Nogo in the big time!

I admit it! SABR presentation was thrilling!

It’s one thing to get to write another baseball book and be on MLB Radio on the show “Remember When” with Ed Randall and Kevin Kennedy for 20 minutes, chatting it up, feeling like you hit it big on national radio on a Saturday morning.

It’s something else to be invited to present a chapter from your book “Diamond Duels” to the most intensely passionate baseball fans in the world (Yes, it was the WORLD — three folks from England sitting three rows up) at the National SABR (Society Of American Baseball Research) Convention at the Westin Hotel in Dallas. (Actually, Irving, Texas.)

Nogo on the lecture circuit - so to speak - at SABR National.

These folks know the game backwards and forward, upside down and sideways. You’d better know your stuff. The pressure is on. Don’t pop it up!

If you don’t know a lot about SABR, understand this: The winner of the SABR Trivia contest was able to look at a page of statistics like this AND TELL YOU WHO IT IS!

(It was Bobo Newsom. And the guy KNEW it. Within SECONDS!)

My point is, these are devoted, discerning fans who will call you out if you say something the least bit inaccurate. While I’ve only been a member of SABR for two years (Thanks, Brent), it’s been a fantastic organization and one that I’ve valued for some time. They are doing all they can to keep those baseball fans excited, involved, committed. SABR has been on the forefront for a long time.

One of the classroom assignments I always looked forward to every year was showing the film “Eight Men Out” about the fixed 1919 World Series, then assigning each student a White Sox player and had them use the SABR biography to determine his involvement (or not) in the fix. They had to write a five-page paper on the Series, whether or not the White Sox/Black Sox were justified in taking the gambler’s money and trying to lose because they weren’t paid fairly. One student, a young woman who wasn’t even a baseball fan, wrote seven pages. “I just had to know what was the right thing to do,” she said. SABR fans are just like that.

So on Friday morning at 8:30, here I was, standing before a room full of SABR folks, talking first about a chapter in “Diamond Duels” about Detroit’s Harry Heilmann, then about the process of writing the book. The audience couldn’t have been more receptive or, when I was done, more complimentary. I was there until Sunday and heard kind words every day. It was so gratifying. When you’ve poured your heart into a bunch of baseball statistics and tried to make something fun and readable and it worked, well, that was pretty cool.

Along with being on MLB Radio and being on the Rick Ballou and Jeff Cameron radio shows earlier this year which was a blast, this had to be one of the coolest things I got to do. When you’re selected to present to a SABR audience, you’d better have some game.

For those who weren’t in Dallas, here’s my SABR presentation. Thanks, Rick.

“Diamond Duels” my latest baseball book, is available locally at Barnes & Noble, Books A Million and at Midtown Reader and, of course, on Amazon, along with my first baseball book, “Last Time Out.”