Meet The Sports Writers

[Bill Burgess]

Forrest Burleigh Myers

Born: July 21, 1889, Luther, Iowa
Died: December 23, 1967, Chicago, IL, age 78

Chicago sports writer / artist;
at school, lived in Des Moines, IA (June 11, 1900 census)
No job, lived in Des Moines, IA (April 19, 1910 census)
Chicago Daily News, artist (June 5, 1917 WWI Civilian Draft Registration)
Chicago newspaper, artist / writer, (January 20, 1920) (lived at the YMCA)
Chicago newspaper sports editor, (April 15, 1930 census)
Chicago, IL, newspaper writer, (April 19, 1940 census)
Chicago Daily News, sports writer, 1917 - 1930?
Chicago Herald American, (April 27, 1942 WWII Draft Registration)
grey eyes, light-brown hair

Father: John Allen, born Indiana around 1859; Mother: Dovea Mae Luther, born Iowa around 1865; Wife: Mabel Sherwood; Forrest/Mabel married June 4, 1922 in Chicago, IL. Son: Sherwood of Miami, FL; Daughter: June Felts of Chicago, IL; Brother: Bernard of St. Louis, MO, born Iowa around 1901;

------------------------1920-------------------------------------------------------1926-----------------------------------------------1920

Forrest Myers, George Beebe, David Rotroff, 1924

[Bill Burgess]

-------------------------------------------------------

[Bill Burgess]

Ronald Duane Fimrite---AKA Ron Fimrite

Born: January 6, 1931, Healdsburg, CA
Died: April 30, 2010, San Francisco, CA, age 79,---d. pancreatic cancer

Sports writer;
Attended University of California (Berkely)
Berkeley Gazette (Calif.), 1955
San Francisco Chronicle, features / general assignment reporter 1955 - 1964, sports columnist, 1964 - 1971
Sports Illustrated, 1971 - 1995, retired. (Continued to contribute articles.)

wikipedia
Ron Fimrite (January 6, 1931 – April 30, 2010) was an American humorist, historian, sportswriter and author who was best known for his writing for Sports Illustrated.

Fimrite began his career at the Berkeley Gazette in 1955, moving to the San Francisco Chronicle. He was nicknamed, "The Sporting Tiger" and was part of a famous circle of San Francisco Chronicle columnists that included Herb Caen, Art Hoppe, Stanton Delaplane and Charles McCabe. He became a sports columnist for Sports Illustrated in 1971. He authored numerous sports books including:

Authored:
Way to go!: A chronicle of heroes and legends of Bay Area sports, 1978
No Place Like Home" [1978 World Series, Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees] in Sports Illustrated, (October 23, 1978)
The Square: The Story of a Saloon, 1988
Three Weeks in October: Three Weeks in the Life of the Bay Area, the 1989 World Series, and the Loma Prieta Earthquake, 1990
The World Series: A History of Baseball’s Fall Classic, 1993
Birth of a Fan: A Collection of Original Works, 1993
Series for the Fans: the Braves and Indians Meet Again after 47 Years: the Official Book of the 1995 World Series: Recapture the Excitement, 1995
Pappy's Boys: The Rose Bowl Years 1948-1949-1950, (1996)
Golden Bears: A Celebration of Cal Football's Triumphs, Heartbreaks, Last-Second Miracles, Legendary Blunders and the Extraordinary, 2009
Winged O: The Olympic Club of San Francisco, 1860-2009

[Bill Burgess]

Joshua Adam Leventhal---AKA Josh Leventhal

Born: January 17, 1971, NYC
Died: Still Alive

Baseball book author / editor;
Graduated Carleton College (Northfield, MN), 1993

Josh is a baseball fan, writer, editor. He was born in New York City, and graduated from Hunter College High School in 1989. He is an editor at Voyageur Press and lives in Minneapolis, MN with his wife, Jennifer and their daughter.
Josh's Facebook page

Authored:
Beer Lover's Companion: A Guide to Producing, Brewing, Tasting, Rating and Drinking Around the World, 1999
Tugs: The World's Hardest Working Boats, 1999
Take Me Out to the Ball Park. An Illustrated Tour of Baseball Parks. Past and Present. Featuring Every Major League Park, Stadiums from the Past and Famous Minor and Negro League Parks, 2000 (assisted by Jessica MacMurray)
Dale Earnhardt 23 Years with the Intimidator, 2001
Major League Park Stadiums form the Past and Famous Minor and Negro League Parks, 2006
The World Series: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Fall Classic, 1903 to the Present, 2001
Baseball . . . The Perfect Game: An All-Star Anthology Celebrating the Game's Great Players, Teams, And Moments, 2005
Baseball And The Meaning Of Life, 2005
Baseball Yesterday & Today, 2006
Baseball America Directory: Your Definitive Guide to the Game, 2009
Our San Diego

Josh with his Daughter.

