The Rogers Hornsby Chapter, serving Central and South Texas, was officially recognized as a SABR chapter early in 2006. The Chapter held 12 meetings in 2009 with one meeting in each month, continuing a streak of 37 straight months with a meeting. Nine were dinner meetings, held on a monthly basis at a local sports bar, with an average attendance of ten people. In addition to baseball talk, these meetings allowed members to discuss areas of their research and were also used to plan chapter activities. Members are encouraged to bring guests to these meetings and some new active members have been added as a result.
The third annual winter meeting of the chapter was held in January 2009 on the campus of Texas State University in San Marcos. Thirty five people were in attendance at the meeting which included 3 research presentations by Chapter members and a trivia quiz conducted by Norman Macht. The featured speaker was Larry Dierker, former pitcher, manager and broadcaster with the Houston Astros. Other guests included authors, Talmage Boston and Milton Jamail and Round Rock Express Broadcaster, Mike Capps.
One of the meetings in 2009 was held at Dell Diamond, the home of the Triple-A Round Rock Express. The meeting included a pre-game get together and attendance at the game as a group. The October meeting was held at the home of Gilbert Martinez in connection with an NLDS game on television.
The chapter website ( http://chapters.sabr.org/hornsby/ ) was officially launched in April 2009. Jan Larson spearheaded the effort working with Peter Garver of the SABR office. The site is used to announce chapter meetings/events, make prediction contest results available to chapter members and to make various research papers, book reviews, etc. available to SABR members and the general public.
The site has information about the history of the chapter, chapter meeting summaries and membership information. Trivia quizzes (and correct answers) that have been presented at regular chapter meetings are also available for use by interested parties. There are currently three chapter members with editing rights that maintain the site.
Chapter member Monte Cely served as one of three judges for the Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award. This annual award honors outstanding research projects completed during the preceding calendar year (2009). Eligible projects must be the product of original research or analysis, must significantly advance our knowledge of baseball, and must reflect factual accuracy and notable insight.
Fourteen books were submitted for consideration. The three award winners have been announced and will be honored at the 2010 SABR Annual Convention. They are:
- "The Rise of Milwaukee Baseball" by Dennis Pajot
- "Death at the Ballpark" by Robert Gorman and David Weeks
- "Ball, Bat and Bitumen: A History of Coalfield Baseball in the Appalachian South" by L.M. Sutter
The chapter has continued the monthly meetings in 2010. Another very successful Winter Meeting was held in January 2010 with Astro TV broadcaster Bill Brown as the featured speaker. The Winter Meeting is expected to be an annual affair.
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