Resources
Dave Jensen Dies
Dave Jensen died at 81 on April 8. Dave made multiple research presentations at chapter meetings and served on the chapter board of directors. His wife, Linda, commented on how much Dave enjoyed his connections with the chapter. Dave grew up in North St. Paul, served in the Navy, and worked in the healthcare field most of his life. His funeral will be April 25 at Calvary Church on Lexington Avenue in Roseville.
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Business/Law Event at University of St. Thomas
Members of the Halsey Hall Chapter will present a review of business and legal aspects of baseball highlighting web pages on the topic at the SABR web site as well as advantages of joining SABR with student members of the University of St. Thomas School of Law’s Sports, Entertainment and Media Law Society from 12:30-1:25 p.m. on Thursday, April 23, 2026, at the downtown Minneapolis campus. For more details, contact Ed Edmonds.
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Lineup Set for Spring Chapter Meeting
Marshall Kelner—a lawyer who has worked with sports organizations and was a play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Twins affiliate in Fort Myers, Florida—will be the featured guest at the Halsey Hall Chapter Spring Meeting Saturday, April 25 at the Plymouth branch of the Hennepin County Library system, 15700 36th Ave North, Plymouth 55446. Registration begins when the library opens at 9:00 a.m. with the program beginning soon after, so punctuality is encouraged. Instead of a set admission price, it will be a Pay as You Can with donations of all amounts accepted.
Research presentations from members will take place in the morning:.
9:45-10:15: The 1937 St. Paul Kohn’s: Minnesota’s First National Baseball Champions by Armand Peterson
10:15-10:45: The Sports Agent and Sports Management by Kris Hard
11:00-11:30: Elston Howard’s 1951 Semi-professional Baseball Season in Wisconsin by Paul Spyhalski
Howard Luloff will conduct his Jeopardy-style quiz before lunch, when the business meeting will be held. Featured guest Marshall Kelner will be on from 1:00 to 2:30.
Elections
During the business meeting, an election will be held for president-elect and director in accordance with the revised by-laws. Any SABR member may run for director, which will be a three-year term. Candidates for president-elect must have served at least one year on the board of directors within the last five years. The nominating committee has put forth two canidates:
Terry Bohn for president-elect
Mike Zarling for director
Candidate statements:
Terry Bohn was an original member of the Halsey Hall chapter and is a current board member. He has been a regular attendee and has made presentations at regional meetings. Terry has been published in the SABR Baseball Research Journal, contributed to the BioProject, and is a member of SABR’s Minor Leagues and Nineteenth Century Committees. His interests are early baseball in the Dakotas, and he has written and self-published three books on baseball history in North Dakota. He is retired and lives in Mandan, North Dakota, with his wife, Mary Jo. They have two children and three grandchildren.
Mike Zarling—I joined SABR about a year ago with some urging from John Buckeye with whom I often shared my research findings. Upon joining, I immediately joined the Research Committee where I have been a regular attendee and contributor. I had the pleasure of presenting to Halsey Hall at the fall meeting. It would be an honor to be on the board.
Others may indicate interest in running by contacting Ed Edmonds, edmonds.7@nd.edu. Candidates will be invited to submit a candidate statement, which will appear in the next issue of The Holy Cow! Nominations will also be accepted from the floor at the meeting.
Bring a book bag to the meeting as Dan Levitt will be bringing a number of baseball books he got from a baseball fan who is downsizing.
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Other Upcoming Events
The Fred Souba Hot Stove Saturday Morning, an informal breakfast gathering for the purpose of talking baseball, will be Saturday, May 9 at 9:00 a.m. at the Shortstop Bar and Grill, 1298 East Moore Lake Drive, Fridley 55432.
