Society for American Baseball Research

Mark has written mainly about baseball and is particularly expert on labor relations, general history, cheating, baseball's integration, baseball cards, and biographies.

Joining the Society for American Baseball Research in 1983, Mark has made extensive contributions to the organization over the past four decades.

Mark was the recipient of Sabre's highest honor, the Bob Davids Award in 2008, and of the Henry Chadwick Award, honoring baseball's greatest researchers in 2014.

He has written or co-written several other books and many articles for publication.

His book, Joe Cronin, A Life in Baseball, published by the University of Nebraska Press, was a finalist for the prestigious Seymour Medal in 2011, as was In Pursuit of Penance, also published by Nebraska, which he co-wrote with Dan Levitt in 2015.

In 2022, Mark and Dan Levitt produced their third collaboration, Intentional Bulk, Baseball's Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating, via Clyde Hill Publishing.

The book traces the history of baseball's more ingenious or nefarious efforts to get an edge on the opposition.

That book was awarded Sabre's Seymour Medal for the best book of baseball history or biography published that year.

And, uh, I know some of the, some of the guys.

I know the people, uh, at the Society for American Baseball Research, which used to have its headquarters there.

I know the people at Cleveland Baseball Heritage Museum.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

... because it is Quique-tober, so I'm sure he'll do something spectacular, but, um, I, I don't want either one of those g- teams to, to win.

Also, um, public service note, next weekend is SABR's Women in Baseball conference.

So go to the Society for Advanced Baseball Research website that we will link and check it out because there are lots of great speakers.

It's online, so no excuse.

I write for Baseball Prospectus and I'm the author of Summer of the Chief Weiners: What the 1941 Phillies Were Up To While Joe DiMaggio Was Making History.

And with me is Liz Roscher, the editor of SABR's Baseball Research Journal.

Hello, Liz.

Hello, Justin.

It would have been 89 and, what, 73.

At 89, I'm running a meeting of the Society of American Baseball Research in Lansing tonight, coincidentally, right?

Uh-huh.

And I have a trivia quiz, and it's full of trick questions.

So joining me here on the roundtable, Justin Kluwe and Liz Roscher.

Uh, Liz Roscher, of course, is the editor of SABR's Baseball Research Journal.

You can follow her on X and BlueSky @lizroscher.

Liz, they did it.

And it's so different, because if I...

You know, like, if I'm trying to tell a story of, you know, Wally Moon in this Cardinals book, I have to search Society for American Baseball Research, I have to go to Wikipedia, I have to go to Inter- the Sporting News.

With this, I'm like, "Hey, Jay, when you were playing that guy, was it at Glen Abbey in Toronto?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "All right, cool." Click.

I'm like, "That's it." So it was a lot quicker, and it was so much fun just sitting there doing it.

You do it 40% of the time, you're a superstar.

In 1984, the year I formally joined the Society for American Baseball Research, now 42 years ago, 1984, baseball proudly announced it was adding a new avant-garde statistic called on-base percentage.

It took them till 1984 to make that official.

So, so what are you saying here? Every on-base average before 1984, every record doesn't count? What about OPS, on-base average plus slugging percentage? That doesn't count before 1984? Of course not.

I'm John Stolnis from The Good Fight.

I'm joined here on this edition of The Roundtable by Liz Roscher, the editor of SABR's Baseball Research Journal.

Lots to get to here.

Uh, we do not just include this week.