[Bill Burgess]

Timothy Michael Gay---AKA Tim Gay

Born: July 11, 1954, Warren, PA
Died: Still alive

baseball book author;
Graduated Warren Area High School (Warren, PA), 1972
Graduated Georgetown University (Washington, DC), 1976

Mother: Anne Harrington Gay (Warren, PA); Wife: Elizabeth Oualline; Daughter: Allyson; Son: Andrew; Daughter: Abigail. Tim married Elizabeth May 28, 1983, Montgomery, TX.

Timothy M. Gay is the author of Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend. It was a finalist for two of the baseball history community’s most prestigious awards.
His essays and articles on the Civil War, politics, baseball, college basketball, and golf have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, and other publications.

Tim is a graduate of Georgetown University and lives in northern Virginia with his wife , Elizabeth and three children, Ally, Andrew & Abby. They have lived in Vienna, Herndon and Alexandria, VA.
Tim's Facebook page

Authored:
Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend, 2007
Satch, Dizzy, and Rapid Robert the Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson: 2010

[Bill Burgess]

Richard Maurice Huhn---AKA Rick Huhn

Born: December 28, 1944, Washington, DC
Died: Still Alive

Baseball book author;
Graduated Ohio University (Athens, Ohio), (B.A., 1969 in Political Science & History);
Graduated The Ohio State University, College of Law, (Columbus, Ohio) (J. D., 1969).
Blumenstiel, Huhn, Adams & Evans LLC. (Law Firm), 1975 - 2000, associate, then partner.
Married Marcia May of Columbus, Ohio. They have daughter, Kimberly Lynn (Bumgarner), born May 16, 1971.

Rick, an attorney and member of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), lives in Westerville, Ohio. In August, 2001 he was encouraged by George Sisler, Jr., to write his late father's story and given the enthusiastic cooperation of the Sisler Family in writing his biography.

Biography: How It All Started
I am a firm believer in that old adage, "Timing is everything." In my case it was an introduction by a friend to the eldest son of a deceased Hall-of-Fame baseball player. In the months that followed I revived my interest in baseball history and fulfilled a dream of writing a published work. The result: The Sizzler: George Sisler, Baseball's Forgotten Great.

Early Days
For those of you who enjoy learning something about the authors of the books you read, let me provide a little background. I was born in Washington, D.C. in 1944 while my father was on military assignment at the Pentagon.

Shortly after the war my parents returned to my father's hometown, Marion, Ohio. I spent a rewarding youth in this small midwest railroad center where my father worked for the railroad and my mother the public library.

While in high school I first merged my interest in writing with my avid interest in sports, as the sports editor of the school paper. At Ohio University in Athens, where I majored in history and political science, my favorite course was a creative writing course taught by Walter Tevis, the author of the best selling book, The Hustler.

My next three years were spent, so they seemed, in the deep recesses of the library at The Ohio State University College of Law in Columbus. Upon graduation I obtained a position with the federal government, moved to the West Coast, and married Marcia May of Columbus--my single (no pun intended) best move. While we lived out west we were blessed by the birth of our daughter, Kimberly Lynn.

Career Tracks
In the early 1970s we returned to Ohio where as an Assistant Attorney General I was in-house counsel to the Ohio State Highway Patrol. I lectured on criminal justice at the Patrol Academy and as an Adjunct Professor for Park College. I also found time to play a little tennis, run a few 10ks, and co-author the "Ohio Drug Abuse Control Act Training Manual."

In 1975 I joined a great group of people in a Columbus litigation firm where I remained for over 25 years as an associate and then partner. In private practice I specialized in representing injured railroad workers and those seriously injured by faulty products. In its present form the firm is Blumenstiel, Huhn, Adams & Evans LLC.

In the mid-1990s I began thinking more and more about a writing career. I started putting pen to paper one afternoon each week, finding the experience intoxicating. Through the enthusiastic support and assistance of a law partner I was able to slowly shift away from my law practice, in the process penning two novels.