Gustavo II will take place Saturday night, May 30, at Mayo Field as the Rochester Honkers host the Minot Hot Tots in a Northwoods League game at 6:35 p.m. with a pre-game gathering at Brothers Bar & Grill (812 Broadway Avenue South, Rochester 55904) at 4:00 p.m. at which members will be able to meet and masticate with Honkers official scorer Kyle Traynor. Two years ago on a similar chapter outing, the game was rained out but not before a chapter member threw out a ceremonial first pitch, screwing 13-year-old Gustavo of a similar honor on his golden birthday (the downpour started right after the first pitch by the chapter member and before Gustavo was able to throw his). Gustavo may be at the game. If he is, he’s gonna be whizzed, so steer clear of him. For more information, contact Stew Thornley.
The next Book Club meeting will be Saturday, June 20 at Barnes & Noble in Har Mar Mall at 9:30 a.m. The book selection is License to Deal: A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent by Jerry Crasnick.
Other books by or about agents are Inside the Strike Zone by Randal A. Hendricks, Behind Closed Doors by Bob Woolf, and The Agent: My 40-Year Career Making Deals and Changing the Game Paperback by Leigh Steinberg and Michael Arkush.
Another worthy read: How Retrosheet Saved Baseball History by Jay Wigley. Jay spent 10 years researching and writing about the volunteers who spent decades building and operating this all-volunteer organization, which has contributed so much to baseball.
Brent Heutmaker has organized a list of all the book selections since the book club started in August 2002: Halsey Hall Book Club Selections.
The 2026 SABR convention in Cleveland will be Wednesday, July 29 to Sunday, August 2 at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown. The Arizona Diamondbacks will be in town to play the Guardians during the convention.
Keep up to date with chapter activities on social media:
SABR Halsey Hall Chapter Facebook page
SABR Halsey Hall Chapter Bluesky page
Please visit the pages, and, if you haven’t yet, “Like” the Facebook page and “Follow” the Bluesky page and set your notifications to be alerted to new posts. (The Bluesky page has 120 followers/70 following, and the Facebook page 348 members. Bob Komoroski has established rules—essentially, don’t be a dink. The page is still public although Bob has set up a series of questions for new members to cull out spammers, wankers, trollers, and other degenerates.)
Also:
Regular Events
Video Archives of Past Events
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Research Roundtable
The Halsey Hall Chapter received a SABR Local Grant for scholarship outreach by funding a table at the Minnesota Social Studies Conference to publicize SABR scholarship opportunities for students. The Field of Dreams Chapter got a grant to install a historical marker on the former Broadway/American Legion Park in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The chapter will hold a dedication ceremony on Thursday, June 25.
Research projects, web pages, and blogs of chapter members are highlighted on the home page of the Research Committee.
Tom Flynn has been researching a 1925 game in Kansas between an all-Black team and the Ku Klux Klan.
The next Research Committee meetings, via Zoom, will be May 11 and June ?? at 7:00 p.m.
Research Committee members are co-chairs Dave Lande or Gene Gomes as well as Brenda Himrich, Sarah Johnson, Dan Levitt, Doug Skipper, Stew Thornley, Rich Arpi, Hans Van Slooten, Mike Haupert, Bob Tholkes, Daniel Dorff, Darryl Sannes, Tom Swift, David Karpinski, Glenn Renick, John Buckeye, Terry Bohn, Ed Wehling, John Gregory, Art Mugalian, John “Sparky” Seals, Ed Edmonds, Mike Zarling, Chrstian Towalski, and Bob Komoroski.
Let a committee member know if you would like to attend a meeting and/or join the committee.
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Stew Thornley’s Imperfect Quiz
For the April 20 Research Committee meeting, Stew Thornley presented this quiz:
- His name became a punch line after a Seinfeld episode in which Frank Costanza asked Steinbrenner, “How the hell could you trade Jay Buhner?”
- A catcher for Washington in the 1950s, he returned to the franchise as a coach for Minnesota for three years in the early 1960s. During World War II, he served in the Aleutian Islands and then in Europe and is credited with capturing two German soldiers. He had a career .260 batting average in the majors and lived until he was 96.
