermeasures until December 1969.

John and his wife, Jackie, have one son, Jason, and John is retired after working in the Information Technology department for Northwestern National Bank/Norwest/Wells Fargo. He published a book, Twins Trivia, in 1998 and was been running a Twins historical web site, www.twinstrivia.com, since retiring in 2007.

John shares his December 24 birthday with fellow chapter member David Trombley as well as Jamey Wright, Kevin Millwood, Frank Trechock, Glenn “Mr. Inside” Davis, Howard Hughes, Franz Waxman, Kit Carson, and Iron Mike DiBiase.

Mark Davidson was born in 1953 and lived in Lockport, New York, near Buffalo and Niagara Falls, until 1974, when he went into the Air Force for four years. He served in the Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, area and then Shreveport, Louisiana, where he saw a Class AA game between the farm teams of the Cardinals and Pirates, a game that included Tommy Herr and Leon Durham. He also had a chance to see the Astros in the Astrodome while he was serving in Shreveport.

Mark was raised as an Indians fan since Cleveland was only 200 miles from Lockport and the family had relatives in Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland. His parents took him to some weekend doubleheaders against the Yankees and White Sox that filled Municipal Stadium to more than 75,000 people “Cleveland Municipal Stadium (CMS) was a big deal even in the late 50s when the Indians were still very competitive. My father was buried in 1984 with his 1948 World Series tickets, which Bob Feller autographed in the 1970s.” Mark also remembers attending a 1960s game in which Denny McLain beat Luis Tiant as Don Wert homered for the only run of the game.

Mark’s two younger brothers played high-school baseball. David once got a double off a pitcher who was drafted fifth by the Indians, and John played in a game that included Rick Manning, who played for LaSalle High School in Niagara Falls. As for Mark, he says he was 1-for-10 in his one year of Little League but got better results playing softball in later years.

He has been in Minnesota since 1980. He retired from the Air Force and Air Force Reserve and has been a Public Affairs Officer for the St. Paul District, Army Corps of Engineers, since 2000. Mark and his wife, Linda, have two grown children, Maria, who has been an usher at St. Paul Saints games for five years, and Paul, who lives only five blocks away from Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Mark got to Minnesota in time to see several games at Met Stadium. He and Linda, while dating, frequently went to Siebert Field to watch the Gophers. He has been a 20-game season-ticket holder with the Twins for a few years.

Maria is a Yankees fan, and Mark went with her to a game at Yankee Stadium in 2008, and he has been to Wrigly Field twice. He has been to the Baseball Hall of Fame three times and to minor-league games in Rochester and Batavia, New York, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, as well as to Buffalo, where he saw Johnny Bench play in the 1960s, while he was growing up in Lockport.

Mark shares his December 19 birthday with Rob Gardner, Tony Taylor, Rex Barney, Wally Gilbert, Mike Fetters, Doug Johnson, Ian Kennedy, Chito Martinez, Walt “No Neck” Williams, Al Kaline, Ford Frick, Kevin McHale, Randall McDaniel, Reggie White, Bobby Layne, and Leonid Brezhnev.

Also new to the Halsey Hall Chapter: William Hutchison, Tom Thompson, Galen Schroeder, Aaron Hutchison, Todd Johnson, and Carl Rogan.


Addition to Baseball Names on The Office

The January issue of The Holy Cow! included a list of character names from the television show The Office that were also names of people in baseball: Michael “Mike” Scott, Ryan Howard, Devon White, and Kevin Malone. Add to that list the name of David “Dave” Wallace, the chief financial officer for Dunder Mifflin Paper Company on the television show and a former pitcher and pitching coach in the major leagues. Member Tara Krieger points out that the Ryan Howard character, portrayed by B. J. Novak, may be named after Ryan Howard of the Phillies, who played for Scranton-Wilkes Barre in parts of the 2004 and 2005 season (the television show is set in Scranton, Pennsylvania).


Calendar

    February 6—Book Club, Barnes & Noble, Har Mar Mall, Roseville, 9:30 a.m., The Glory of Their Times. by Lawrence S. Ritter. For more information, contact Tom Dolen, 651-483-8617, or Art Mugalian, 612-721-2825, amugalian@comcast.net.

    February 21—Halsey Hall Chapter Board Meeting, 3 p.m. For more information, contact Kevin Hennessy, 651-651-492-2298, kwhennes@ties2.net.

    March 13—Hot Stove Saturday Morning, Bakers Square, 66th and Xerxes, Richfield, 9:00 a.m. For more information, contact Mark Johnson, 952-831-1153, baseballbooks@comcast.net.

    March 21—Research Committee Meeting. For more information, contact Rich Arpi, 651-739-6986, rich.arpi@comcast.net.

    May 22—Spring Chapter Meeting. For more information, contact Howard Luloff, 952-922-5036, Hfan77@webtv.net.  


Board of Directors 2009-2010
President—Kevin Hennessy
Vice President—George Rekela
Secretary—Art Mugalian
Treasurer—Jerry Janzen
Fred Buckland
Gary Hackenmueller
Scot Johnson

The Holy Cow! Editor—Stew Thornley
Webmaster—John Gregory 

Halsey Hall Chapter Web Page: http://halseyhall.org

Past issues of The Holy Cow! are available at http://halseyhall.org/pubs/holy.html

  

Chapter History: http://halseyhall.org/officers_history.html

Chapter Procedures and By-Laws: http://halseyhall.org/bylaws.html

Society for American Baseball Research: http://sabr.org

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