Then the blocks fell into place. I was able to blend my interests in sports, history, and writing. As a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) I am dedicated to enriching the experience of today's baseball fan by recalling the life and times of those player's who made the game into "America's Pastime." For me it has been a most satisfying journey. I hope the fruits of my efforts to date satisfies you, the reader, as well.
Email: [email protected]

Authored:
The Sizzler: George Sisler, Baseball's Forgotten Great, 2004
Eddie Collins: A Baseball Biography, 2008

[Bill Burgess]

Richard Ben Cramer

Born: June 12, 1950, Rochester, NY
Died: January 7, 2013, NYC, age 62,---d. complications from lung cancer

Free-Lance writer;
Graduated Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD), (BA Liberal Arts)
Columbia University (NYC), (Masters)
Baltimore Sun, 1972 - 1975
Philadelphia Inquirer, foreign correspondent, 1975 - 1982, (stationed in Cairo, Egypt, then London, then Rome)
Sports Illustrated
Esquire Magazine
Rolling Stone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Ben Cramer (born 12 June 1950) is a Jewish-American journalist and writer.

Biography
Cramer was born & raised in Rochester, New York and attended Johns Hopkins University, earning a bachelor's degree in the Liberal Arts. He later went on to earn a masters degree at Columbia University. Cramer has worked as a journalist at several well known publications such as The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, Esquire Magazine, and Rolling Stone. He won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1979 for reports from the Middle East. His work as a political reporter culminated in What It Takes: The Way to the White House about the 1988 Presidential election which is considered to be the seminal piece on presidential electoral politics. His book, Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life was a New York Times bestseller in 2000. He is an avid New York Yankees fan and lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in a small town called Cambridge. His most recent book is How Israel Lost: The Four Questions, about the ways in which the Israeli occupation has corrupted the country's original vision. He is working on a new biography about baseball star Alex Rodriguez.

Authored:
Ted Williams: The Seasons of the Kid, 1991
What It Takes: The Way to the White House, 1993
Bob Dole, 1994
Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life, 2000
What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now? A Remembrance, 2002
How Israel Lost: The Four Questions, 2004

[Bill Burgess]

David P. Anderson

Born: May 6, 1929, Troy, NY
Died: Still alive

New York sports writer;
Troy, NY, 11-months old, (April 12, 1930 census)
New York, NY, 10-year old, (April 3, 1940 census)
Holy Cross College (Worchester, MA), 1951, (B.A. English Literature)
Brooklyn Eagle, sports writer, ? - 1955
New York Journal-American, sports writer, 1955 - 1966
New York Times, general assignment sports reporter, 1966 - 1971, sports columnist, 1971 - September 14, 2007 (continues to write 18 columns per year.)

Father: Robert P., born New York, 1896?; Mother: Josephine D., born New York, 1901?;

Dave Anderson has been a sports columnist at The New York Times since November 1971, after having been a general assignment sports reporter since joining the newspaper in 1966. His column was Sport of the Times. Although he officially retired as a regular Sports of The Times columnist in 2007 he did not stop writing his column altogether. In a kind of emeritus role, he will write at least 18 columns a year, most appearing on Sundays.

Mr. Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize winner, capturing the 1981 award for distinguished commentary for his sports column.

Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Anderson was a member of the sports staff of the now defunct New York Journal-American for 11 years. Before that, he was a sports writer with the Brooklyn Eagle, which folded in 1955.

Born in Troy, N.Y. on May 6, 1929, Mr. Anderson, received a B.A. degree in English Literature from Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass. in 1951.

He is the author of 21 books and has written more than 350 magazine articles.

His writing appears in several anthologies including: "The Realm of Sport," "The Grantland Rice Prize Sports Stories," "Assignment America," "The Baseball Reader," "The Golf Book," "Sports Classics" and "Great Golf Stories."

Mr. Anderson is a 1994 winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors Red Smith Award for distinguished sports column writing. He was inducted into the National Sports Writers and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in Salisbury, N.C. in 1990, joining three other former "Sports of The Times," columnists -- Red Smith, Arthur Daley and John Kieran. In 1974, he won the Nat Fleischer Award for excellence in boxing journalism. In 1972, he won the E.P. Dutton Award for the best sports feature story of the year, the return of the heavyweight champion Joe Frazier to his Beaufort, S.C. hometown, (he won a Page One Award for the same story.) In 1965, he won the E.P. Dutton Award for the best magazine sports story for "The Longest Day of Sugar Ray," which appeared in True magazine.

Dave Anderson/Kurt Haas

[Bill Burgess]

-------------------------------------------------

[Bill Burgess]

Sean Michael Holtz

Born: December 19, 1967, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Died: Still alive

Founder / Owner of Baseball Almanac and Baseball-Fever.
Attended Miami-Dade Community College
Miami Dade Police Dept.


