September 2002
Dr. Fan a Hit in Accepting Hilda Award
Joint Chapter Meeting October 20
On Deck Circle
Replogle a Top Recorder
Book Club
New Members: Jim Hoey and Scott Taylor
Directory Update
Cow Chips
Vintage Base Ball Featured in Fortune
All-Minnesota Team
SABR Doings
Correction
Cool Web Site
Hot Stove Saturday
Answer to Quiz
Last Chance for Subscription Renewal
Calendar
Board of Directors
Dr. Fan a Hit in Accepting Hilda Award
Seth C. “Dr. Fan” Hawkins traveled to southern California to accept the Hilda Award from the Baseball Reliquary in late July. The award was presented as part of the Baseball Reliquary’s annual Shrine of the Eternals induction. One of the speakers on the program was Minnie Miñoso, who was being inducted into the Shrine. Another was Peter Golenbock, the master of ceremonies. However, according to The Baseball Primer (http:www.baseballprimer.com), “Golenbock may well have had the show stolen from him by Dr. Seth Hawkins, the winner of the Reliquary’s Hilda Award (named for the Dodgers’ fanatical cowbell lady who was a fixture at Ebbets Field for nearly three decades). Hawkins’s credentials for such an award are impressive: he’s seen every game where a batter made his 3,000th hit since 1959, was in attendance when Hank Aaron hit number 715 and when Pete Rose collected hit number 4,192, and has seen regular-season games in 66 different stadiums.
“Hawkins, a retired speech professor, was the best speaker of the day, with several memorable ripostes. Perhaps the best of the lot was his recollection of the time that he ‘was caught engaging in suspicious behavior at Dodger Stadium.’ What was the exact nature of this dire action? Why, remaining in attendance until the bottom of the 9th inning, of course.”
Joint Chapter Meeting October 20
The Halsey Hall Chapter will hold a joint regional meeting with the Field of Dreams Chapter of Iowa on Sunday, October 20 at the Music Man Centre in Mason City, Iowa. The meeting will begin at noon and wrap up by 5:00. The program will include a display of Iowa and Minnesota baseball memorabilia, an open forum on how to do research, a joint business meeting, and a trivia quiz as well as:
On Deck Circle
After an absence of more than two years, the On Deck Circle (the chapter’s television show) was revived in July, thanks to the efforts of producer Ray Luurs. The topic was baseball graves. The program will be shown on Minneapolis Television Network as well as other cable television public-access channels in the Twin Cities.
Replogle a Top Recorder
Ron Replogle is listed as one of the Volunteers of Note for The Baseball Index (TBI). Operated by Ted Hathaway, TBI is a catalog to baseball research materials with references and citations to more than 175,000 books,
articles, videos, and other items.
Ron has catalogued nearly 500 records for TBI. The information is available at http:/www.baseballindex.org.
Book Club
Four chapter members met on August 10 to discuss the book Hitter! The Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams by Ed Linn.
The next meeting is at 10 a.m. on Saturday, October 19 at Dunn Bros. Coffee Shop, next to Rag & Bone Books, 2812 W. 43rd Street in the Linwood Hills area of Minneapolis. The book to be read is The Great American Novel by Philip Roth. For more information, contact Tom Swift at swifttom@hotmail.com.
New Members: Jim Hoey and Scott Taylor
Jim Hoey grew up in the mining town of Taconite, Minnesota, and played baseball on a field adjacent to an iron ore pit. “A lot of foul balls came back with a chalky red substance on them,” Jim recalls. He attended his first Twins game in 1964, where he also saw his first black person. Although he missed Jack Kralick’s 1962 no-hitter for the Twins, nine years later Jim attended his cousin’s wedding at which another relative vomited on Kralick.
Jim attended Greenway High School in Coleraine and later played hockey at St. Mary’s College in Winona, Minnesota. He has taught social studies for 25 years and now teaches at Farmington Middle School. He also works with former Twins first baseman Craig Kusick on the Rosemount Town Pages.
Jim has a four-year-old son, Eddie, and a wife, Ann, who is a pharmacist at the Veterans Administration Medical Center. On their honeymoon in 1990, they attended the Boston-Minnesota game at Fenway Park when the Twins turned two triple plays. He was at the final game at Met Stadium in 1981 as well as at Kent Hrbek’s final game in 1994. At the latter game, Jim caught a grand slam hit by Kirby Puckett.
