The Rawlings Gold Glove Award, usually referred to as simply the Gold Glove, is the award given annually to the Major League Baseball (MLB) players judged to have exhibited superior individual fielding performances at each fielding position in both the National League (NL) and the American League (AL). The Gold Glove is widely considered one of the most prestigious defensive awards in baseball.
Joseph Michael Medwick, nicknamed "Ducky" and "Muscles", was an American Major League Baseball player. A left fielder with the St. Louis Cardinals during the "Gashouse Gang" era of the 1930s, he also played with the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants (1943–1945), and Boston Braves (1945). Medwick is the last National League player to win the Triple Crown award (1937).
John Abraham Thorn is a German-born American sports historian, author, and publisher. Since 2011, he has served as the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball.
John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil Jr. was an American first baseman and manager in the Negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. After his playing days, he worked as a scout and became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball. In his later years he became a popular and renowned speaker and interview subject, helping to renew widespread interest in the Negro leagues, and played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022 as an executive.
Lawrence Edward Dierker is an American former Major League Baseball pitcher, manager, and broadcaster. During a 14-year baseball career as a pitcher, he pitched from 1964 to 1977 for the Houston Colt .45s/Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals.
Leland Gaither Allen was an American sportswriter and historian on the subject of baseball. He was known for an accessible writing style that made history more interesting, typically focusing on the people in the stories as much as the events.
Effa Louise Manley was an American sports executive. She co-owned the Newark Eagles baseball franchise in the Negro leagues with her husband Abe Manley from 1935 to 1948. Throughout that time, she served as the team's business manager and fulfilled many of her husband's duties as treasurer of the Negro National League. In 2006, she posthumously became the first woman inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, chosen by the Special Committee on Negro Leagues for her work as an executive.
Bud Fowler, born "John W. Jackson", was an American baseball player, manager, and club organizer. He is the earliest known African-American player in organized professional baseball. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022.
David W. Smith is an American microbiologist, baseball historian and analyst, and statistician. He is best known as the founder of Retrosheet, a volunteer organization whose mission is to collect, digitize, and distribute play-by-play accounts from every game in Major League Baseball history. Additionally, Smith also writes research articles on baseball. Smith's work in baseball research has been widely praised and he has received a number of awards for his work, including from the Society for American Baseball Research and the Baseball Reliquary.
Gary Gillette is a baseball writer, author, and editor. He is co-editor of both the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia and the ESPN Football Encyclopedia. For both series of books, he partnered with noted statistician Pete Palmer, as well as writers Sean Lahman and Matt Silverman.
The Dr. Harold and Dorothy Seymour Medal, often simply referred to as the Seymour Medal, is an annual literary award given by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) to the best baseball historical or biographical book. The award was named in honor of baseball historians Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills, co-authors of the Baseball trilogy, a highly acclaimed baseball history series.
Neil Lanctot is an American historian and author. Two of his books, Negro League Baseball and Campy, were finalists for the Casey Award while the former won the Seymour Medal.
The Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference (JMNLC) is an annual conference sponsored by Negro leagues Committee (NLC), a standing committee of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. As of 2016, the NLC has held nineteen conferences in various cities known for their history in hosting Negro league baseball teams. The JMNLC is the first and remains the only such event dedicated exclusively to the examination of black baseball history.
Leonard Davids, known as Bob Davids or L. Robert Davids, was an American baseball researcher and writer and the founder of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
The Southern League of Colored Base Ballists was the first organized Negro baseball league. The league's only year of operation was 1886. Ten teams competed in the league which stretched from Jacksonville, Florida to Memphis, Tennessee with several other southern teams mentioned as possible members in newspaper articles from the period. The league appears to have collapsed in early July.
The Doubleday myth is the claim that the sport of baseball was invented in 1839 by the future American Civil War general Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York. In response to a dispute over whether baseball originated in the United States or was a variation of the British game rounders, the Mills Commission was formed in 1905 to seek out evidence. Mining engineer Abner Graves authored a letter claiming that Doubleday invented baseball. The letter was published in a newspaper and eventually used by the Mills Commission to support its finding that the game was of American origin. In 1908, it named Doubleday the creator of baseball.
Peter C. Bjarkman was an American historian, freelance author, and commentator on the baseball played in Cuba after the 1959 Communist revolution. He provided regular internet commentary on Cuban League baseball as a contributing writer for LaVidaBaseball.com and as Senior Writer for the U.S.-based internet website BaseballdeCuba.com and appeared frequently on radio and television sports talk shows as an observer and analyst of the Cuban national sport. He also published more than three dozen books ranging in scope from Major League Baseball history and college and professional basketball history to sports biographies for young adult readers. In spring 2017 Bjarkman was honored with a SABR Henry Chadwick Award, the society's highest research recognition established in 2009, "to honor baseball's great researchers – historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists – for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America's present with its past".
George Lawrence Lester is a Negro league baseball author, historian, statistical researcher, and lecturer.
Dorothy Jane Mills, known as Dorothy Seymour Mills, was an American baseball researcher, author, and novelist who authored and co-authored over thirty books, fiction and non-fiction, over her life.
Harold Seymour was an American baseball historian and academic who is best known as the co-author of the baseball history trilogy: Baseball: The Early Years, Baseball: The Golden Age, Baseball: The People's Game. Though Seymour was initially credited as the sole author of the highly acclaimed trilogy, his wife Dorothy Seymour Mills was the one who did much of the extensive research and writing for the books.