Sean was born in Fort Lauderdale, FL and graduated from Twin Lakes HS in 1986 in Monticello, Indiana. He attended Miami-Dade Community College and worked with the Miami-Dade Police Department. He currently lives in Miami, FL, and has a teenage daughter, Erika. His Facebook page is: http://www.facebook.com/Sean.Holtz1

Baseball-Almanac's message board, Baseball-Fever was spun off in 2000, and is now a site of its own. In April, 2010, Baseball Almanac averaged 2,136,015 hits per day, while Baseball Fever averaged 934,117 hits per day. Baseball-Fever presently has over 20,000 members. The most that were online at one time was over 2,000. Sean presently resides in Miami, FL with his family.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Interview with Sean Holtz, by Don Hyslop of Red Sox Nation.

Don Hyslop of Red Sox Nation recently had a chance to interview Sean Holtz, the founder and force behind Baseball Almanac.com. A wealth of information about all things baseball, Baseball Almanac is a great resource whether you’re looking for an old box score, baseball poetry, statistics on a particular player or team, and more.

RSN: Sean, can you tell us something about your background and how you became interested in helping preserve baseball's past.

SH: If we go back to my school days, it started due to me living in West Palm Beach which was home to the Montreal Expos and Atlanta Braves spring training sites. There was more than one occasion when I was there watching the teams of the early to mid-1980s. This provided my early interest in baseball. Add to that a lifelong interest in computers that truly started in 1979 when I got my own, even though I had been using three others I had access to.

Jumping forward to the early 1990s, I am by profession a law enforcement officer. When the city of Miami became interested in obtaining a baseball team, I was there working off-duty at some of the early meetings. I was also active in the CompuServe Autograph Collector's Club (CACC) acting as an Assistant Section Leader and helping others get baseball autographs. We had a great database of addresses, who was signing, who was not, where they were at (similar to a trade register), and if they were real or not based on thousands of in-person samples I had from those Spring Training days. I began tracking the Marlins team with databases and found in the CACC that there were others like me. We began sharing data, and that is how the preserving of baseball's past started for me.

RSN: When did the idea of creating the website Baseball Almanac come to you?

SH: CompuServe was popular, but it was still a paid subscription service. I was also on Prodigy, but it too was a paid service. Both had active autograph clubs and baseball fans, but neither was truly free and trading was sometimes tough. I started running a Bulletin Board System (BBS) at the time, using Wildcat software, and called it The Guild. I had thousands and thousands of files that I began giving away, as long as I received a file in return, and before I knew it I had 21 phone lines into my home and quite a nice little BBS. Once the worldwide web took off, the BBS nearly went away so I decided to move to the web using The Guild as my inspiration.

RSN: What was your original plan for the site, and how much has that changed over the years?

SH: I think I could write a book about that. Those that visit know that nearly every day of the year Baseball Almanac changes. The front page has been used to announce changes since 2000, and it really has never stopped getting bigger, better, and more informative. The original plan was to provide a free service, as subscription services were the only ones readily available in the early internet years. The original plan is still intact, and we just continue moving in different directions all the time.

RSN: Where did you go to do your initial research, and how long did it take to get to get enough to begin the site?

SH: It evolved over the course of many years and is still evolving to this day. The initial research truly depends on the project. When I decided to track and share every uniform number worn by every player in history, my inspiration was Baseball Weekly. I had 1994 through 1996 in my home due to an early subscription. I put in the numbers from those issues which led to the Chicago Cubs contacting me with data from their team. This led to a group of retired friends from the military that had been collecting and typing numbers onto onion skin sheets since the early 1950s. One of them literally gave me their entire set of files which I still have to this day (they include coach numbers which I hope to add in the future). That led to a collection of Baseball Weekly on eBay that was a near complete run spanning their first issue ever and up through 2002. It did not sell due to a high reserve, but after I contacted the owner and told them my goal they sold it to me for the cost of shipping. That was the good news. The bad news was they lived in Canada! Fourteen cases arrived about a month later, and it was probably the best set of research materials Baseball Almanac has obtained since it started.

RSN: What were the early years of the site like?

SH: As much fun as they are today! When Baseball Almanac first began, it was on AT&T home pages and it was called Our National Pastime. I won the Sports Site of the Year in 1999 and decided it might be time to move it onto its own domain. Three hosts later, due to us outgrowing them, we still consider ourselves in the early years and look forward to the next five as we have the last five.

RSN: Did you do the research by yourself in the beginning, and how much help do you have now?

