SABR

By Patrick Mondout

SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research, is an organization that was founded in 1971 to "foster the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball." It's members, which includes the creator of this website, now number over 7000 and are authors, statisticians, announcers, former players, and others who have a passion for the history of baseball.

It is important to note that the statistical term "sabermetrics" has very little to do with SABR and that the organization itself should not be thought of as just a group of statisticians. The Statistical Analysis committee (note that it is not called the "Sabermetrics Committee") is just one of 24 committees.

If you intend on writing about the history of baseball, you would be a fool not to join SABR. It is not only home to most serious baseball historians, but you will have access to resources that may not otherwise be available in your library, such as a ProQuest subscription that contains full-text searchable versions of newspapers such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution, and others going back well into the 19th Century. As the creator of this website and someone intensely interested in history, that feature alone is worth my annual membership fee, but there are members who never use ProQuest and still find it worthwhile; there are so many reasons to join.

Update: ProQuest, which has recently come under investigation for account irregularities, has decided that its business model is better served by cutting off access to dozens of groups like SABR in hopes that this will force libraries - whose budgets have become increasingly reduced in the last half decade - to carry their product. While this seems an unlikely to succeed strategy, it does mean that SABR members will no longer be able to access ProQuest after December 31st, 2006.

To learn more or to become a member, check out their website. (If you do become a member, let me know via the Contact link at the top-right of any page on this site. Not because I get some referral fee - I don't. I'd just like to know.)