July 29, 2011 Issue No. 49 IN THIS ISSUE:

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1 July 29, 2011 Issue No. 49 IN THIS ISSUE: Regional meeting on Saturday, August 13, 2011 see Program below SABR 41 Some Chapter Member Observations San Diego Chicken Inducted into the Baseball Reliquary Shrine of the Eternals August 13 th Regional Meeting Date: Saturday, August 13, 2011 Time: 9:45a.m. (doors open at 9:30 a.m.) Location: City of San Diego's Mission Valley Library 2123 Fenton Parkway, San Diego Ample parking is available and the Trolley Fenton Parkway Station (Green Line) is nearby PROGRAM Joining us will be Jane Mitchell, author of the book One on One - My Journey with Hall of Famers, Fan Favorites and Rising Stars; Luke Yoder, Director Field and Landscape Maintenance for our Padres; Jack Murray, one of MLB s official scorers for Padres games; and member John Green. Jane Mitchell is a 26-time Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist. Her passion for storytelling stems from her growing up in a Navy family, traveling the world and being encouraged by her mother, who was a teacher, to write about her experiences. One on One - My Journey with Hall of Famers, Fan

2 San Diego Ted Williams SABR e-news Issue No. 49, July 29, 2011 Page 2 Favorites and Rising Stars celebrates the good sports stories of many of the nation s favorite players from teams such as the Padres, Diamondbacks, Giants, White Sox, Indians, Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, Brewers, Mariners, Cardinals, A s, Rangers, Angels and Rockies. For 15 years, Jane Mitchell has explored the hearts, souls and scrapbooks of high profile athletes and rising stars for the television program One on One with Jane Mitchell. In One on One, Jane tells her story of becoming a journalist, of her personal and professional challenges, risks and joy of the enviable job of covering athletes, the most unlikely subject because she was not always a sports fan. She is happy to be working in her hometown, a graduate from the University of California San Diego with Political Science honors, and a Master of Science in Journalism from the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago. She began her career in Wichita Falls, Texas and Tulsa, Oklahoma, reporting on everything from teacher strikes to tornadoes. She returned home as a producer and reporter at KNSD-TV and then joined Cox Communications to produce and report for a special channel for the Republican National Convention in San Diego. She was then hired to help create Channel 4 San Diego before its launch in Luke Yoder, the Padres head person in charge of field maintenance, knows the ins and outs of ballpark field maintenance having worked for the Pittsburgh Pirates and now our Padres. This is one of those behind-the-scenes jobs in baseball that is so important to a well-played ballgame. We will get a chance to hear what is happening to the field between the last out of one game to the first pitch of the next game and, what the field crew does when the team is out of town and, numerous other aspects of their job that most of us never think about. Jack Murray is one of two official scorers for our San Diego Padres. He has been functioning in this capacity for more than 20 years. Did you know that the official scorers are employed by Major League Baseball? There are probably numerous other things you didn t know about his job, so come and learn about what the official scorer does besides ruling on errors/hits and wild pitches/passed balls. When he is not at Padres games, Jack broadcasts baseball games for the University of San Diego. Also on our program agenda is John Green who will tell us about Joe Oeschger. Joe was a National League pitcher from 1914 through SABR 41 Some Chapter Member Observations SABR 41 was held in Long Beach July 6-10, Several Chapter members were in attendance, including our President Dan Boyle. Dan attended the Regional Chapter Leaders Meeting on July 6 th and provided a feature presentation on the history and accomplishments of our chapter. Other chapter members in attendance at this meeting included Andy Strasberg, Tom Larwin, and Greg Funk.

3 San Diego Ted Williams SABR e-news Issue No. 49, July 29, 2011 Page 3 In his remarks Dan offered a challenge to other chapters proposing a $406 contribution from our chapter to SABR (note the significance of the dollar amount) that would go toward awarding scholarships to potential new young members in the Twin Cities to enable them to attend next year s SABR 42 convention. We expect to hear more about this in the coming months as SABR headquarters and Board consider our challenge. In the main hall of the convention, and capturing much attention, was a Fantography exhibit of photos from Andy Strasberg. He announced that a publisher has signed on for his book with a publishing date scheduled in mid Below are some comments from a few of our members who were in attendance. From Greg Funk: Long Beach was my fifteenth convention and seventh in a row. I thought Dan did a great job on the presentation. Andy s display had some fascinating shots. Two of my favorite research presentations: A Close Call for the Baseball Antitrust Exemption, by Ross Davies, who examined the fine line separating several swing votes among the justices; and John McGraw Fights His Way Through Early Prohibition, by Dan Levitt. The game at Dodger Stadium on Friday was the one where the Padres loaded the bases (including 2 HBP) in the ninth with no outs, only to lose 1-0. Seemed like the season s coffin-nailer. Stopped by Lake Elsinore on the way home and saw a 15-8 game to get my run-scoring fix. Trivia contest: I survived the first 2 written test rounds on Thursday to make the final 4. Saturday night s individual semi-finals started around 10:15 PM after the Angel game, followed by the team semi s. The individual finals started around midnight and the team finals ended at 1:20 AM. (Oh, and I finished 3 rd ) From John Green: Having the convention in Long Beach was ideal; I stayed in the overflow hotel (Renaissance), and it was a nice walk from there to the Hilton HQ, with restaurants along the way... Scott Boras was impressive as the keynote speaker...dennis Gilbert was a disappointment as the Awards Luncheon speaker...jed Hoyer gave a good account of himself at the GM Panel...the McCourt debacle was much in evidence at Chavez Ravine; the ballpark looked shabby, attendance was down, and the Dodger Dogs were lousy!...the bus trip to old ballpark sites could have been worked into a presentation, rather than taking six hours on the bus...met some interesting SABRerites, and all in all, enjoyed the festivities. Hope to make it to Minneapolis next year! From Jay Walker: Someone must have great connections with the Hollywood crowd because they had the alltime greatest baseball film festival, with films running everyday from 9:00 in the morning until