SH: Some projects, like the Marlins data, yes. Other projects, no. The very early days were a true hodgepodge of data from every possible source in the world. The BBS had nearly 4,000 files on it when I shut it down. From 1-2-3 Spreadsheets to FoxPro databases, they were all there. None were perfect, but it was better than any book I ever owned.

In respect to today, I have the help of thousands and thousands! How? When I mistype a quote, I am told nearly the same day. Fans simply don't allow mistakes to be made, and I welcome their help more than anything in the world. I also use them to help on projects. We have about 4,000 sets of high school data. We will be adding that to our play pages soon. On those we do not have will we add “Unknown,” and by nature baseball fans hate to see that -- especially if they know the answer. So they will correct our “Unknowns” and an unprecedented set of data will evolve over time.

RSN: The site encompasses so much, covering not only statistics but everything from baseball jokes to poetry and song. Are there any areas left that you would still like to add?

SH: Countless! I'd love to add a comprehensive Negro League section, a comprehensive AAGPBL section, a comprehensive Fielding Charts section (this will probably occur before Opening day) as well as many others. If I had more volunteers, more funding, more people with as much passion, I don't think I'd ever stop adding new sections and providing more information than we've already covered in our 150,000+ pages.

RSN: How long do you spend each day updating the site?

SH: I wish I could do it full-time, but it is an early morning activity. Each day at 4 a.m., I wake and "work the site" until 5:30 a.m. I go to work and return home around 2:30 p.m. I work the site again until it's time to become "Dad" again, which starts when I pick up my daughter at 4 p.m. There are days that I've taken off just to get caught up on items, making it a full time day, but those are not as often as I'd like.

RSN: Who have some of your more notable users been?

SH: Baseball Almanac has been contacted and complemented by no less than a hundred former Major League players over the years -- probably quadruple that in respect to ballplayers families. Our most recent section was the Umpires area, and once it was made I received quite a few emails. That Christmas I received about 10 cards from active and former umpires. That was unexpected and pleasant surprise.

Many baseball executives, team owners, and industry standards have sent me an email as well, and their compliments. Knowing that I've helped a franchise, the Hall of Fame, or a magazine or news source get the answer to something still feels great to this day.

Some of the more fun notable users would be television-based incidents with players and celebrities. On a Fox pre-game show, Buddy Bell was using the site looking up his own family connections and sharing it with fans. More recently was Billy Bob Thornton in an interview about his new Bad News Bear movie saying Baseball Almanac was his favorite site to visit.

RSN: On the average, how many hits does the site get in a day and what are the most popular segments?

SH: In 2003 Baseball Almanac averaged 132,388 hits per day. In 2004 we averaged 179,878. We have grown nearly every day since our start in 2000, and in 2005 we wanted to exceed 200,000 hits per day -- we finished with an average of 255,048. The most popular sections vary, but almost always include the All-Star Games, Awards, Hitting Charts, Player Stats, Pitching Charts, Quotations, Record Books, World Series and Year in Review.

RSN: You encourage suggestions and input from users. What have some of the best and most useful ones been?

SH: Far too many to list. They are the reasons I've started up thousands upon thousands of pages. They are the lifeblood of the site and without their input I don't think we would have more than 50,000 pages. To me, personally, the best input I can receive is the small ones. When I personally visit a site and see a misspelled word on a page, I immediately become discouraged. I make those same mistakes, and when a user helps me make the page better by suggesting a better sentence, a proper spelling, or a small change of any type I feel as if that page just became even more accurate. Those are my favorite. In respect to those that are best, I would probably go with users finally convincing me to add pictures of every player in history to their pages. I've done about 2,500 to date using autographed baseball cards from my private collection and can go as high as 6,000+ players with this. Once those are done I'll return back to the letter A and start over again, just adding pictures to their pages. I truly like the way they make the page look, but have never received an email telling me anything negative or positive so I hope it is not just me that likes them!

RSN: How long has the message board segment been active? The number of members for it is outstanding. Did it take long to build to that number of members or did it take off right after you created it?

SH: The message board (Baseball Fever) used to be integrated into Baseball Almanac back in 2000 & 2001. It got so big, so large, and started using so much bandwidth that I had to move it onto its own domain. Nearly 500 members left that day as they did not like the change, but it has rebounded and grown steadily ever since and averages 253,255 hits per day. It truly does provide serious baseball fans with a serious place to discuss our national pastime without the issues typically found on spam-filled sites.

RSN: How do you make the site work financially?

