6/28/02 Retrosheet Board Meeting a Success

Approximately 125 people attended the ninth annual meeting of the Retrosheet Board of Directors on June 28, 2002. The meeting was held at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. Four of the five Board members attended the meeting, with only Vice President Sherri Nichols absent.

The first order of business was the approval of last year’s minutes. Then an election was held for two Board positions: David Vincent was re-elected Secretary and Luke Kraemer was re-elected a Director.

The Secretary’s report included notice of the one vote taken by the Board since the last meeting. They voted unanimously to increase the speed of the Internet connection for the web server by four times at twice the cost - pretty good deal!

The Treasurer’s report showed that expenses exceeded income in the last 12 months by $366.88. However, the treasury is in good shape at the moment. The principal expense for the last two years has been the computer that is used as the host for the Retrosheet web site and the cost of the Internet connection.

The President’s report was primarily about the new features on the web site. A live demonstration was shown of the new data and features created by Tom Ruane which include player, team and ballpark pages among other items.

The web site is going to be expanded even further in the near future. New information will be added frequently, including photos of past meetings and news items of interest to the RetroCommunity.

In other SABR Convention news, the SABR Awards Luncheon was a big success. Tom Tippett was awarded the prize for best presentation at the convention. His topic was “Using Lineup-Dependent Expected Runs Analysis to Evaluate Strategies.” Lyle Spatz and the Daves-squared (Smith and Vincent) were presented The Sporting News/SABR Baseball Research Award for their work which culminated in the publication of “The Midsummer Classic: A Complete History of Baseball’s All-Star Game.” This book used Retr osheet data throughout.

Many research presentations used data provided by Retrosheet. Among those presenting were Board member Clem Comly, RetroWebMaster Mark Pankin, Chairman of the Board Dave Smith, Don Zminda, Cyril Morong, Dave Raglin, Larry Baldassaro and Herm Krabb enhoft.

Board Secretary David Vincent participated in a panel on Umpires and Official Scorers. Topics ranged from umpire positioning to scoring rules.

Next year’s Retrosheet Board meeting will be held in Denver. See you there!

Submitted by David Vincent, Secretary