4 San Diego Ted Williams SABR e-news Issue No. 49, July 29, 2011 Page 4 almost midnight. I'm not that much of a cinema fan, but I caught two films. The first was a 1935 feature called Alibi Ike - a comedy based on the novel by Ring Lardner (a great baseball read by the way). It was slightly goofy without being silly and went well with a 9:00 AM cup of coffee. Some of the 'more mature' folks in the chapter might remember the original Home Run Derby, broadcast from Wrigley Field (LA, not Chicago) in the late 1950s. My second film featured the first-ever such matchup with two guys named Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays doing battle. Mantle rallied from a serious deficit to win 9-8. In some ways the most interesting part was how they had each one sit and chat with the announcer while the other one was batting. I had forgotten that these were not actually two New Yorkers but a couple of Southern lads. The trivia contest was still going strong when I called it a night at 12:45 Sat. night/sun. morning. This is pretty much the baseball trivia championship of the world, and our chapter's Greg Funk finished 3rd in the individual contest. The contest was in a Jeopardy format, and while credit is due for those who took the time and effort to put it together, they should have given more thought into the scoring, as rules were made on the fly. For instance let's assume an 8-point question where you have to name 8 players with some characteristic and you only can name 7. Should that be scored as 7 points, or 6 points (7 minus 1), or -8 points for not answering the question in full? Fortunately none of the contests were close enough that anyone screamed robbery. I also noticed they missed at least one answer (Barry Larkin being one of those with 15+ years playing for his native city). There was an upset for my favorite panel, with the old-timers player panel taking the nod. In fact only two players showed up, Tommy Davis and Al Ferrara, both Brooklyn boys who played with the Dodgers in the Walter Alston years. Ferrara is a seriously funny character with more than his share of jokes and assorted humorous tales. While his name might not be familiar to all of you, he was also the Padres starting LF their first two years. T-Davis was also good, with some astute observations on hitting and Walter Alston plus a few jokes of his own. I was also able to get Jed Hoyer's phone number. My little fantasy was that it was his cell in case I wanted to give him input on any trade rumors. While I have yet to try it, I did notice that it has the same 3-digit prefix as the Padres main switchboard. Oh well. San Diego Chicken Inducted into the Baseball Reliquary Shrine of the Eternals Ted Giannoulas, in full SD Chicken regalia, was on-hand to accept his induction to the 2012 class of the Shrine of the Eternals. He was introduced by Andy Strasberg, who worked for 22 years for the San Diego Padres in a variety of advertising, marketing, and promotional capacities, and worked closely with Giannoulas for many memorable events and routines. They promoted a Chicken Season Ticket package, premium giveaway items featuring the Chicken s likeness, and many TV ad campaigns such as the Padres Go See Cal parody that included Tony Gwynn as a member of San Diego State s baseball team.

5 San Diego Ted Williams SABR e-news Issue No. 49, July 29, 2011 Page 5 In addition to the Padres relationship, Strasberg was able to negotiate the Chicken s appearance on a Donruss baseball card and co-authored a baseball trivia book with him. Andy s introduction went like this: Timing is such an important part of any sport, and for The Chicken, his time began on Easter Sunday in But let me put things in perspective as it relates to baseball. ESPN was five years away from well, becoming ESPN (September 7, 1979). The Montreal Expos played at Jarry Park. There were only 2 divisions in each league and there were only 24 teams. A box seat at Dodger Stadium cost $3.50 that s three dollars and 50 cents not three hundred and fifty dollars. You could buy a pack of baseball cards for 10 cents. Ozzie Smith was a college student. Cal Ripken s son, Junior was ironically in Junior High School. And Derek Jeter well Derek wasn t even born yet (June 26, 1974).