The Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research conducted its Fall chapter meeting after the conclusion of yet another Fall Classic.

The Chapter was very excited to have guests and member presentations. The meeting was hosted at the Library Conference room of Seattle Pacific University by Professor Bill Woodward, a longtime SABR member. Professor Woodward attended the meeting along with many of his students.

The first presentation of the day was from Joe Staton, member of the 1972 and 1973 Detroit Tigers. Joe had a great amateur career in Seattle and Washington State, and brought along many artifacts from his time in high school and college baseball. These artifacts illustrated a highly competitive environment in the area. Joe had great stories of his managers with Detroit, Billy Martin and Joe Schultz, as well as his winter ball manager in the minors, Jim Leland. Joe's minor league adventures had even included time playing in Mexico with future Mariner Enrique Romo. Aside from his playing accomplishments, Joe helped start the Seattle RBI program. The program is in its 21st year, and has helped 180 kids, 14 of whom have gone on to be drafted.

Next up was Ocean Shores based author, SABR member, and statistician Merrianna McCully. Merrianna has self published a book about her second career providing stats research to Jim Kaat for his broadcast work. Kaat had hired McCully while he worked as a TV analyst for the Minnesota Twins, as well as CBS and ESPN, and he also wrote the book’s foreword. Merrianna's book centers around her concepts of Swing Runs as well as her own story with baseball. Its a fascinating read with lots of great numbers to back up the concept which looks at how many runs a given team needs to win a gam.

Steve Steinberg was up next, delivering a presentation on the 1931 Dixie Series of Houston versus Birmingham. Steve presented a great narrative of, as he put it, the wiley veteran against a brash youngster. In this case the veteran was Ray Caldwell, who place in the minors was on his way down, against Dizzy Dean, whose star was ascendant. It was a fascinating story, including not just the great characters of the legendary players, but the interesting details, such as Caldwell being struck by lightning and then finishing a game.

SABR Member Frank Workman delivered his concept for realignment next. This restructuring looked at creating three leagues of 10 teams, an East, Central and West. Each would then be divided into a north and south division. There would be no interleague, instead teams would focus on geographic rivalries during a regular season with a balanced schedule of 162 games against the other 9 teams in their league. This would also allow games to always be played at night in a single time zone, accommodating tv. An 8 team playoff would have two seeded teams get a break while the others play a series of one game playoffs, then a quarter finals, then a World Series. It was a very interesting proposal which sparked a lot of debate.

Finally, Mark Brunke presented some recent audio and video finds. The main part of Mark's presentation was audio from reel to reel tapes of interviews conducted during the Seattle Mariner's 1978 Spring Training. These interviews, by Dave Niehaus and Ken Wilson, were of players such as Julio Cruz, Enrique Romo, Dan Meyer and Bruce Bochte. A real treat was hearing Dave Niehaus interview team owner Danny Thomas.

The next PNWSABR chapter meeting will be during Mariners Fan Fest on January 25, 2015. This meeting is a closed meeting for SABR members and guests. There will also be a meeting for members in Victoria, BC area that weekend, as part of the SABR Day activities. That meeting is at 11 AM at John's Place, 723 Pandora Avenue, Victoria. The next regular chapter open meeting will be in Portland on February 14, 2015. Please look at our events page information on this and other meetings.