Coming Attractions: SABR50 this month!

The long delayed SABR50--the fiftieth annual convention held by the Society for American Baseball Research--is finally taking place at the end of next week in Baltimore. I'm very excited to be going. Not only is it the first in-person conference that I've attended since before the pandemic, but its the first time that I'll have the chance to meet many of the SABR members that have given me a great deal of camaraderie, insight, and friendship since I joined back in 2020. I have a supply of facemasks; got my second COVID-19 booster at the end of July; and so should be all set to come somewhat out of hibernation. (Also: registration is still open for the event that runs from August 17th through the 21st). 

One of the first pieces of card art that
I created

There's a great deal on the calendar that looks fascinating: panels on the building of Oriole Park at Camden Yards; the life of Babe Ruth, including his biographer Jane Leavy (who also wrote an outstanding book on Sandy Koufax's life), and reminiscences of Boog Powell, who by now is just as beloved for his delectable barbecue as for his handling of the first base position.

And yours truly will also be involved. I'll be at the meeting of the Baseball and the Arts Committee as a contributor to the third edition of Turnstyle, the SABR literary magazine, which is publishing a page on my card paintings. 

I'm also taking part in the poster session, with my contribution "Re-Visualizing Baseball Cards and Data: New Ways of Seeing." The overall theme should be very familiar--that data visualization presents a great opportunity for baseball researchers to show impact and insight that the statistics suggest. My focus is less on hard and fast insights--though they are certainly there, and familiar if you have seen my past postings on the 2020 major league season, and on the Negro Leagues--than it is on the process of seeing and showing those findings. My main goal is to show the process of finding data, working with it, and visualizing it with a view to having the data tell a story that's new and interesting. If you're coming to the convention, the poster session is at noon on Saturday -- I hope to see you there. The related data is embedded below. If there are any questions that you think would be worth addressing, or that you have about my data visualization work, please let me know in the comments!