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


February 2011

Editor:
Stew Thornley

Spring 2011 Chapter Meeting Set for May 14
New Members
On the Move
On-line SABR and Baseball Resources
Calendar
Board of Directors


Spring 2011 Chapter Meeting Set for May 14

The 2011 Halsey Hall Chapter spring meeting will be Saturday, May 14.

The meeting will be at the Grace University Lutheran Church, 324 Harvard Street SE, Minneapolis, 612-331-0125. Parking is in lot AA, across Harvard Street from the church. The meeting will begin at 9:00 (registration at 8:00) with research presentations and a featured guest in the morning.

Howard Luloff is working on getting a block of tickets for the Twins-Blue Jays game that afternoon (with chapter president Kevin Hennessy serving as the official scorer of the game).

Registration for the meeting is $10, which includes lunch. There is also a meeting-only price of $5. Those wanting lunch must RSVP to Howard Luloff at 763-208-1637, hfan77@webtv.net, by May 7.

During the business meeting, four members will be elected to the chapter’s board of directors to succeed outgoing directors Kevin Hennessy, George Rekela, Fred Buckland, and Scot Johnson. 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 Stew Thornley, 1082 Lovell Avenue, Roseville, Minnesota 55113-4419, 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. The Research Committee (which also consists of Tom Swift, Dan Levitt, Cary Smith, Bob Tholkes, and Rich Arpi) will finalize the schedule of research presentations by April 30, 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 Brendan Boyd’s Blue Ruin: A Novel of the 1919 World Series. The book club will meet on Saturday, April 2 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 12 at Bakers Square in Richfield (66th Street to the east of Xerxes Avenue).

SABR 41 will be held from Wednesday, July 6 to Sunday, July 10 in Long Beach, California. The convention will be at the Hilton Long Beach & Executive Center (701 West Ocean Boulevard, Long Beach 90831-3102, 562-983-3400), which has a special convention rate of $119 per night for guest rooms. The convention will include trips to a Los Angeles Dodgers-New York Mets game and a Los Angeles Angels-Seattle Mariners game.

The 2012 SABR Convention will be in Minneapolis.

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New Members

Scott Cummings is from Chanhassen and is a junior, studying mathematics with a specialization in education at the University of Minnesota. He plans to earn a license to teach secondary mathematics to grades 6 to 12 but would like to someday work in baseball and is hoping that being an active member in SABR will help.

A hardcore Twins fan now, Scotty became a Twins fan after falling off the Minnesota Wild’s bandwagon in the spring of 2003. After the Wild were eliminated from the playoffs, Scott’s dad didn’t want him to get too upset, so he said, “Hey, the Twins won, though! They beat the White Sox 18-3. It was a laugher.”

“I asked what ‘Laugher’ was, and that is when my love for baseball started.”

Less than a month later Scott went to A. J. Pierzynski bobblehead day and saw the bobble-honoree go 3-for-4 with 2 homers, one a grand slam, and 7 runs batted in. “This was really the first game in which I really fell in love with the game, and I still have that bobblehead on my desk at school.”

Some other highlights of games he attended:

  • June 13, 2009, at Wrigley Field. Jason Kubel hit a Rich Harden change-up onto Sheffield Avenue, and Anthony Swarzak threw seven shutout innings and was sent back to the minors after their game. The Cubs fired Gerald Perry, their hitting coach, the next day.
  • April 14, 2010, the second regular-season game at Target Field, and it rained during the game. “And what did we fans do? We cheered!”
  • September 5, 2010. “My dad has never been a fan of Kent Hrbek because he said he was just a big fat dinosaur. Now, I never saw him play in person, so I really thought he was being ridiculous. But seeing Hrbek dive for a foul pop in foul territory at first base at the old-timers’ game and take make a crater of divot, finally showed maybe my Dad did have some insight.”
  • September 6, 2010. Jim Thome hits the longest home run so far at Target Field. “That home run could have gone a lot farther if it hadn’t hit the darn flagpole.”

Scotty shares his December 5 birthday with fellow chapter member Art Mugalian as well as Justin Smoak, Cliff Floyd, Mike Mahoney, Patsy Tebeau, Gus Mancuso, Gary Roenicke, Boo Ferriss, Phil Wrigley, Strom Thurmond, Jim Messina, George Custer, Walt Disney, Alvy Moore, Martin Van Buren, and Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards. Scott also notes that on his first birthday, in 1990, the Toronto Blue Jays traded Fred McGriff and Tony Hernandez to the San Diego Padres for Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter.

