Society for American Baseball Research
Rogers Hornsby Chapter
Central and South Texas
Annual Report, June 2018 – May 2019
By Gilbert D. Martinez
Chapter Commissioner
Rogers Hornsby Chapter
The Rogers Hornsby Chapter enjoyed another year of baseball-related activities and said goodbye to chapter founder Bill Gilbert in the last year.
Gilbert, who also founded the Larry Dierker Chapter in Houston prior to moving to Central Texas in the mid-2000s, brought baseball enthusiasts together in the Austin area to form the Rogers Hornsby Chapter. He also started our tradition of annual winter meetings filled with research presentations and visits from former ballplayers, managers, umpires, agents and front-office staff. In recognition of his contributions to SABR and the chapter, we have named our annual winter meeting after him, which will now be known as the Bill Gilbert Winter Meeting of the Rogers Hornsby Chapter.
At the 13th annual winter meeting in January 2019, we honored Bill Gilbert and had a videoconference with acclaimed baseball writer (and commissioner of the West Coast League) Rob Neyer. Bob Joyce, son of former Major League pitcher Bob Joyce, recounted his father’s career, pitching with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1939 and with the New York Giants in 1946. In addition, Joyce won 94 games as a starting pitcher for the Double-A San Francisco Seals from 1942 to 1945, including a 31-game win total in 1945. In addition, Bob Joyce shared his own collegiate baseball experiences playing for the University of San Francisco. Other presentations included Gilbert Martinez’s “Baseball in Japan,” in which he described attending Chunichi Dragons games in June 2018, visiting the Ichiro Suzuki museum near Nagoya, Japan, and presenting Ichiro’s father with a photo of Ichiro’s 3,000th professional hit (Nippon Professional Baseball hits plus MLB hits). In addition, longtime broadcaster for the Round Rock Express Mike Capps shared details about the long-anticipated return of the Triple-A affiliate to the Astros’ farm system.
The chapter’s “Talking Baseball” reminiscence program celebrated its 100th session in April 2019. Our SABR chapter’s program in Austin, offered in conjunction with Alzheimer’s Texas, has been running for four years. This session concluded our 11th “season” in Austin. The monthly program in Kerrville, in cooperation with the Veteran’s Administration there, has been in operation for three years.
Monte Cely also attended and filed dispatches about the Caribbean Series 2019 from Panama City, Panama. Panama defeated Cuba to take the Serie del Caribe crown.
In May 2019, the chapter met for the 150th consecutive month, a streak dating back to December 2006.
Many of the monthly meetings include lunch at a restaurant in the Austin area, sometimes involving baseball trivia quizzes.