Tag Archives: SABR

Out of Left Field: This column is in the best shape of its life

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MlbHlSqPitchers and catchers. Spring training. This column is limbering up, ready for the new season, and feeling good. Leaner, fitter and happier. Welcome, good people, and observe this column preparing itself for Opening Day.

Just sit back and enjoy the following training montage. I imagine that awful Journey song will accompany it. It gets everywhere.

While the great and the good of the MLB are being put through their paces, your correspondent is in training himself. He’s reading Hemingway’s collected advice to writers, he’s thumbing through Bryson’s Dictionary for Writers and Editors, he’s perusing ’10 rules for writers’ in today’s Guardian and he’s scribbling furiously in various notebooks. He’s even thinking about baseball itself (who’d have thunk it?), scanning the Hardball Times Annual, SABR’s free Emerald Guide to Baseball (you need this, people!) and mock drafting like crazy.

And most importantly, your correspondent is honing his eye. Pitchers across the southern states are getting their eye in this week, and so am I. But it’s not easy. Now is time for fluff and bluster in MLB. Nothing of note is happening. This column isn’t looking so promising now, eh?

An aside: how good is life as a baseball professional? You get over four months off (if you’re lucky enough to miss those pesky play-offs), and then on your first few days back you just play catch and wander around in the sunshine. Those lucky things.

No such easy life for this columnist. I’ve had my nose to the proverbial grindstone, and have come up with the following. Bear with me, and be kind, dear reader.  Continue reading →

Project Cobb makes important step forward with attainment of SABR Chartered Community status

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sabr_cobb_smallThe Society for American Baseball Research (or SABR for short), which is the world’s leading organization for historical baseball research, has recently accepted Project Cobb (the Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball) under its umbrella as a Chartered Community. This important step for Project Cobb not only enhances its reputation as a group of research collaborators, but also helps to extend its reach.

The Chartered Community concept is a very new one, being established at the end of 2009. Baseball Think Factory members Chris Dial, Mike McCullough, and Paul Brewer made the excellent suggestion – at SABR’s 2009 national convention in Washington, DC -  for the organization to accept virtual chapters to “recognize the impact of the Internet and other technologies on the way in which SABR members interact,” as described in this press release. Baseball Think Factory was the inaugural Chartered Community, while Project Cobb becomes the fifth group to attain this status and the first that has a primary focus away from the game in North America.

I am very glad to welcome Josh Chetwynd alongside me as co-chair of the Project Cobb Chartered Community. While he is sorely missed from our TV screens, we can take solace in his persisting passion for British baseball.

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