SABR UK's 13th Annual General Meeting took place at John Eichler's Three Kings Pub in Clerkenwell (London) on May 17th, 2004 with 20 Anglo-American baseball fans in attendance (including some new faces who found out about us from www.sabruk.org).

The meeting started with Chairman Mike Ross announcing that SABR UK was going to present a plaque to John & Sue Eichler commemorating their many years of effort in making the Three Kings a baseball-friendly environment in a baseball-indifferent country. Treasurer Andy Parkes, SABR UK/Europe Committee co-chair Jim Combs, and Secretary Michael Olenick also gave reports. Michael announced that despite his imminent move back to the US [now complete], he would try to continue as Chapter Secretary to the degree that this was practical. He also tried to explain that the Baseball in UK/Europe Committee and the Bobby Thomson Chapter (a.k.a. SABR UK) are not the same thing, despite the overlap in membership and interests.  Publications Editor Martin Hoerchner announced that he had put all the SABR UK Examiner's on a CD and distributed these to anyone who wanted them.

Jim Combs began the presentations with a review of Robert Henderson's methods while writing his seminal "Ball, Bat, and Bishop". He specifically explored Henderson's contention that Egyptian fertility rites involving balls were the ultimate source of modern ball games.  Combs cited Gillmeister and Decker as two authors who have refuted this. While ball games have been around at least as long as Tuthmosis III (1479-1425 BC) the idea that there was an unbroken development of such games from Egypt to Europe to America is not supported by the evidence.

Andy Berry then presented some new theories he had on the interpretation of fielding statistics. His basic contention was that we needed to focus on the percentage of a team's fielding outs (not including strikeouts) credited to various members of the team and then compare similar positions from team to team. One point of discussion was that in his system, errors did not figure in the calculations.

Barry Winetrobe distributed a brief, introductory bibliography of baseball mystery fiction he developed and called for members to contact him with any additions to the list. He also announced that he was trying to construct a database of baseball resources within SABR UK, beginning with a master list of baseball-related fiction (for lending and/or research purposes).

Guest speaker David Block kept the crowd enthralled with a 45-minute encapsulation of his three-year study of the origins of baseball. What started as a bibliography of early baseball books has developed into a trail of international detective work, which will be fully disclosed in his soon-to-be-published book "Baseball Before We Knew It".  Using Henderson's "Ball, Bat, and Bishop" and Peterson's :The Man Who Invented Baseball" as starting points, David's research has produced a considerable body of new information about baseball.s evolutionary background and its emergence in 18th century England.

Because his talk was of necessity a brief summary of his work, David decided to highlight the seven known 18th century references to baseball. Many students of baseball's origins know of the four-line poem about, and illustration of, base-ball in "A Little Pretty Pocket-Book" (1744) or of Jane Austen.s reference to baseball in "Northanger Abbey" (written ca. 1798). Fewer know of a 1748 letter from Lady Hervey in which she describes the family of the Prince of Wales as "diverting themselves with baseball". Among other references, David has uncovered a mention of baseball made by a contemporary of Austen's - but for that one, you need to buy the book!

As David pointed out, and as the recent Pittsfield discovery attests, the search for early references is far from over. David upholds the theory that the game of rounders is not the progenitor of baseball (the first known reference to rounders is from 1828) but that the earlier English game of "base ball" developed into (or became known as) rounders in England while it retained its name and developed into the "modern" game of baseball by ca. 1845 in the US.  He also observed that "Ball, Bat, and Bishop" has been both a blessing and a curse for early baseball research.  While clearly setting a scientific standard for research into baseball's origins, Henderson's work has been so highly regarded that historians have rarely bothered to corroborate its findings, which has led to some erroneous conclusions being accepted as fact.

Martin Hoerchner followed with a talk of how his love for baseball developed when he got a job that required him to do a lot of driving in the San Francisco Bay area.  Although he was obviously aware of baseball before this, listening to games on the radio were what really got him hooked. He also showed slides of pictures he took at Camera Day at Candlestick Park in 1978.

An auction followed, but time ran out before the annual trivia quiz could be held (although the four remaining members took part informally in the quiz that had been prepared by Michael Olenick due to quizmaster Brian Williams' absence).

Michael Olenick, SABR UK