“I have fond memories of listening to late-night games on the West Coast on my grandpa’s old Zenith radio by lying on the hallway floor outside his bedroom door, trying to pick up the scratchy reception from WCCO and watching the Saturday Game of the Week with my dad with Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean broadcasting,” Jim says. “I miss the old ballparks (by 1989, I had seen a game at every venue except Shea), have great disdain for the present strike zone, and still love the morning box scores.”
Jim’s favorite player is Bert Blyleven, and he once dated a woman who shared Bert’s April 6 birthday. As for Jim, he shares his May 14 birthday with Ed Walsh, Earle Combs, Tony Perez, Bob Thurman, Dennis Martinez, Dick Howser, Roy Halladay, Sophie “The Trophy” Kurys, and George Lucas.
Scott Taylor was born in Toronto, grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, and now lives in Winnipeg. He has a family of three other “baseball-to-the-death” fans: his wife, Sally; son, Jesse, 21; and daughter, Betsy, 18.
As a player, Scott was a memer of the 1969 Sarnia Drawbridge Inn Knights, the Canadian Junior baseball champions, and, from 1986 to 1999, of the Giroux A’s, four-time Canadian over-35 national champions. As a baseball columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press, Scott has covered 17 All-Star Games, 15 World Series, Cal Ripken’s consecutive-games record, Mark McGwire’s 59th, 60th, 61st, 62nd, and 70th home runs, Barry Bonds’s 73rd home run, Kirby Puckett’s final at bat (in spring training against Greg Maddux), and Manitoba-native Corey Koskie’s first major league game.
Scott shares his April 20 birthday with fellow chapter member Barry Bengtsson as well as Eric Tipton, Don Mattingly, Dave “Beauty” Bancroft, Todd Hollandsworth, Harry Agganis, Preston Gomez, and Adolf Hitler.
Directory Update
Jim Hoey
2971 Pilot Knob Road
Eagan, Minnesota 55121
651-994-7870
E-mail: jahoey@unique-software.com
Scott Taylor
128 Kingston Row
Winnipeg, Manitoba R2M 0S9
204-227-8610
E-mail: scott.taylor@freepress.mb.ca
Sarge Upton
801 Martin Behrman Avenue
Metairie, Louisiana 70005
504-835-0246
E-mail: Msarge101st@aol.com
Cow Chips
Fred and Gaynelle Buckland saw ball games at SkyDome and Comerica Park. . . . On a trip to Philadelphia to visit a friend, Jerry Janzen saw games at Veterans Stadium, Oriole Park, Yankee Stadium, and Shea Stadium. . . . On his birthday, Deano Thilgen saw the Twins beat Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox at the Metrodome. . . . Brenda Himrich is going to Newfoundland with her husband although they aren’t planning on seeing any baseball games there. . . . Phyllis Thornley was the “Subway Fan of the Game” at the August 17 Twins-Red Sox game.
Vintage Base Ball Featured in Fortune
Cary Smith and Don “Pieso” Hammer are pictured in the September 2, 2002 issue of Fortune magazine, which contains an article on vintage base ball in the United States with particular attention on a recent match in Rochester, Minnesota, in which the St. Croixs beat Rochester to win the Silver Ball (the trophy for the state championship). In addition to Pieso, chapter members Deano Thilgen and Dan Cagley play on the St. Croixs. Cary plays on the Quicksteps, a team sponsored by the Halsey Hall Chapter. The Quicksteps will finish their 2002 season with a match against the St. Croixs on Sunday, September 15 at the Cummins-Grill Homestead, 13600 Pioneer Trail in Eden Prairie. The St. Croixs have one match after that, against the Afton Red Socks, on Sunday September 22 at 2:00 at Afton Village Park in Afton, Minnesota.
All-Minnesota Team
The July issue of The Holy Cow! featured Alan Holst’s All-St. Paul team. For this team, Alan gets to use the entire state. Here are his picks of the best players born and/or raised in Minnesota.
C: Terry Steinbach
1B: Kent Hrbek
2B: Jack Crooks
SS: Gene DeMontreville
3B: Paul Molitor
OF: Jim Eisenreich, Dave Winfield, Roger Maris
CF: Larry Rosenthal
Pitchers: Chief Bender, Joe Bush, Jerry Koosman, Jack Morris, Rube Walberg, Dave Goltz
Reserves:
Pitchers Tom Burgmeier, Dave Goltz, Bill Gullickson, Tom Niedenfuer, Aaron Sele; Catchers Greg Olson and Wes Westrum; Infielders Chick Gandil and Jerry Kindall; Outfielders Spencer Harris, Walt Moryn, and Rip Repulski.
