Doug Pappas

I’ve had a couple of weeks now to try to make sense of Doug’s departure, of what he meant to us, of what we can do to carry on in his absence.  The tremendous outpouring of remembrances and condolences peppered through the baseball internet community and elsewhere has been a big help.  For example, here’s part of a comment that was posted to his last blog entry: 

“I’m a better baseball fan for having read you, Doug.  I just wish it didn’t take this to get all of us to tell you that.”

We didn’t offer up our appreciation, of course, because Doug’s work was unfolding and occurring every day.  To quote Joni Mitchell (a bit out of context), “don’t it always seem to go / that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?” 

So what did we have in Doug Pappas? 

He was a brilliant researcher, blessed with the capacity to digest and describe great volumes of material.  Most SABR research stops there, but Doug continued on, to analyze and make sense of what he observed, and to synthesize his insights into recommendations for resolving the problems he addressed.

He was a splendid and generous communicator, writing with clarity and passion, eager to share resources and ideas with all who sought him out, always as ready to examine his own assumptions as he was to challenge the assumptions of others.

Doug detested pretension and artifice – he certainly knew that the clothes do not make the man.  If he’s somehow observing us, he’s laughing about us wearing suits and ties on this occasion.  At the same time, he reveled in the unabashed quirkiness and fakery he observed on his frequent drives along America’s highways and byways. 

Doug didn’t suffer fools gladly, nor could he muster up sympathy for those who would willfully and deliberately mislead and misrepresent.  His college friend Veronica Drake speaks of his mastery of the Socratic method (as taught at the University of Chicago), but I’d call his approach one of reductio ad absurdum … following the premises of, say, Bud Selig to their logical conclusion, and then simply noting the absurdity and fallacy of that outcome.

His abiding enthusiasm for baseball and for the American roadside were amply illustrated in the public persona of his writings and his web presence.  Less obvious, but just as deeply held and as integral to his being, were his commitment to social justice and progressive politics, and his love of rock-and-roll music.

Doug was a cynic and a skeptic, and he was sarcastic.  He was quick of both wit and tongue.  As someone who shares more than a few of those traits, I know that that can be off-putting to those who can’t keep up.  I’m sure he’d be surprised and astonished, and maybe a bit embarrassed, that so many of his readers saw past the walls he constructed around himself, to the seeker-of-justice within.  He would try hard to deflect the kudos with a flippant remark of some sort, but underneath it all he would be gratified that his message was getting through.

I first met Doug at my first SABR convention in 1990.  Though we rarely saw each other except at those meetings, we shared a real sense of sympatico.  Even if it had been a year since we last talked, it might as well have been a day between conversations.  Though we concentrated on baseball talk, it was clear that we shared many other interests as well.  For example, when I asked Doug for advice on a trip I wanted to take – adding four Upper Plains/Rockies states to my “life list” – prior to last year’s convention in Denver, he immediately sketched out something very close to the 2700-mile driving tour I eventually enjoyed … coincidentally, the car I rented last summer was a red convertible.  I certainly wouldn’t have known to seek out the jackalope statue in Douglas, Wyoming or the mass grave of the Wounded Knee victims without his advice!

Let me sum up with another comment from the internet.  This is from the BaseballPrimer site:

“I sort of feel the way I did when Paul Wellstone died …; a uniquely bold voice on issues of the day suddenly taken from us”. 

Surely, Doug would be deeply honored to be mentioned in the same sentence with the senator.  I believe we need to take Wellstone’s legacy as our challenge for Doug’s legacy. 

Others, from Howard Dean to Al Gore to MoveOn.org, have taken Wellstone’s themes and methods as their own … the “democratic wing of the Democratic party” lives on, even without its champion.  So too will independent, iconoclastic research into the business of baseball, when someone, or someones, takes up where Doug left off.  He showed us what can be done; it’s up to us to pick up the gauntlet he left for us.

I end as I ended my own blog entry:

“Doug Pappas was my colleague.  Doug Pappas was my friend.  I am deeply saddened that it is necessary to use the past tense to say so.”

Neal Traven, Secretary of SABR

June 7, 2004

Immaculate Heart of Mary Church

Scarsdale, New York