Resources
MVP Two-Peat!
The Halsey Hall Chapter was recognized with the SABR MVP Award for the second year in a row. Seven other chapters also received this designation, but the Halsey Hall Chapter is the only group to receive it twice, thus solidifying our status as the best chapter in SABR.
SABR 52
The best chapter in SABR hosted the annual convention for the third time, following convocations in 1988 and 2012 with another hit this year. Nearly 600 people attended the convention, including chapter members Dave Hill, Tom Flynn, Dirk Lammers, Jeff Papas, Ross Bennett, Howard Luloff, Katie Roggenbuck, Rob Schoene, Kris Hard, Jerry Janzen, Jacob Sayward, Bryan Herr, Jennifer Parker, Dan McIntyre, Doug Skipper, Jack Stanton, Rich Cohen, Art Mugalian, Mike Sluss, Barry Bengtsson, Joey Thomalla, Bob Komoroski, John Buckeye, Gene Gomes, Phil McCracken, Kenny Jackelyn, Tom Mollen, John Rosengren, Daniel Dorff, Ed Edmonds, Joe O’Connell, Dave Lande, Jeff Schwenn, Dan Levitt, John Swol, Gary Sjoberg, Sam Sundermeyer, Rich Arpi, Jim Thielmann, Cary Smith, Gregg Nelson, Hans Van Slooten, Alan Holst, Steven Gregory, R. J. Lesch, Aaron Sinner, Fred Buckland, Theo Tollefson, Lloyd Kepple, Al Strauss, Paul Spyhalski, Terry Bohn, Kyle Roggenbuck, Brenda Himrich, John Gregory, Jason Parker, Rex Hamann, Steve Bratkovich, Bill Stixrud, Stew Thornley, Dan Brower, Jim Cox, Steve Ginader, and Steve Elsberry. Thanks also to members who didn’t attend the convention but volunteered and showed up to stuff goody bags and staff the registration table.
The convention featured panels with four Hall of Famers, including (above) Tony Oliva and Rod Carew. Below, an umpire panel had Jeff Nelson and Emma Charlesworth-Seiler.
Below: John Gregory provides quotable quotes, none of which were used, to Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star Tribune for a column Reusse wrote for the opening day of the convention: For Baseball Information and Great Stories, SABR Conventions Are the Place to Be.
Gene Gomes captured a number of chapter members in action:
The convention got a plug by the Twins for several games in a row. (Photo by Katie Roggenbuck)
Brenda Himrich produced the best line of the convention. As she broke up a group at the audience microphone from the previous session so that the program with Melissa Ludtke could begin, a SABR-typical member informed her that he wasn’t there to ask a question but to tell a story. Replied Brenda, “That’s even worse.”
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Upcoming Stuff
The Fred Souba Hot Stove Saturday Morning, an informal breakfast gathering for the purpose of talking baseball will be at Manning’s, 22nd and Como in southeast Minneapolis, on Saturday, September 14 at 9:00 a.m.
The next Research Committee meetings, via Zoom, will be September 23 and October 21 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, Anders Koskinen, 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, and Bob Komoroski. Let Dave or Gene know if you would like to attend and/or join the committee.
The next Book Club meeting will be Saturday, October 19 at Barnes & Noble in Har Mar Mall at 9:30 a.m. The book selection is Summer of Shadows: A Murder, A Pennant Race, and the Twilight of the Best Location in the Nation by Jonathan Knight. 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 Fall Chapter Meeting will be Saturday, November 2 at Faith Mennonite Church, 2720 E. 22nd Street in south Minneapolis. Registration begins around 8:15 a.m. with the program beginning at 8:45. The cost for the meeting and lunch is $10. People can pay by cash (with correct change appreciated) or check at the door.
The day will follow the usual format with research presentations in the morning and a featured guest or guests in the afternoon with a trivia quiz by Howard Luloff to wrap it up.
Members are invited to submit a proposal to make a research presentation at the meeting. Proposals may be sent to Research Committee co-chairs Dave Lande or Gene Gomes and include a title and brief outline of what the presentation will consist of with emphasis on the research that will be included. Standard oral 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.
