February 19th, 2017

Larry Dierker SABR Chapter members:

The Larry Dierker SABR Chapter had a great time celebrating SABR Day in America at Lucky's Bar in downtown Houston. We were also thrilled to welcome Ken Lilley a SABR member since 1984 who has been unable to attend our regular night time sessions.

Mike McCroskey chose the venue and our activities for the day. We started by exchanging about 50 baseball books of various subjects, ages and size; yes there was something for everyone.

Our major activity was for each participant to discuss their favorite piece of memorabilia that they brought with them.and share the experience of collecting it. The stories were fascinating including checking out a large Astros scrapebook containing lots of "dirt", a book filled with hundreds of autographed 3 x 5 cards of baseball Hall of Famers and other noteworthy players, a large photo of the 1953 All Star Team in Cincinatti which captured one of our members, a Yogi Berra black bat that Yogi refused to sign but did, numerous Houston Buff and Colt 45's programs, a huge poster of Mickey, Willie and the Duke signed by each, a complete set of 1953 Bowman baseball cards, a first foul ball caught, Orbit's antenna, stories about attending a first major league game and on an on. Very good stuff.

Mike also introduced a brand new baseball game (to him) requiring answers to trivia questions to score runs. The questions were real hard like: What does an umpire say before the first pitch? What do you call a game where the pitcher pitches 9 inning and wins? Thank goodness we had SABR experts and Tom White on hand to handle these tough chances, The questions did get a little tougher as we went along

A good time was had by all