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Issued by: Laura Hunt 414-229-6447 llhunt@uwm.edu Date: March 4, 2002

UWM Faculty Open Meeting of Milwaukee's New Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research

MILWAUKEE -- Two faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will give presentations designed to get you in the mood for baseball season when the new Milwaukee chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research holds its first official meeting on Saturday, March 9.

The gathering will be in the UWM Union, room E240, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd., beginning at 1 p.m.

Larry Baldassaro, director of the UWM Honors Program and an expert on Italians in American baseball, and Neal Pease, an associate professor who specializes in Polish history and teaches a course called "Baseball in American History," will speak at the event which is free and open to the public.

Baldassaro will give an overview of the ethnic dimension of major league baseball, drawing from the book he just co-edited, "The American Game: Baseball and Ethnicity," which will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in May. The book, a compilation of nine essays by various baseball historians, including Baldassaro and Pease, brings together for the first time in a single volume an ethnic and racial profile of American baseball. Also at the event, Pease will give a presentation on Hall of Famer and Milwaukee native Al Simmons (born Aloysius Szymanski). Simmons, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1953, played for six different American League teams during his 20-year career, including the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1920s and '30s, and the Chicago White Sox in the '30s. He was known as "Bucketfoot Al" because of his unusual batting style.

The Milwaukee chapter of SABR, called the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter, was created last summer at the organization's national convention in Milwaukee. The only chapter in Wisconsin, the new group currently has about 125 members.

The new chapter was named for a native of Milwaukee who played in the major leagues for 13 years between 1937 and 1950 (all but one with the Cleveland Indians). A third baseman, he is best remembered for two spectacular plays that ended Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941. Baldassaro and Pease are also members of UWM's "Professor Baseball"team, a group of UWM faculty and staff members who dole out baseball trivia with an academic twist. Fans can test their knowledge against the Professor Baseball team every time they go to a Brewer's game at Miller Park, where questions are posed during an animated scoreboard feature.

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