One presentation slot is always reserved for a first-time presenter until four weeks before the chapter meeting (October 5). If a slot remains after that, any member can submit a proposal until October 19, two weeks before the meeting, when the Research Committee will wrap up the schedule of presentations.
One presentation has been approved so far:
Sam Sundermeyer, Last Ounce of Magic: Win Probability of the 2009 Twins
The 2009 Minnesota Twins turned in one of the most exciting campaigns in team history. Although the club once again fell short to the Yankees, fans who were along for the last ride in the Metrodome remember Mauer’s MVP campaign, the September comeback, and the last ounce of Dome magic in Game 163.
With 15 years of fond remembrance now behind us, it begs the question: was the ride as magical as we remember? Did the Twins really beat the odds to win the division? Through the use of advanced win probability statistics, memory will be checked with reality.
Keep up to date with chapter activities on social media:
SABR Halsey Hall Chapter Facebook page
Halsey Hall Chapter Twitter page
Please visit both pages, and, if you haven’t yet, “Like” the Facebook page and “Follow” the Twitter page and set your notifications to be alerted to new posts. (The Facebook page now has 303 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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Sparky Seals’s Hefty Quiz
The August Research Committee meeting included a weighty quiz by John “Sparky” Seals:
- This one-time Minnesota Twins pitcher was born in Aruba and knighted in the “Order of Orange-Nassau” (a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry) in 2003.
- This HOF player led the NL in HR four times in his career and holds the record for most RBIs in a season.
- This pitcher appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman” while eating a sandwich and once recorded a song called “Fat is In.”
- This player, nicknamed “Burger,” went 328 games without issuing an intentional walk, spanning over 4 years, reputedly a record. He was quoted in the 2008 World Series: “I go from being one of the bright spots in Atlanta, getting Chipper and Teixeira to last night I give up two squibblers, and I’m the guinea pig. It’s called being a pitcher.”
- This player and his son are first father-son duo to each hit 50 home runs in a season. In 1996, after his first stolen base in 1,096 games in the major leagues, one of them said: “I’ve been working on my jump for nine years.”
- This player played for the Boston Red Sox, Anaheim Angels, and New York Mets, hit 328 career HR, and was the American League MVP in 1995. He once had a Pastrami sandwich named after him at New York’s famous Carnegie Deli.
- This player is the oldest Twins pitcher with a complete-game victory of 9 innings or more.
- This three-time All-Star had 51 saves in 1998 including in a “game 163” against his former team. Once said “I sure don’t think of myself as a fat person, just someone who carries extra weight. I’ve never seen anyone on the DL with pulled fat.”
- This two-time All-Star played for the Cardinals, Reds, Tigers, and Nationals, one of only three players to hit 3 HR on Opening Day, also won the NL Comeback Player of the Year award in 2007.
- “Good Ol’ Folksy Joe” Garagiola once said you could wake this player up at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning, with two inches of snow on the ground, throw him a curveball, and he’d hit a line drive. Referred to as a “Walking Laundry Bag” by Sports Illustrated.
Answers below
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New Member Joey Thomalla
Joey “Joe or J. T.” Thomalla (pronounced tom-AH-lah) is a rising sophomore at the University of Notre Dame, studying Business Analytics and Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics in preparation for a career as a Major League Baseball general manager. He is from Hugo and has a mom, dad, and three sisters but no pets. He attended the SABR convention as a recipient of the Yoseloff Scholarship.
His dad and grandpa, huge fans, went to the 1991 World Series, and Joey grew up on baseball. He played for 13 years, including two in high school. He was the team manager his senior year and did public-address announcing and live video calls of games. With a devastating cutter, he received the Cy Young Award as a rookie in the Notre Dame Wiffle Ball League and also hit three home runs in the playoffs.
Joey—a superfan of the Twins and Rays with lesser admiration for the Padres, Blue Jays, Nationals, and Giants)—collects jerseys. He owns seven Twins jerseys and seven from other teams. His favorite Twins player of all time is Jose Berrios and his favorite player overall is Ji-Man Choi. He attended Game 3 of the 2019 playoffs (when the Yankees beat the Twins 5-1) and has been to 10 games so far this season, including at Yankee Stadium and Busch Stadium. His favorite ballpark he has visited is Oracle Park in San Francisco.
