October 14, 2014

October 14 we were most fortunate to have two outstanding presentations, the first by long time SABR member and baseball executive Tal Smith, on the process and progress made by the Atlantoc League in imporving the pace of the game. His All Star committee composed on 4 former MLB General Managers and 3 former MLB players and managers came up and implemented a number of strategies that did shorten games in their league. They are now looking at additional programs that when combined with those already implemented could shorten games by as much as 15 minutes each. MLB has also developed speed up rules and is now testing them in the Arizona Fall League.

Tal was followed by Mike Acosta who shared his vision for not only saving but enhancing the Astrodome. Mike brought with him a visionary model of the Dome along with a variety of possibilities for the facility to become a visual business asset as well as an architectural symbol on Houston. As he said several times "The building is paid for, we don't have to build a structure". Great job Mike!

Congratulations to to Greg Lucas for his upcoming induction into the Howard County (Kokomo) Hall of Fame and to Tal Smith and Ira Liebman for getting their Sugar Land Skeeters into the Atlantic League Championships. Greg also was the winner of our 2014 Astros win contest.

We also heard from Linda Caplan of "Link Up with Linda" on possibly arrangements members can make if they plan to go to Cooperstown in July for the HOF induction ceremony.

Bob Dorrill stressed the need for the chapter to establish 3 committees to keep our group viable for the future. More will be forthcoming in the next 2 weeks and 5 members have already volunteered to help: Stan Curtis, Mike McCroskey, Jim Kruez , Bob Stephens and Larry Miggins.

Ben Brink provided a terrific trivia contest won by Tom White. .