SABR Bob Davids Chapter

Twenty-three Bob Davids Chapter members and guests attended the annual minor league baseball game and meeting on Saturday, August 20th at Pfitzner Stadium in Woodbridge Virgina. The day’s activities were started off with a Baseball Trivia session developed and presented by Babe Ruth Chapter President and Quiz Master Extraordinaire Bruce Brown, followed by a Question-and-Answer session with Potomac Nationals manager Tripp Keister and outfielder Alec Keller.

After the picnic dinner at the right-field picnic pavillion, the attendees were treated to a come-from-behind win by the Frederick Keys over the Nationals in a contest featuring several long home runs, with the Keys holding off a late comeback by the Nationals to win the game 7-6.

The Bob Davids Chapter Board would like to thank Bruce for affording us his time and efforts, and would also like to thank the Potomac Nationals team and staff for providing us with great speakers and the venue for a fine late afternoon and evening of baseball entertainment.

by David Hughes

On Saturday, June 6, the Bob Davids Chapter met for its annual outing at a major league game, this year at Nationals Park.  The Nationals hosted the Chicago Cubs for an unusual 12:05 P.M. start.  The 70+ in attendance assembled at 9:30 a.m. for entry to the park then moved to the Roosevelt conference room for some discussion and to hear from our two guest speakers: Samuel Mondry-Cohen, Director, Baseball Research & Development for the Washington Nationals, and syndicated columnist, author, and life-long suffering Cubs fan, George F. Will.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the son of a math teacher, and still well south of 30 years old, Samuel recounted his varied career experiences in organized baseball.  He has been, in order: the visiting team’s batboy in his home town, San Francisco; one of the visiting team’s clubhouse attendants there; an unpaid intern with the Nationals’ front office; a paid intern with the Nationals; a one-person analytics resource within the Nationals’ front office, and, finally the supervisor of a three-person analytics department, also charged with certain other data gathering activities for the Nats.  He reports to Adam Cromie, Nationals Assistant General Manager (also one of our recent speakers).

Samuel answered questions about his experience as a clubhouse guy (the tips could be good), the mechanics of data gathering, some of the analytical challenges that his group faces on a daily basis, and the various internal uses to which the organization puts his group’s work product.  His group had been preoccupied recently in anticipation of the amateur draft (which began June 8), and will then turn its focus toward analysis in anticipation of the July 31 trade deadline.

George’s childhood home was in central Illinois, and he said that like all of his friends at the time he had a choice of becoming a Cubs fan or a Cardinals fan.  Most of his friends chose to be Cardinals fans and they grew up to become “happy adults who are liberals.”  He chose the Cubs and grew up to be “a dyspeptic conservative.”  His Cubs allegiance seems to have led him down some dark baseball alleys.  His Little League team’s sponsor was part of the Mittendorf Funeral Home group.  The team’s primary “color” was black.  George’s playing days ended, as they had for many of us in the room, when the dimensions of the diamond went from 60’x60’ to 90’ x 90’.

As George noted, Cubs history is littered with disappointment and strange historical threads.  Among other things, he referenced the “Bartman game,” and it’s clear that he’s seen too many Cubs disasters for too many seasons.  George recalled that the recently deceased Lennie Merullo (heretofore the last living Cub to have played in the World Series) had once committed four errors in one inning.  Lennie thereafter called his son, born that very day, “Boots.”  George also told of the Wrigley family’s concern about stories of a vendor in the bleachers who was infamous for short-changing fans.  The vendor, one Jack Rubenstein, subsequently left Chicago for Dallas, Texas.  There, under the name “Jack Ruby,” he ran a night club and became notorious for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.  One of the Cubs’ spring training forays to Catalina Island was the reason that Ronald Reagan, then a radio voice of the team, ventured to California where he took the screen test that changed history. (more…)