SH: Months and months and months of effort are spent on reducing costs. I realize that making more money should probably be my goal, but I've chosen to focus my efforts on reducing operating costs. I do offset the expenses by doing private advertising and standard banner advertising. Perhaps the most rewarding off all though is receiving any type of donation. I've received some as small as $2.00 in the mail and as high as $500 (once). As nobody on Baseball Almanac receives a check or salary of any type, all monies received go back into the site in an effort to make it even more comprehensive than it was before.

RSN: Finally Sean, where do you see the site being in 20 years?

SH: Wow, something I've never really thought about. I focus more on projects than anything. My current goal is to finish the integration of the Control Panel pages I had built during the off-season. This will add about 200 new pages to the site, streamline the back end of the site in respect to top 100 charts, and simply make life much easier. I will continue adding the pictures on to the pages, continue the Opening Day rosters research, and continue adding box scores before Opening Day 2006. This should add about another 5 to 6 thousand data-items to the site. Add in the high school project, a pronunciation guide, and about 3 or 4 other major projects and I'll be busy for the entire year.

Our beloved Superman Sean and his daughter, Erika.

[Bill Burgess]

Sean M. Forman

Born: 1971, South Dakota
Died: Still Alive

Founder/Owner of Baseball-Reference.com
Grinnell College (Grinnell, Iowa), 1990-1994, B.A. Mathematics
Iowa State University (Ames, Iowa), 1993-1995, Mech. Eng dropout
University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa), PhD. in Applied Mathematics 2001.
St. Joseph's University (Philadelphia, PA), math professor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Baseball-Reference, the statistical website was created by Sean Forman, and launched February 1, 2000.

Baseball Reference.com is the state-of-the-art, cutting-edge preferreed website of choice for most informed baseball fans. Baseball-Reference.com is a website providing statistics for every player in Major League Baseball history. The site is often used by major media organizations and baseball broadcasters as a source for statistics.

The website came online in April 2000, after first being launched in February 2000 as part of the website for the Big Bad Baseball Annual. It was originally built as a web interface to the Lahman Baseball Database, though it now employs a variety of data sources. It has year-by-year team pages, a baseball encyclopedia (the Bullpen, powered by MediaWiki software), box scores and game logs from every MLB game back to 1954 and minor league player stats back to 1900. The Oracle of Baseball can link any two players by common teammates. The Oracle of Baseball is based on the Oracle of Bacon website.

Developer Sean Forman was a math professor at Saint Joseph's University before taking on this project full-time.

In February 2009, Fantasy Sports Ventures took a minority stake in Sports Reference, the parent company of Baseball-Reference, for a "low seven-figure sum." In reporting this transaction, journalist Eric Fisher wrote,

The Sports Reference sites combine to generate more than 1 million unique users per month, according to internal analytics. Company president and former college math professor Sean Forman has become something of a folk hero to baseball fans for the massive depth of data stretching to the 19th century and for the ease of navigation within Baseball-Reference.com.

[Bill Burgess]

[email protected] Jay FimOff

Born: October 12, 1950,
Died: Still Alive


Baseball Photos Identification specialist;
Graduated University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, IL),

Mark has worked with the SABR Pictorial History Committee. He has also been gracious enough to assist in the player identifications of the Baseball-Fever thread, Vintage, Panoramic Pictures. His Fever user-name is bmarlowe.

Mark has worked as an electronic engineer.

[Bill Burgess]

Kirk Crothers Miller

Born: September 19, 1888, Bloomington, IL
Died: November 30, 1954, Washington, DC, age 66,---d. committed suicide with shotgun to head. Had chronic life-long pain.

Washington sports writer;
Cuban government news bureau, (WWI Civilian Draft Registration)
Kent, MD, 11-year old, (June 29, 1900 census)
Kent, MD, architect, (May 3, 1910 census)
Washington Star, news writer, (January 3, 1920 census)
Washington newspaper editor, (April 7, 1930 census)
District of Columbia, Publicity man, office building, (April 11, 1940 census)
blue eyes, black hair

Father: Daniel B., born Indiana, August, 1850; Mother: Martha P., born Indiana, May, 1859; Wife: Antonine, born Canada, born 1902; Son: Kirk, Jr., born District of Columbia, 1924?; Daughter: Antonine, born District of Columbia, 1925?;

Washington Post obituary, December 1, 1954, pp. 16.-------------------------------------------------------------Letters to the Editor
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Washington Post and Times Herald,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------December 10, 1954, pp. 22.

