December 16, 2019

Larry Dierker SABR Chapter members and friends:

Our meeting on December 16th started on a somber note where we recognized and honored 3 chapter members who had passed away during the year; Bill McCurdy, Charlie Walker and Tom White. All had been extremely involved in our SABR activities and will be terribly missed.

Several announcements were made involving activities that are to take place before our next meeting on January 20th:

The all day Rogers Hornsby Chapter Winter Meeting in San Marcos, TX at Texas State University will be held in Old Main on campus Saturday January 11th starting at 10:00 AM

The Houston Astros Annual Fan Fest is scheduled on Saturday January 18th. Our chapter will also celebrate SABR Day in America at the same time.

Volunteers are requested to help staff our table at Fan Fest which runs from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. To date we have had positive responses from Dick Bily, Jim Kreuz, Mike McCroskey, Lou DeScoili, Bob McCann, Bob Dorrill and John Lloyd. We like to have at least 4 people on duty the entire time so more volunteers are welcome. We will give away baseball cards to youngsters and promote SABR to the 12,000 expected to be in attendance. Please let me know of your availability so we can get everyone registered.

Next Marsha Franty discussed baseball books she had recently checked out of the public library, reviewed the authors and topics and encouraged members to read each one.

Bob McCann presented a unique version of a contest to name the home run hitters who had hit the most homers by alphabet. He provided the number of home runs hit and we had to match the number hit with the alphabet listing 3 names per letter.

The remainder of the meeting was spent with individual teams selecting their player for arbitration, the salary to offer and establishing applicable strategies.

Player number one is George Springer who is asking $24M while the team is offering 18.5M. Springer is represented by Mike McCroskey, Dick Bily, Tom Plemons, Wesley Story John Lloyd and Robert Beck. The Astros have Greg Lucas, Bill Brown, Marsha Franty and Gary Schulte working for the club.

The second player is Roberto Osuna who is being offered $9M by the Astros per Bob McCann, Bob Dorrill, Larry Dierker, Chris Chestnut and Tony Cavender. Osuna is asking $12.5M and is represented by Scott, McCay, Joe Thompson, Mike Vance, Sam Quintero and Carl Ingrim.

The gloves come off on January 20th.

It was also recommended that all future trivia contests be named for Tom White who had a fantastic knowledge of baseball history.

- Bob Dorrill