SABR Doings
Potential Chapter Projects
A potential project for all SABR chapters is involvement in the new BioProject Committee. At the SABR convention in Boston last June, committee chair Mark Armour outlined the goals of the group, whose mission is to assemble journal-length biographies on anyone who ever played major league baseball as well as other significant baseball people. Mark cited the experience of the Gardner-Waterman SABR chapter in Vermont, which assembled a book consisting of biographies of Vermont natives who played in the majors, The Green Mountain Boys of Summer, and how this became a unifying project for the chapter. Mark said the Baseball BioProject (as it is officially known) could also become a group project for other SABR chapters, allowing them the chance to work together on assembling biographies on players from their area. Regional leaders are encouraged to join the e-list for the Baseball BioProject at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SABRBioProject. More information is also available at the committee’s web site at http://bioproj.sabr.org.
Another project involves updates to Jon Light’s 888-page The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball. Jon wants to do a second edition of the encyclopedia but needs help. He seeks assistance from interested individuals as well as from chapters that might wish to update and add to the sections about baseball from their area. Anyone wanting to get involved or receive more information may contact Jon at 805-988-8305 or via e-mail at jlight@nchc.com.
Chapter Chatter Debuts
The first issue of Chapter Chatter, an electronic newsletter for regional chapters in SABR, is now available at http://www.sabr.org/reg/chapchat200207.htm. The newsletter can also be accessed through the SABR web site (http://www.sabr.org) on Regional Chapters in the left-hand column. Chapter Chatter is the first item in the drop-down list that opens under Regional Chapters.
MySABR
The “MySABR” page, on the SABR web site at http://www.sabr.org, allows all SABR members to access and modify their membership information. The new administration feature on MySABR provides an easy way for regional leaders to maintain contact with their local chapter. Members are encouraged to use MySABR and to click on the Administration link, where a multitude of features are available, including the ability to:
Correction
Alan Holst should have been on the list of Halsey Hall Chapter members who attended the SABR convention in Boston.
Cool Web Site
Retrosheet has box scores—many with full play-by-play accounts—for most of the years since 1969 on its web site. Even the years without box scores, back to 1900, have game logs for each team with the date, opponent, and outcome of every game. Often, the starting pitchers are listed, which makes it a great tool for tracking down games. The web site is http://www.retrosheet.org.
Hot Stove Saturday
Kirby Puckett almost became part of the chapter’s last Hot Stove Saturday Morning when he, along with his son and daughter, sat in a booth next to the usual crowd that gathers to talk baseball at the Baker’s Square in Richfield on the first Saturday of the even-numbered months.
The next convocation is Saturday, October 5 at 9:30 a.m. Baker’s Square is on 66th Street, just west of Xerxes Avenue.
Last Chance for Subscription Renewal
If you haven’t already, please send your annual subscription dues of $12 to Rich Arpi, 2209 East Skillman Avenue, Apt. 16, North St. Paul, Minnesota 55109-3996. Make the check out to Halsey Hall Chapter. Those who have joined the chapter since January 1 don’t have to pay again for another year. If you’re unsure of your dues status, check with Rich at 651-748-9361 or at rwaces@cs.com. Anyone making an additional donation will receive recognition in the newsletter.
Thanks to Bob Tholkes for his generous donation to the Halsey Hall Chapter.
Calendar
October 5—Hot Stove Saturday Mid-Morning, Baker’s Square, 66th and Xerxes, Richfield, 9:30 a.m.
October 19—Book Club, Dunn Bros. Coffee Shop, Minneapolis, 10 a.m.
October 20—Fall Chapter Meeting, Music Man Square, Mason City, Iowa, noon to 5 p.m.
Halsey Hall Chapter
Board of Directors 2002-03
President—Ray Luurs
Vice President—Fred Buckland
Secretary-Treasurer—Rich Arpi
Dan Cagley
Cary Smith
Deano Thilgen
Bob Tholkes
The Holy Cow! Editor—Stew Thornley
Holy Cow Extra Editor—Bob Tholkes
Webmaster—Deano Thilgen
Please direct news about chapter events, about
yourself or about other chapter members to:
S. Thornley
1082 Lovell Avenue
Roseville, Minnesota 55113-4419
E-mail Stew Thornley
Halsey Hall Chapter Web Page: http://halseyhall.org/
Halsey Hall Chapter E-list/Message Board: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/halseyhall/
Past issues of The Holy Cow! are available at http://halseyhall.org/pubs/holy.html