[Bill Burgess]

Kenneth Davey Fry

Born: September 28, 1902, Schenectady, NY
Died: July 9, 1971, Waynesville, NC, age 68,---d. emphysema

United Press sports writer;
Indianapolis, IN, 7-year old, (April 16, 1910 census)
Lyons, IL, 17-year old, (January 6, 1920 census)(listed Kenneth Frye)
Chicago, IL, newspaper, sports editor, (April 3, 1930 census)
Alma College (Alma, MI), 1920 - 1923, English
University of Chicago, 1925, (Philosophy major)
Chicago Evening Post, July, 1923, cub reporter, sports editor, 1928-32.

Father: Florien, born Indiana, 1880?; Mother: Thomasina, born England; 1882?; Wife: Margaret B., born Ohio, 1903; Daughter: Nancy K., born Illinois, born 1928;

Biography from Current Biography (1947)
During World War II the United States Government first became active in transmitting short-wave foreign language broadcasts to other nations although other Governments years before had taken advantage of the far-reaching scope of radio for propaganda and educational purposes. By 1947, however, the Voice of America was on a full twenty-four-hour-day, seven-day-week schedule; in that year the first American broadcasts to Russia were instituted. Kenneth D. Fry, director of the State Department's International Broadcasting Division joined the OWI shortly after that war agency initiated the first Government-transmitted international radio programs. He had previously organized and built up the news and special event activities of the Chicago office of a major radio network. In 1948 he will return to commercial broadcasting, having in December 1947 announced his resignation from IBD.

Kenneth Davey Fry, of English and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, was born to Florien and Thomizine (Davey) Fry on September 28, 1902, in Schenectady, New York. He was not reared in the city of his birth, however: his father, an insurance underwriter, moved with his family to the Midwest and later to the South. Young Kenneth attended grade school in Indianapolis (Indiana) and in Sanford and Jacksonville (Florida). By the time he had entered high school, the Frys were living in Chicago; he attended the Hyde Park High School in that city and Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Illinois (a Chicago suburb). In secondary school, from which he was graduated in 1920, he already showed the interest in sports and writing (he played tennis and football and edited the yearbook) that was to guide the choice of his first job. For three years (1920-23) he specialized in English at Alma College in Alma, Michigan; there he also edited the college annual. Two years afterward, in 1925 he became a philosophy major at the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, in July 1923 Fry had been hired as cub reporter for the Chicago Evening Post. His duties included coverage of sports events and the writing of a daily column; occasionally, too, he wrote editorials and covered general news. In 1928 Fry was promoted to the sports editorship of the Post, which discontinued publication in 1932.

For a brief period (November 1932 to July 1933) Fry was sports editor of the central division of the United Press Association. He then joined the public relations department of the central division of the National Broadcasting Company as news editor. Under Fry's direction, news coverage was disassociated from the press relations section and established as an independent division; in 1936 Fry became director of news and special events in the Chicago office of NBC. When Fry joined the network, the news staff had consisted of one writer; when he left in 1943 the department had grown to twelve. In addition to supervising the broadcasting of news and commentary, Fry planned, wrote, and produced all central division special events programs. These included on-the-spot coverage of headline events, sports, and political conventions, and the broadcasting of speeches and election returns; special programs such as the Army Hour also came under Fry's direction. The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Fry planned and had in operation the NBC coverage of the Pacific area.

In February 1943 Fry became head field representative of the Alaska outpost of the overseas division of the OWI. A few months before, this war information body had taken over the short-wave broadcasting previously carried on by two major networks and other private units. Part of OWI's activities included "live" broadcasting; another aspect was the supplying of recorded programs to outposts, of which Fry's Alaska station was one. Because they could be sent out on medium-wave transmitters and because a great deal of atmospheric interference was eliminated, these transcriptions reached a larger audience than the short-wave programs. The outposts also broadcast recorded shows prepared for the armed forces stationed in their areas. In June 1943 Fry closed the Alaska outpost and returned to the United States as assistant director of Pacific operations, with an office in San Francisco. Under the supervision of Fry and his superior, programs were beamed to the Far East, Australia, and Honolulu. Nine hundred employees, at the peak of operations, worked for the California office, preparing or actually sending programs, twenty-four hours daily, over ten short-wave transmitters and relays in Honolulu and Manila. With three major objectives (psychological warfare, the supplying of important information to Allies and the armed forces in the Pacific, and the reassurance to people on Japanese-occupied islands that they had not been forgotten), programs were broadcast in English, French, Dutch, Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, Annamese, Korean, and Malay.