- This two-time All-Star hit more than 200 home runs in a 14-year major-league career. His best season, with Houston, was in 1999, when he received votes in the Most Valuable Player balloting for the only time. He was arrested in 2011 for pointing a gun at his wife and breaking her cell phones to prevent her from calling for help. A Boston writer dubbed him “Jurassic [name]” for his insights on religion and evolution, which included, “The Bible never says anything about dinosaurs. You can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. Somebody actually saw Adam and Eve. No one ever saw a Tyrannosaurus rex.”
- He played 10 years in the majors in the 1960s and 1970s despite compiling a lifetime bWAR of only 2.3. More than 15% of his plate appearances came as a pinch-hitter in addition to four in the 1973 National League playoffs, his only post-season appearance in what was also the end of his major-league career. Until his final year, he played for bottom-feeders, signing with the Kansas City Athletics in 1960 and making the big leagues in 1964. After three seasons, the New York Mets selected him off waivers. Two years later, the San Diego Padres took him in the expansion draft.
- He is the son of one, brother of one, and dad of two major leaguers, making him a part of one of the few three-generation families in the major leagues history. His dad played in the Negro National League and had four games with the Chicago White Sox in 1951. One of his sons played in the majors from 1998 to 2013, the other from 2004 to 2014. This player, a switch-hitter who did a lot of pinch-hitting, played mostly for the Chicago White Sox between 1973 and 1989.
- Drafted out of the University of Arizona by Philadelphia, he was later traded along with others to Cleveland for Cliff Lee. He made it to the majors in 2010 and played three seasons for Cleveland, hitting seven home runs and accumulating 142 hits, one more notable than the others. He played for his dad at Floyd B. Buchanan High School in Clovis, California, a school that also produced former Twins player Jordan Luplow, Justin Wilson, and former Baltimore manager Tony Mansolino.
- His nickname was the Sheriff although he fit more with Barney Fife than Andy Taylor, claiming that he had been deputized to chase mule thieves in the Carolinas. He was described as “essentially an uneducated hillbilly” although he got along well with his 1932 teammate with Washington, the less uneducated and more erudite Moe Berg. Both played on the 1933 pennant-winning Washington team, but the player in question was the only one of the two who got into the World Series. He played in three of the games in the five-game loss to the New York Giants, grounding out twice and walking twice. Like some of the others in this list, he was frequently used as a pinch-hitter.
- He pitched four no-hitters in the minor leagues and started his major-league career by pitching 25 scoreless innings with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1907 before having the best season of his career, in 1908, when he had a 23-17 won-lost record and an earned-run average of 1.53 in 369-2/3 innings. Alcoholism and syphilis derailed his career although he pitched 10 years in the majors and finished with a career ERA of 2.38.
- Out of Panama, this outfielder’s 14-year career in the majors included one season and part of another with the Twins although he’s most associated with the Yankees, the team he finished his major-league career with in 2000 before playing in the Pacific Coast League with the Rockies organization and then two years in the Mexican League. He spent a few years as a manager in the South Atlantic League and also managed Panama in the World Baseball Classic qualifying round in 2013.
- This third baseman spent his first 13 years in the majors with Oakland, earning six gold gloves during the team’s Moneyball era, before finishing with two years with the Yankees and two more with the Diamondbacks, hitting 260 home runs. While he received votes in MVP balloting four times, he never was named to an All-Star team.
Answers below
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Membership
The Halsey Hall Chapter welcomes Steve Wallner to SABR.
Our chapter has welcomed 11 new members since June 1, 2025, the beginning of the SABR fiscal year reporting period, and now has 179 members.
Know a potential member? Here are resources for getting that person happily involved in SABR:
Membership application
Get more out of your membership experience by checking out SABR Member Benefit Spotlight Series.
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Thought for the Month
“You didn’t throw up in front of Dean Wormer. You threw up on Dean Wormer.” (Prepositions save lives.)
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Cow Pies
Dan Levitt was a contributor to the SABR Book, Two Outs, So What! The 2001 Seattle Mariners with an article co-written by Mark Armour on Pat Gillick.
