Clem Conly

Clem Comly, Vice President and Treasurer of Retrosheet, Inc., passed away on August 6, 2014. His contributions to Retrosheet are numerous. Clem input more than 15,000 games (by far the most of anyone), he edited many years of data before its release on the site and was a board member since 1998 and VP since 2004. Clem was friends with so many people and many have commented in the last few days about his kind and gentle nature along with his enthusiasm and willingness to help with all manner of baseball questions. In addition to baseball, Clem was well read on many topics, including movies, books, current events and music. He enjoyed playing bridge and was a Life Master of that discipline. We mourn the loss of our friend and colleague.

David Vincent

David Vincent, Secretary and original Board member of Retrosheet, Inc., passed away on July 2, 2017. His contributions to Retrosheet and baseball research are incredibly great. They include the home run database for which he was known as "Dr. Longball," lists of replays and ejections, information and insights about umpires, among others. Our reserach page contains a small sample of his work. More importantly, he was unstinting in his support of those doing baseball research by gladly providing data and insights when asked. For these contributions and more he was honored with SABR's Bob Davids Award, the highest honor the organization can bestow. His loss is an enormous blow to Retrosheet, the baseball research community, and he will be missed by many.

For details of his research efforts see SABR's In Memoriam

Mark Pankin

Mark Pankin, Retrosheet Webmaster, passed away on Friday, December 17 when he suffered a heart attack while bicycling. This was an enormous passion of Mark's, along with baseball, of course. See: http://www.pankin.com/bicycle.htm for some details. In the past few decades, he participated in hundreds of rides covering thousands of miles. As for baseball, Mark was the first and only Webmaster for the Retrosheet web page for 30 years. He was extremely conscientious in maintaining and updating the many different pages on the Retrosheet site and he was in the front line to field questions and complaints which he always handled flawlessly. It is hard to imagine the website without his guiding hand. Mark was a PhD mathematician and a former University Professor at Marshall University. This background led him to groundbreaking baseball research in many areas, notably the use of Markov chain analysis to study such things as lineup optimization. See: https://retrosheet.org/Research/PankinM/PhillyNews1.htm for an entertaining application of this work. He studied many other aspects of the game, making dozens of presentations at the Bob Davids Washington chapter of SABR and the SABR national convention. See: https://www.retrosheet.org/Research/Research.htm and scroll down to Mark's name. In 2019, his detailed study of Batting Out of Turn (BOOT) won the annual Doug Pappas Award for the best presentation at the SABR convention. His other research papers on the Retrosheet site, covering 1993 to 2021, are all well worth reading. On the personal level, Mark was a genuine friend and a marvelously gentle man. He helped many researchers navigate the Retrosheet site and assisted with custom programming in many cases. A lifelong Tigers fan (Al Kaline was his favorite player), Mark was a member of the Mayo Smith Society. His whimsical side shown through with his license plate which was "NO DH". Mark will be greatly missed by many, many people.

Tom Ruane

Tom Ruane, longtime Vice-President and Board member of Retrosheet, passed away on July 18, 2023. Tom's contributions to Retrosheet and baseball research were extraordinary. For over 20 years he prepared the many player files, box score, play by play accounts, and transaction history that appear on the Retrosheet website. He was also central to the proofing process that all game files undergo before their release. Tom's research contributions were extensive and there are over 20 of his papers available on the Retrosheet website (https://www.retrosheet.org/Research/Research.htm). Upon learning of his passing, many individuals wrote of his extreme patience and assistance for those learning to navigate the Retrosheet file system. This exceptional helpfulness, among many other things, led to his receiving SABR's highest honor, the Bob Davids Award, in 2010 and the Henry Chadwick Award in 2016. Aside from baseball, Tom was consistently cheerful, funny, and an accomplished poet. His loss is a huge blow to Retrosheet, SABR, and the baseball research community at large, all of which are significantly diminished without him.

For a detailed obituary, see Remembrance of Tom Ruane and more details of his baseball activities at SABR Tribute to Tom Ruane

Dave Lamoureaux