I think the Bulletin is the only mailing I get from SABR, the rest is delivered electronically. Scratch that, the Springfield, Mass chapter sends me a semi-annual announcement via snail mail, but they also sell the circa 1980 SABR foam dome at their meetings. I'm starting to get a little more active in some of the commitees (the 19th Century one is pretty mature. I believe that I was the second youngest one at their conference.) I'll RTFB and will probably vote this time around.

I don't follow SABR politics at all, but I'll certainly agree that my impression is that the membership is heavily skewed toward the geriatric. And the website is pretty second-rate.

Yes...a beverage for FX Flinn!

A vote for FX is a vote for progress

He's the Goldie Wilson of our times.

Matt, who is FX running against? What are the other positions up for grabs and who is running there? I haven't gotten my mailing yet.

Chris, not sure. My info came from a phone conversation.

I attended my only SABR convention as a 20-something in Milwaukee, I felt like a baby at times. I had a great time, but it does need some new vision.

tell you what ill run in 2010. im counting on you primates to help make it happen

meatwad/CiC 2010.

...and a Meatwad in every pot.

FX is running against Andy McCue, another long-time board member. Vince Gennaro and Bill Marshall are running for secretary (Neal Traven is retiring), and Gary Gillette, Rodney Johnson, Seamus Kearney, R.J. Lesch and Cary Smith are all running for the open director slot.

I would suggest that everyone read the candidate statements in the Bulletin very carefully before making a choice.

-- MWE

In my experience, all organizations like SABR are getting old and grey, and tottering towards extinction. Young people don't seem to find them of interest or value. It's some kind of seismic cultural shift that I've concluded there's not much one can do about.

My theory is that, in part, these groups have been so successful at promoting what they want to promote, that they are no longer so obviously important. We have retrosheet.org, bbref, loads of good baseball blogs raising questions about Bert Blylevyn as a Hall of Famer, and for a time we could even access a database of old Sporting News's online. Plus so many books about baseball history that one doesn't have enough time to read them all. When SABR started there was the Sporting News and its guides, the Baseball Encyclopedia and the Hall of Fame, and most baseball books were about the recently retired, unless you looked for used books.

Yet, let SABR shrink too far, and in a generation it'll be needed all over again. Baseball isn't going away. You young people just don't think ahead!

This is one of those times that I am glad to say that I am out of SABR politics. I did, however, let Mr. Beverage know at the Winter Meetings that I was looking forward to rejoining SABR as nothing more than a member who could then learn to enjoy NWSABR meetings again. SABR is the greatest. The politics of SABR... not so much.

Got the info in the mail yesterday. I was really impressed with F. X.'s statements. I was leaning towards voting for him anyway, but that cinched it.

Finally got the bulletin in the mail. I see that Cary from MN is running for director. I'll have more comments when I digest this. I'll be having breakfast with some guys from the local chapter tomorrow. Maybe we'll talk about the upcoming election.

Two brief comments.

1.) What was the micromoanaging that Andy McCue was referring to? Mike, do you know? IIRC, you've been with SABR longer than the rest of us.

2.) This has nothing to do with the election, but I was impressed with how the 19th Century set up their committee meeting in Cooperstown.

Read through this and talked about it at breakfast on Saturday. We talked about Flinn vs. McCue and Cary Smith's name also came up. One or two of the guys had the opinion that Andy would be more collaborative than FX. Not sure if this is good or bad. Cary's age came up as an issue. I think his youth would be an asset, as he'll have less counterdemands on his time than someone older may have. Not everyone agreed. (It was an older group.)

I like Vincent Genarro's statements, BTW. He's running for secretary.

I was a member of SABR for a year. Once I realized that by 'baseball research' they only meant historical baseball research, I let my membership lapse. To Fra Paolo's point, maybe it wouldn't be in the process of becoming less relevant if the issues they focused on adjusted with the times, but 99% of what is researched is still about obscure historical events, and that just isn't what the younger generation is focused on. There are plenty of baseball horizons where we've just scratched the surface, but they're still focused on trying to draw oil from a well where the most accessible parts have already been drained.

(T)hey're still focused on trying to draw oil from a well where the most accessible parts have already been drained.

There is a lot of historical stuff that hasn't been mined yet. That discovery of the Pittsfield Ordinance from the 1790s was only a few years ago, for instance. And they still never figured out what happened to One-Arm Daily. But it looks like Flinn is trying to address your concern, according to one of his answers in the bulletin.

Once I realized that by 'baseball research' they only meant historical baseball research, I let my membership lapse. To Fra Paolo's point, maybe it wouldn't be in the process of becoming less relevant if the issues they focused on adjusted with the times

My impression of SABR is that it is pretty open to new ideas, provided one keeps pushing them for a sustained period. If SABR was flooded with contributions to its journals or to its annual meeting on topics of 'baseball research' that were contemporary, they'd start publishing them or allowing them to be presented. For example, I took part in the selection process for presentations for last year's SABR. I got a group of proposals, and ranked them according to my interests and my perception of what was original or, perhaps, offbeat. I didn't have to be interviewed or have my birth certificate checked to make sure I was old enough not to bring some unwholesome enthusiasm for newfangled approaches. I just needed to check the SABR-listserv digests and volunteer when the call went out. I'd have done it again this year if my workload hadn't been so heavy when the call was made.

I can understand why someone might join an organization, find it doesn't suit their needs and offers them no way to participate, and leave after a year. But SABR's not like that. It's very open, especially if one is already in contact with members at a place like Primer/BTF.

I like baseball, I like Sabermetrics, I like Primer. I find SABR offers me a chance to meet Primates when I can get to the annual meeting, where we sit in sabermetric and non-sabermetric presentations, and then talk about them afterwards. The last meeting I went to featured things like the attempt to describe the physics of Matsuzaka's funny pitch, a first presentation of how Pitch F/X can help analyse pitching, and whether Judge Landis was more of an integrationist than we thought. Plus sabermetrics stuff like Daly's excellent Southworth: Manager in a Box presentation. Great times!

And they still never figured out what happened to One-Arm Daily.

He shot his i out?

I just looked at my bulleting. The deadline is June 9th. Apparently they only take official ballots from the bulletin.

Mailed my ballot today.