What's New on the Web

By Tim Gregg
SABR Member, Houston Video Producer and Web Designer

With the advent of spring comes the dawn of a new baseball season, and with this fresh start on our national pastime comes a new look for both the SABR national and Larry Dierker Chapter Web sites.

By now, many of you will already have perused the new look and expanded content to be found at SABR.org. The new site provides a wealth of new and relevant information for fans and students of the game. A SABRNation link serves as a portal to the member-specific section of the site with a wealth of historic information perfect for baseball research.

On behalf of Turn-Key VideoWorks and WebWorks, it has been our pleasure to create this new on-line SABR home for the Larry Dierker Chapter here in the Houston and Gulf Coast region. At the chapter's February meeting, our president, Bob Dorrill voiced a need to identify a new webmaster for the local contingent, a function which previously had been served by a member of SABR's national team. Since my Clear Lake-based company has been in the Web design business for more than 10 years, volunteering our services seemed to be a good opportunity to get involved.

I'm grateful for the support from our chapter's long-time leaders, Bob Dorrill and Bill McCurdy, as well as fellow SABR member Scott Barzilla and Ariel Torchia of the Turn-Key Web design team for their assistance with this project. Our initial goal has been to create a more dynamic Web presence for the Houston chapter to promote our mission and activities to a larger audience. As the site grows and matures, we'll be adding new content and exploring new ideas with input from chapter members in specific and baseball enthusiasts in general. If you have thoughts, opinions, or ideas, we'd love to hear them.

This is not our first venture into the business of designing Web sites with baseball in mind. For five years we served as the official provider of Web services for Albert and Deidre Pujols, which included site designs for the Pujols Family Foundation, the Pujols 5 Grill at Westport Plaza, and In the Pujols Kitchen. How a small company in Houston landed baseball's best player as a client is a story I'd be happy to share in person.

Almost three years ago, I had the good fortunate of meeting another former Cardinal Rookie of the Year: Wally Moon. Today at 81 years old, Wally lives in Bryan, Texas, near his alma mater of Texas A&M. When we first met, Wally was exploring the creation of a personal Web site to re-connect with fans and merchandise autographed memorabilia. Four months later and under the guidance of Turn-Key, the three-time Dodger World Series champion launched WallyMoon.com. My personal relationship with Wally has grown since then and we are proud to announce that his memoir Moon Shots: Reflections on a Baseball Life, which we co-authored, will be coming out this spring.