While his second-most followed sport is hockey, Joey loves pickleball and spending as much time outdoors as possible. He has been a top 1,200 player in MLB The Show.
Born in 2004, J. T. shares his November 17 birthday with chapter members Matt Johnson and Kyle McNary as well as Tom Seaver, Mike Garcia, Jim Brewer, George Stallings, Orlando Pena, Jeff Nelson, Seth Lugo, Ryan Braun, Mitch Williams, Nick Markakis, Danny DeVito, Sarah Harding, Martin Scorsese, Gordon Lightfoot, Rock Hudson, Bob Mathias, and Titus Flavius Vespasian.
Joey Thomalla essay for the Yoseloff Scholarship
Also new to the Halsey Hall Chapter: Marty Krogman, Henry Bednar, Tom Goldstein, Steven Bolster
Our chapter has welcomed eight new members since June 1, the beginning of the SABR fiscal year reporting period, and has 190 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
Courtesy of Cal Quantrill: Pitcher brings up hitter’s arrest record during trash talk, a breakdown (NSFW)
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Cow Pies
The SABR Games Project has new game story by a chapter member:
August 18 was the 83rd anniversary of The Butt Report.
The Hennepin County Museum has an oversized bat with autographs from players in a July 30, 1933 game between Perry Werden’s All Stars and the Old Guard. Museum curator Alyssa Thiede found an article about the game in that day's Minneapolis Tribune, which included a photo of Werden’s All Stars from 1910, and she would love to learn more about the players in the 1933 game. If anyone can help, contact Alyssa, alyssa.thiede@hennepinhistory.org, and please copy me, stew@stewthornley.net.
The August 2024 edition of Keltner’s Hot Corner, the newsletter of the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter, is on-line:
Keltner’s Hot Corner, August 2024
For those of you who missed Melissa Ludtke at the SABR convention, the Keltner Badger State Chapter will be having a book club meeting via Zoom with her on Thursday, November 7 at 7:00 p.m. A link to register for this event is in the current Keltner’s Hot Corner. This issue also has a recap of the Women’s Baseball Cup by Mary Shea.
There is also information on the virtual SABR/International Women’s Baseball Center Women in Baseball Conference September 20-22 along with a registration link.
Past Keltner’s Hot Corner newsletters:
Keltner’s Hot Corner
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Answers to Sparky Seals’s Hefty Quiz
- Sidney Ponson
- Hack Wilson
- Terry Forster
- Ray King
- Cecil Fielder
- Mo Vaughn
- Bartolo Colon
- Rod Beck
- Dmitri Young
- Smoky Burgess
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Calendar
August 25—Halsey Hall Chapter Board of Directors meeting, 7:00 p.m. For more information on attending, contact Ed Edmonds.
September 14—Fred Souba Hot Stove League Saturday Morning, 9:00 a.m., Mannings’s, Minneapolis.
September 23—Research Committee meeting, 7:00-9:00 p.m. via Zoom. For more information, contact Dave Lande or Gene Gomes.
October 19—Book Club, Barnes & Noble, Har Mar Mall, Roseville, 9:30 a.m., Summer of Shadows: A Murder, A Pennant Race, and the Twilight of the Best Location in the Nation by Jonathan Knight.
October 21—Research Committee meeting, 7:00-9:00 p.m. via Zoom. For more information, contact Dave Lande or Gene Gomes.
November 2—Fall Chapter Meeting, 8:45 a.m., Faith Mennonite Church, Minneapolis. For more information, contact Howard Luloff, 952-922-5036, or Bob Komoroski.
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Board of Directors 2024-2025
President—Ed Edmonds
Vice President—Mike Haupert
Secretary—Daniel Dorff
Treasurer—Rich Arpi
Terry Bohn
John Buckeye
Howard Luloff
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—Frank Kadwell, Hans Van Slooten, and Stew Thornley
Social Media Directors—Bob Komoroski, Facebook; Hans Van Slooten and Tom Flynn, Twitter
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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