At the end of the war, the Department of State decided to continue the broadcasting activities of both OWI and the Office of Inter-American Affairs, which had been transmitting programs to Latin America. Fry supervised the merger of the work of the San Francisco offices of both groups and was appointed chief of the western office of the State Department's Interim International Information Service. Early in 1946 the radio activities of the two offices were permanently assigned to the Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs as the International Broadcasting Division; at that time, Fry, still in San Francisco, was named associate chief and was given charge of all broadcasting to the Far East and of English language broadcasts to Latin America. Six months later, after supervising the liquidation of the California office and the centralization of all work in New York, Fry became chief of the International Broadcasting Division of the State Department.

The title of these foreign language broadcasts, Voice of America, had been established in OWI days. During the war, the programs had been prepared in forty languages; in peacetime the number of languages dropped to twenty-four (until the beginning of 1947 when a twenty-fifth was added). According to the Christian Science Monitor, about 17 per cent of the programs transmitted by Fry's department are news broadcasts, about 34 per cent are commentaries or background information on current events, and about 49 per cent are feature broadcasts. The latter may be speeches, interviews, "quiz" programs, on-the-spot broadcasts of news events, round-table discussions, the dramatization of events in American history, the lives of famous Americans, discussion of American books or plays, lectures on homemaking or child care, or programs answering listeners' questions about the United States. About half of these are actually produced by Fry's staff; the rest are prepared under contract with domestic radio companies or networks. Often, in addition to receiving the programs on short-wave bands, foreign listeners may hear the Voice of America over the facilities of their local stations, which retransmit IBD's programs. In response to a request for audience reaction, Fry by early 1947 had received over fifty thousand letters.

The activities of Fry's division had received little publicity until February 17, 1947, when the first American broadcast was sent to Russia. Much note was made of the insistence that the Voice of America was not planned for propaganda purposes but merely to familiarize the rest of the world with American customs, history, and opinion. The Russian audience was told, "The purpose of our broadcasts is to give listeners in the U.S.S.R. a picture of life in America, to explain our various problems, and to point out how we are trying to solve these problems." The format of the program, which is on a daily schedule, includes late news, music, information about the Government and the history of the United States, and scientific lectures. The Russian language broadcasts raised the monthly total of program hours to sixteen hundred.

Later in 1947, a controversy arose in Congress concerning IBD's operation: the House, because the State Department had not been legislatively authorized to carry on its short wave broadcasts, refused funds for the Voice of America in passing an appropriation bill. The Senate, however, restored the necessary money and, to insure House approval, added an amendment to the general bill authorizing the continuation of IBD. Fry himself, on December 26, announced his resignation effective January 16, 1948. The reasons, he said, were the difficulty of planning the "Voice of America" programs with the constant threat of their elimination by Congress, and the fact that his salary was "frozen." Fry planned to return to commercial broadcasting.

Fry has retained his membership in the San Francisco Press Club, although his IBD duties are centered in Washington, where he lives with his wife, the former Margaret Freshley, to whom he was married on September 19, 1925, and their two daughters, Nancy and Susan. Fry's hair is now gray; he has blue eyes and is five feet seven and a half inches in height and 140 pounds in weight. The official, who claims no political affiliation, attends the Congregational Church.

He died of emphysema in Waynesville, NC on July 9, 1971.

[Bill Burgess]

Lucius Clinton Harper

Born: November 11, 1894, Augusta, GA
Died: February 10, 1952, Chicago, IL, age 57,---d. uremic poisoning in Chicago's Billings Hospital.

Chicago editor;
Augusta, GA, 5-year old, (June 8, 1900 census)
Augusta, GA, 16-year old, (April 19, 1910 census)
Chicago, IL, newspaper, editor, (March, 1920 census)
Chicago Defender (June 5, 1918 WWI Civilian Draft Registration)
Chicago, IL, newspaper, editor, (April 3, 1930 census)
Chicago, IL, Daily Newspaper, editor, (April 17, 1940 census)
Chicago Defender, 1916 - 1952 (cub reporter, columnist, 1942 - 1952 executive editor)

Father: James S., born Georgia, November 1854; Mother: Ellen, born Georgia, August, 1858; Wife: Lillian Eggleston. She married Lucius on February 8, 1952, just 2 days before he died. Wife: Lorraine K. Cooper, married March 21, 1938; Wife Amy, born Illinois, 1894?; Daughter: Ruth, born Illinois, 1921?; Son: Robert, born Illinois, 1927?;

Jet Magazine obituary, February 21, 1952.
Lucius Harper, Exec Editor of Chicago Defender, Dies