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S GrossI joined late 1970's, when it only had a few hundred members, just before the big jump in numbers.
Back then (in the good ol' days ....) when you din't receive a publication, you would call John Thorn on his home phone, and ask what's up. He would tell you Mark Rucker was sending the publication out this week. Then you would call Mark and get his mother on the line, and she said he was in the garage. She would go get him, and he'd say he had just sorted and mailed off your copy this afternoon. You'd get it in a day.
Had a few good interactions, and went to a few conventions. The one guy I remember the best (now deceased) was Vern Luce (Luse?). This fellow literally had every NON-major pre-1900 league player stats. He got them from library newspaper files, and complied them on 3x5 index cards. I met him once, and in the back of his wood paneled station wagon, were shoe boxes and shoe boxes of these stat cards. An unreal personally historical research project. He was also the one who said that SABR was going to grow too fast for it's then make-up, and he was ultimately right. Things in the mid-80s got unorganized and I one year never renewed, and have never gone back (you can never go home).
In the late 90's I saw Thorn at a Winter Meeting hawking a book of his. I asked him whatever happen to SABR and Vern's work, he looked at me like I asked him about his dead childhood puppy.
Gotta' go, a spot just open up for me at shuffleboard ......