I attended the meeting of the Southern New England chapter of SABR today. They had two interesting guests; Joe Morgan, the former manager of the Red Sox, and Art Johnson, a lefty pitcher for the Braves in the early 40's.

Joe Morgan gave a presentation that was part recollections, part trivia. Two questions he answered struck me as worth repeating. One audience member asked him about the importance of team chemistry. Joe basically said that team chemistry was a crock. Give him good players, and they'll win. He pointed out my favorite example, the A's of the early 70's of a team that had no chemistry but won. The other question was on steroids. He pointed out that when he was a player he and his teammates used greenies. Morgan said he used them if he was playing a double header after a night game. Others, however, used them all the time. He talked about the Cardinals having a jar of them in the clubhouse, but then players started using 6 or 7 a game. At that point, the club put the drug under lock and key. He refused to name any players who might be using steroids today.

Art Johnson came to talk about Casey Stengel, who was his manager in Boston. I asked him about Stengel wanting to have fielders who were great at turning the double play, and Art confirmed that Casey always tried to have great players up the middle.

If you are at all interested in baseball history, I would recommend attending one of these meetings. The SNE chapter always has interesting speakers and usually has some good reports.