Dennis Lange went to Puerto Rico for the World Baseball Classic and attended the Cuba versus Puerto Rico and Canada versus Panama games.
The SABR Games Project has new game stories by chapter members:
The SABR BioProject has an article by T. S. (Thomas Sheehan) Flynn on T. S.’s great-great uncle, Tom Sheehan.
A 1960s letter from Halsey Hall to a young fan who wrote often with questions:
Mike Haupert was a guest on Kansas City radio station KKFI in March to discuss the 50th anniversary of the Peter Seitz decision in the Dave McNally-Andy Messersmith grievance: Celebrating 50 Years of Free Agency in Baseball. The interview with Mike starts at around the 10:00 mark.
Bookie Larson presented on amateur baseball in Wright County in Buffalo April 4. His presentation covered statistics, records, and stories from his updated book on North Star League teams from 1951 to 2025.
Frank White achieved another goal by getting the atrium in Benjamin Mays School named for Toni Stone, who lived on the site at 551 Carroll Avenue while growing up in St. Paul.
“We’ve lost too many significant places of our history,” said Frank. “I’m not done yet, more places to come!”
Kit Krieger, the founder of Cubaball, is seeking responses from SABR members on which game in history they would have like to have attended and why. It must be a major-league regular-season, postseason, or All-Star game. Contact Kit at ejkrieger@shaw.ca to be a part of this.
The April 2026 edition of Keltner’s Hot Corner, the newsletter of the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter, is on-line:
Keltner’s Hot Corner, April 2026
Past Keltner’s Hot Corner newsletters:
Keltner’s Hot Corner
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Answers to Stew Thornley’s Imperfect Quiz
- Ken Phelps
- Ed Fitz Gerald
- Carl Everett
- Larry Stahl
- Jerry Hairston
- Jason Donald
- Dave Harris
- George McQuillan
- Roberto Kelly
- Eric Chavez
Theme: Batters who broke up perfect games with two out in the ninth
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Calendar
April 23—St. Thomas. For more information, contact Ed Edmonds..
April 25—Spring Chapter Meeting, 9:00 a.m., Hennepin County Library, Plymouth. For more information, contact Howard Luloff, 952-994-5217, or Bob Komoroski.
May 9—Fred Souba Hot Stove League Saturday Morning, 9:00 a.m., Shortstop Bar and Grill, Fridley. For more information, contact John Buckeye.
May 11—Research Committee meeting, 7:00-9:00 p.m. via Zoom. For more information, contact Dave Lande or Gene Gomes.
May 30—Northwoods League: Minot at Rochester, 6:35 p.m. with pre-game debauchery at 4:00 p.m. For more information, contact Stew Thornley.
June 20—Book Club, Barnes & Noble, Har Mar Mall, Roseville, 9:30 a.m., License to Deal: A Season on the Run with a Maverick Baseball Agent by Jerry Crasnick. Contact Ed Edmonds for more information.
??—Halsey Hall Chapter Board of Directors meeting, 7:00 p.m. For more information on attending, contact Ed Edmonds.
July 29-August 2—SABR convention in Cleveland.
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Board of Directors 2025-2026
President—Ed Edmonds
Vice President—Mike Haupert
Secretary—John Buckeye
Treasurer—Rich Arpi
Terry Bohn
Howard Luloff
Jacob Sayward
Events Committee Co-Chairs—Howard Luloff, Bob Komoroski
Research Committee Co-Chairs—Dave Lande, Gene Gomes
Membership Committee Co-Chairs—Stew Thornley, John Buckeye
MVP Chapter Committee Chair—Gene Gomes
The Holy Cow! Editor—Stew Thornley
Ass. Editors—Jerry Janzen, Brenda Himrich, and John Buckeye
Webmaster—John Gregory
Ass. Webmasters—Hans Van Slooten and Stew Thornley
Social Media Directors—Bob Komoroski and John Buckeye
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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Resources
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