OBB…Getting Closer

The web site isn’t up and running yet, but we’re getting a couple steps closer.  Some of the initial data, Gary’s work on dead ball-era Cuba, is in the hands of Sports Reference LLC, and should be on the web in the very near future.

Outsider Baseball Bulletin (OBB)

We’re getting real close to a) posting Cuban and Negro League statistics at www.baseball-reference.com, and b) launching the new digital baseball magazine called the Outsider Baseball Bulletin (OBB).  Are you down with O.B.B.?  Yeah, you know me…

Many of you have already submitted email addresses to receive a free issue when the magazine hits the digital streets.  For those who haven’t heard about the new venture, please have a gander below.  This is some of the copy that’ll be up at the new web site very soon….

Welcome to the Outsider Baseball Bulletin!  I don’t know how you accidently stumbled in here, but I’m glad you did and might as well take this opportunity to explain a few things.

In just a couple weeks, we’re going to release the VERY FIRST ISSUE of our brand new, freshly minted, digital baseball magazine!!

(Canned laughter and wild applause) 

It’s going to be a weekly deal, magically delivered to your personal email inbox, and presented in vivid Technicolor and Dolby Surround Sound.  Okay, okay there won’t be any sound.  You’ll be able to check it out with your PDF reader, or print it and keep it forever and ever.

We’re going to start small, each issue containing a minimum of two or three pages of original research, humor, analysis, history and interviews.  We’ll review books and baseball simulations, share statistical research, and keep our bull shit detectors locked on, to challenge old assumptions and questionable analysis.  And we’ll be man enough to take your shots, should we let some bull shit slip into our own work.  But really, more than anything, we want to have some fun.  We all became interested in baseball, either as players or fans, because it was fun.

Coming up in the first few issues of the Outsider Baseball Bulletin, I’m going to take a ridiculously detailed look at teenager George Herman (Babe) Ruth…. before he was *the Babe.*  We’ve got statistics compiled for several dozen games, played when he was still an inmate at St. Mary’s Industrial School, catching fungoes off the bat of big Brother Matthias.    OBB partner Gary Ashwill (of www.agatetype.typepad.com fame) will continue his ground-breaking research into the Negro Leagues, revealing a little known connection between black baseball and today’s World Wrestling Entertainment.  There will also be an interview with author Edward Achorn (Fifty-Nine in ’84), who’ll speak with us about 19^th century baseball and Old Hoss Radbourn.

We’re also going to have some stuff about baseball-related car crashes, sex scandals, home decorating, and……murrrrrder.

If you want a FREE copy, please email me at s_simkus@yahoo.com.  For those who’ve already put your name in for a free sample, thank you…we’ve got your information on file.  The weekly magazine is going to be a subscription product (to weed out the uncool people), starting at $22 per year.

Addendum: It’s important to note that in real life, Gary and I are just a couple of working stiffs who love baseball.  The vast majority of revenue from the subscriptions is going to cover the costs associated with rebuilding the Negro League and Cuban baseball data at www.baseball-reference.com. We’ve taken on the project without the benefit of a corporate sponsor (although we’d love to hear from companies!).  There are real costs associated with baseball research: interlibrary loan, travel, photocopies, and the biggest of all: the man-hours involved in simply entering the information into spread sheets.  Each single game represents about one man hour.  Seriously.  If you include the time it takes to visit a library, find box scores in microfilm, copy them, then take them home and enter the data into excel..forget about it—it’s probably more than an hour.  Ouch.   At any rate, those who wind up subscribing to the OBB are actually partners in the venture, and we will be extremely grateful!  We look forward to working with you guys (and gals), the readers, in the very near future!