.
The Fred Souba Hot Stove Saturday Morning, an informal breakfast gathering for the purpose of talking baseball, will be Saturday, November 8 at 9:00 a.m. at the Shortstop Bar and Grill, 1298 East Moore Lake Drive, Fridley 55432.
The Halsey Hall Chapter will host a Zoom meeting with Mark Armour on Wednesday, November 19 at 7:00 p.m. regarding his research on Satchel Paige and his attempt to document every pitching appearance by Paige. The meeting with our chapter will focus on Paige’s appearances in Minnesota and the Dakotas.
The 2026 SABR convention in Cleveland has the dates set: 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
Halsey Hall Chapter Twitter 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 102 followers, the Facebook page 317 members, and the Xwitter page 817 followers. 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.) Bob Komoroski is overseeing the Bluesky page.
Also:
Regular Events
Video Archives of Past Events
Go to Top
Research Roundtable
Research projects, web pages, and blogs of chapter members are highlighted on the home page of Research Committee.
Chapter members are often meeting Friday mornings at the Minnesota History Center to work on the Minnesota Spread of Baseball Project, 1857-1923 and identifying Pre-pro Clubs and Games in Minnesota.. For more information, contact Rich Arpi.
The next Research Committee meetings, via Zoom, will be September October 13 (rescheduled to avoid a conflict with the SABR Scholars Series—see above ) and November 17 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.
Go to Top
Stew Thornley’s Not All There Quiz
Here is the quiz from the September Research Committee meeting.
- He pitched in the 1988 Olympics, when baseball was a demonstration sport, and later pitched a no-hitter for the Yankees.
- He was traded for Rocky Colavito after leading the American League in batting average.
- He once replied to a woman who asked how an athlete like him could be so out of shape with, “I’m not an athlete, lady. I’m a baseball player.”
- He outdueled Christy Mathewson in the 1908 replay of the Merkle game. He was buried, after his death, in Terre Haute, Indiana.
- A right-hander with a descriptive nickname who pitched in three different leagues in the 1880s, he won 28 games in the Union Association and led the league with 483 strikeouts.
- His name on the back of his uniform and his number combined to spell out his birthday. He was a guest at the 2015 SABR convention in Chicago.
- A southpaw, he was one of three members of the San Diego Padres to join the John Birch Society. He was later traded to the San Francisco Giants.
- He portrayed Roy Turner in Bad News Bears as the coach of the team that was the rival to the one sponsored by Chico’s; Bail Bonds.
- With a nickname that could also apply to Reese McGuire, this righty’s major-league career consisted of 47 innings with Pittsburgh in 1957. He was later traded to Cincinnati in a deal that included Frank Thomas, Smoky Burgess, and Harvey Haddix, although he never pitched for the Reds.
- He won all but two of his 193 career wins in the National League, most of them with the Phillies, with whom he had signed a contract with a reported bonus of $65,000. He later went to the Cardinals and won 65 games with them and had a 2.51 earned-run average in the 1964 World Series.
- He played 100 games (including two at Target Field) with the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals between 2017 and 2019. He survived a suicide attempt in 2020 and played for the San Francisco Giants’ farm team in 2021 in Sacramento and then became a mental-health advocate in the Giants system. ESPN made a documentary about him.
- He is often incorrectly identified as the first free agent. Qualify it a bit more (as the first million-dollar free agent, for example), and it is correct. He did not have the disease he died from named after him, as was the case with a former player.
Answers below
Go to Top
New Members
Our chapter now has 184 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.
Go to Top
Thoughts of the Month
Abe Simpson: “Die before you get old. Oops, too late.“
“I’m only civil because I don’t know any swear words.“ —Calvin
Chuck Tanner: “The greatest feeling in the world is to win a major league game. The second greatest feeling is to lose a major league game.”
John Kruk: “I feel like I have tendinitis in my middle finger after driving from Florida to Philly.”
“The worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades.”
Joe Sheehan on the Automated Ball Strike (ABS) system and Major League Baseball’s decision to use a challenge system rather than full-out ABS: “MLB can get the calls right and is choosing not to do so.”
Also from Joe (who supplied a link to the cartoon below): “No team is as good as it looks when it’s playing well, or as bad as it looks when playing poorly. Variance swamps everything.”
Go to Top
Cow Pies
Gregg Omoth had an article on Álvaro Espinoza in the SABR book, Vinotinto Venezuela Béisbol, 1939 - 2024: 85 Years of Venezuelans in the Major Leagues, which is available as a free download for SABR members.
Al Strauss received a heartwarming on-line review from Triumph®, The Insult Comic Dog™, regarding Al’s book, The Newman Adjustment:
Dave Anderson has entered hospice care. He is the vice president and longtime monthly quizmaster (a role he took over from Glenn Gostick) for the Original Old Timers Hot Stove League. A charter member of the Halsey Hall Chapter, Dave rejoined SABR a few years ago. He owned Brick Alley Books in Stillwater and authored several books, including Quotations of Chairman Calvin and the anthology Before the Dome. Members are encouraged to send cards to Dave at 2237 Commonwealth Avenue in St. Paul 55108.
The SABR Games Project has new game stories by chapter members:
The September 2025 edition of Keltner’s Hot Corner, the newsletter of the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter, is on-line:
Keltner’s Hot Corner, September 2025
Past Keltner’s Hot Corner newsletters:
Keltner’s Hot Corner
Go to Top
Answers to Stew Thornley’s Not All There Quiz
