May Chapter Meeting Recap

Bud Kane reminded us that the St. Louis Browns Annual Dinner will be held June 8 at the MAC and will likely feature former players such as Roy Sievers, Ned Garver, Don Larson, JW Porter, SABR's own Bill Jennings, Don Lenhardt and Ed Mickelson ... Benita Boxerman presented some research on local restaurants where we might move our chapter meetings. We're looking for a suitable venue that is handicapped-accessible for some of our older members. Next month's meeting (June 19) will be at Maggie O'Brien's ... Animated discussion provoked by the venerable Rick Salamon about the Cardinals' need to "win now" as opposed to building for consistent division championships. Rick, seeing a quickly-closing window to win the World Series, advocated trading young pitching for big stick Miguel Cabrera. Counterpoints: Moneyball belief that the playoffs are a crapshoot and that St. Louisans would much prefer the Braves' model -- consistent winning over the long haul -- over the win-now model of the 2001 Diamondbacks and 1997/2003 Marlins ... No love for Ozzie from SABR members regarding recent newspaper kerfuffle with TLR. Members with good memories recalled that Smith has had a history of being a malcontent, even having rifts with Whitey (see Jack Clark) and being a contract holdout in San Diego (agent Ed Gottlieb took out an ad in the San Diego paper advertising "Padre Baseball Player wants part-time employment to supplement income," which led to Joan Kroc's offer to become her gardener). Apparently, Hummel's provocative interview of Ozzie Smith was a directive from an editor to find out why the Wizard hasn't been more active with the team ... Discussion about Selig's requirement that the Cardinals do something about the press box at the new ballpark before we can host an All-Star Game. The press-box roof evidently prevents journalists in the second row of the box from seeing the sky and parts of the scoreboard. But changing the angle of the roof would obstruct view for fans sitting in upper deck above the press box ... Overall reaction to new ballpark was positive. Still too early to tell if it is indeed a "pitcher's park," as Albert Pujols claimed, though it's 20th in Park Factor so far. Seating angles and light standards recalled old Sportsmans Park ... Consensus was that Bonds will leave baseball soon after passing Ruth's record, which it was noted by Matt Philip and trivia-master Bob Tiemann, is actually 715, since one of his out-of-the-park hits was considered a triple, based on old rule that counted walk-off hits only for however many bases they required to force the winning run home. Tiemann went further to suggest that The Sultan of Swat actually might've had 30 or more home runs taken away on account of an obscure rule that discounted long flies that left the field of play in fair territory but landed foul ... Surprise manager of the year? Jim Leyland of the Tigers. And if there were a coach of the year award, Leyland's first-base coach, Andy Van Slyke, would receive votes ... As always, Tiemann stumped the group with his trivia quiz. Topic: Runs and Outs.