Society for American Baseball Research
Rogers Hornsby Chapter (Central and South Texas)
Annual Report, June 2021 – May 2022
By Gilbert D. Martinez
Chapter Commissioner
The last year has been a mixed bag for the Rogers Hornsby Chapter; while we have mostly returned to in-person meetings, we’ve also had to shift to virtual meetings as precautions against the continuing pandemic.
In addition to lunch meetings, the chapter organized multiple outings to the Dell Diamond and a World Series watch party.
One particular highlight was the May 2022 meeting in which chapter members gathered for a barbeque dinner before a Round Rock Express game at the Dell Diamond. The game was followed by a screening at the ballpark of “Facing Nolan,” the new documentary about the career of Nolan Ryan.
For our in-person gatherings, we usually met for lunch, but in March, we had breakfast tacos at a local barbeque restaurant. We plan to mix breakfast and lunch meetings in the coming year.
We also had our 16th annual Bill Gilbert Winter Meeting in January on Zoom, featuring former Astros executive Tal Smith, baseball writer Rob Neyer, umpiring pioneer Perry Barber and Mike Capps and Tim Nolan of the Express. In addition, Ryan Pollack coordinated this, his sixth winter meeting, and elected to step down from that role, but he remains an active member and continues to serve as our webmaster. Active member Jerry Miller will take on the coordinator role and lead the effort to organize our winter meeting next year.
Whether in-person or virtually, the chapter continued its streak of meeting at least once monthly for 186 months, a streak dating to December 2006.
In addition, Hornsby volunteers are beginning their eighth year offering Talking Baseball programs to participants and care partners living with Alzheimer’s, dementia, or living in isolation or institutionalized. Biweekly programs are held in Austin and Georgetown.
Volunteers are hoping to restart the program soon at the Kerrville VA Medical Center and are exploring starting a program in Seguin. Chapter members have also been instrumental in the expansion of these programs to other SABR chapters. Currently, SABR “Baseball Memories” programs are offered in seven other cities nationwide, with several other SABR chapters exploring local possibilities.
Also, longtime SABR and chapter member Jim Baker continued running Predictatron, a contest to predict win totals for all teams and playoff teams and World Series champions. This year, he added trophies for the season-long Predictatron champion and for the playoff portion of the contest. The trophies include the names for each winner, going back to 2008 for the season champion and 2007 for the postseason champion.