by David Hughes<\/p>\n
On Saturday, June 6, the Bob Davids Chapter met for its annual outing at a major league game, this year at Nationals Park.\u00a0 The Nationals hosted the Chicago Cubs for an unusual 12:05 P.M. start.\u00a0 The 70+ in attendance assembled at 9:30 a.m. f![\"Samuel](\"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Samuel-Mondry-Cohen-275x300.jpg\")
or 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 He has been, in order: the visiting team\u2019s batboy in his home town, San\u00a0Francisco; one of the visiting team\u2019s clubhouse attendants there; an unpaid intern with the Nationals\u2019 front office; a paid intern with the Nationals; a one-person analytics resource within the Nationals\u2019 front office, and, finally the supervisor of a three-person analytics department, also charged with certain other data gathering activities for the Nats.\u00a0 He reports to Adam Cromie, Nationals Assistant General Manager (also one of our recent speakers).<\/p>\n
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\u2019s work product.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
George\u2019s 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![\"George](\"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/George-Will-223x300.jpg\")
fan.\u00a0 Most of his friends chose to be Cardinals fans and they grew up to become \u201chappy adults who are liberals.\u201d\u00a0 He chose the Cubs and grew up to be \u201ca dyspeptic conservative.\u201d\u00a0 His Cubs allegiance seems to have led him down some dark baseball alleys.\u00a0 His Little League team\u2019s sponsor was part of the Mittendorf Funeral Home group.\u00a0 The team\u2019s primary \u201ccolor\u201d was black.\u00a0 George\u2019s playing days ended, as they had for many of us in the room, when the dimensions of the diamond went from 60\u2019x60\u2019 to 90\u2019 x 90\u2019.<\/p>\n
As George noted, Cubs history is littered with disappointment and strange historical threads.\u00a0 Among other things, he referenced the \u201cBartman game,\u201d and it\u2019s clear that he\u2019s seen too many Cubs disasters for too many seasons.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Lennie thereafter called his son, born that very day, \u201cBoots.\u201d\u00a0 George also told of the Wrigley family\u2019s concern about stories of a vendor in the bleachers who was infamous for short-changing fans.\u00a0 The vendor, one Jack Rubenstein, subsequently left Chicago for Dallas, Texas.\u00a0 There, under the name \u201cJack Ruby,\u201d he ran a night club and became notorious for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.\u00a0 One of the Cubs\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
George gave his thoughts on numerous topics in response to many questions from the floor.\u00a0 He described his friendships with Tony La Russa, Buck Showalter, and Larry Lucchino.\u00a0 He opined on matters such as daily inter-league play (he\u2019s for it), the 162-game schedule (he\u2019s in favor of returning to 154), and Rickey Henderson (he\u2019s very high on George\u2019s list of all-time offensive forces in the game).\u00a0 George emphasized a comment from Buck Showalter about today\u2019s game: \u201cThese are \u2018The Good Old Days.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
After lunch, it was up to Section 306 for the game, which happened to be the MLB debut of the Nationals\u2019 pitcher, Joe Ross, just up from AA to make a spot start (or two) while Doug Fister and Stephen Strasburg are on the DL.\u00a0 Young Mr. Ross acquitted himself well, at least the first time through the Cubs\u2019 lineup (3 innings, 3 Ks).\u00a0 He has swing-and-miss stuff as well as an ability to induce ground balls.\u00a0 But he found out the price that young pitchers pay when they fall behind in the count to MLB hitters, especially while facing them the second time.\u00a0 The Top of the 4th<\/sup> was a tad uncomfortable for him.\u00a0 The Top of the 5th<\/sup> was much tougher.\u00a0 But even so, he had only yielded 3 ER before his pitch count (91) got him out of there after five.\u00a0 Felipe Rivero followed with three clean innings of relief, but Taylor Hill coughed up an insurance run in the 9th<\/sup> that had some strategic importance.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because the Nationals had done very little until then against a longtime nemesis, Jason Hammel.\u00a0 Hammel pounded the strike zone all game and while he had given up a lot of fly balls, the Nationals didn\u2019t mount much of an attack.\u00a0 Wilson Ramos hit a solo home run to give the Nats an early lead, but they didn\u2019t score again until Hammel\u2019s 100th<\/sup> (and last) pitch, an opposite field blast by Bryce Harper to lead off the 9th<\/sup> inning.\u00a0 But that only brought the score to 4-2, and though the Nats managed to get the tying run to the plate, the Cubs\u2019 bullpen did the job to seal their victory.<\/p>\n Still, a great day at the ball park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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.\u00a0 The Nationals hosted the Chicago Cubs for an unusual 12:05 P.M. start.\u00a0 The 70+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrdavids.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}