Herb Brunell was born and raised in St. Paul and watched many games at Lexington Park and his first major league game at Wrigley Field in Chicago in 1954. He has been to games in 10 major league stadiums outside of Minnesota. His favorite players are Richie Ashburn and Jimmy Piersall. Now retired and married to Barbara for 52 years, Herb played baseball and hockey at Mechanic Arts High School and Hamline University as well as baseball for the Railroad American Legion Post. He still plays in a senior slo-pitch softball league.

Herb went to Cooperstown to see Paul Molitor inducted into the Hall of Fame and has been to Cooperstown two other times. He is a member of the St. Paul Old Timers’ Hot Stove League and has Twins season tickets with his sons, Brad and Bryan.

Herb shares his October 24 birthday with Louis Sockalexis, Rafael Furcal, Wilton Guerrero, Arthur Rhodes, F. P. Santangelo, Gene Larkin, Junior Ortiz, Ron Gardenhire, Ossie Bluege, Omar Moreno, Rawly Eastwick, Jim Brosnan, Jim Greengrass, Ned Williamson, Cuckoo Christensen, B. D. Wong, The Big Bopper, and Sal the Stockbroker.

Zach Jendro is from Fargo and now works for the museum in the State Hospital in Jamestown, North Dakota, doing archival. “I collect lots of stuff, including what neat baseball stuff I have found over the years. I have been working at the Institute for Regional Studies in Fargo, and I have been finding lots of interesting baseball photos among the 500 thousand images in the collection.”

Zach has been researching baseball in North Dakota for about 10 years and researching baseball history with a focus on the 19th century to 1920. Honus Wagner has been in favorite player from the start. It was the 1991 World Series that got Zach interested in baseball. “I taught myself to keep score for Game 7 and what an exciting game it was.”

Zach shares his July 28 birthday with Bullet Rogan, Vida Blue, and the last major league born on July 28, Chad Paronto, as well as Darryl Hickman, Bill Bradley, Frankie Yankovic, and Jackie O (and is only eight days away from the birthday of Tony O).

Also new to SABR: Brandon Warne.

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On the Move

Howard Luloff has moved to Golden Valley, where one of his caretakers is Gwen Kusick, sister-in-law of Craig Kusick, who was a featured guest at our 1997 fall chapter meeting. Please note Howard’s new address and phone number in the news about the spring chapter meeting and in the calendar. Howard is also writing about high school sports for examiner.com. Members may subscribe and receive notices when Howard posts a new article. [Editor’s note: This is good stuff. Check it out.]

Coming to Minnesota:
Noted SABR member John Thorn will be at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul on Tuesday, March 29 for a conversation with Garrison Keillor about John’s new book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game.


On-line SABR and Baseball Resources

The Winter 2010-2011 SABR Bulletin is now on-line.

SABR-L continues to be a forum for members to post and exchange research information. To subscribe to the SABR-L listserv, send an e-mail message to listserv@apple.ease.lsoft.com; in the body of the message, write “subscribe sabr-l” followed by your name (first name, middle initial, last name).

The Minnesota Baseball e-list is a forum for discussion of anything related to baseball and SABR. Although not restricted to SABR members, SABR events and news can be posted on the list. To join, go to the e-list (by clicking the link in the first sentence), and then click on the link to join the group.

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Calendar

    March 12—Hot Stove Saturday Morning, Bakers Square, 66th and Xerxes, Richfield, 9:00 a.m. For more information, contact Mark Johnson, 952-831-1153.

    March 20—Research and Convention Committee. For more information, contact Stew Thornley, 651-415-0791.

    April 2—Book Club, Barnes & Noble, Har Mar Mall, Roseville, 9:30 a.m., Blue Ruin: A Novel of the 1919 World Series by Brendan Boyd. For more information, contact Tom Dolen, 651-483-8617, or Art Mugalian, 612-721-2825.

    April 3—Halsey Hall Chapter Board Meeting, 6 p.m. For more information, contact Kevin Hennessy, 651-492-2298.

    May 14—Spring Chapter Meeting. For more information, contact Howard Luloff, 952-922-5036.

    Summer 2012—SABR Convention, Minneapolis  


Board of Directors 2010-2011
President—Kevin Hennessy
Vice President—George Rekela
Secretary—Bob Tholkes
Treasurer—Jerry Janzen
Fred Buckland
Scot Johnson
Cary Smith

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

Halsey Hall Chapter Web Page

Past issues of The Holy Cow! are available on-line.

  

Chapter History

Chapter Procedures and By-Laws

Society for American Baseball Research

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