British Baseball Federation

Project COBB (the Project for the Chronicling of British Baseball) is an online collaboration that was founded by Joe Gray in 2008. It received recognition as a Chartered Community of the Society for American Baseball Research (better known as SABR) in 2010.

The initiative has three overarching aims: [1] to support efforts to research and publish historical details of British baseball; [2] to help make digitized copies of British baseball artefacts available online; and [3] to promote the preservation of British baseball history today, through scoring and photography.

Joe Gray acts as coordinator for Project COBB, but its success depends largely on the work of its valued collaborators, mostly members of the British baseball community.

This is the second in a series of four articles in which Joe outlines ways in which members of the community can help to enhance the work of Project Cobb.

 
This initiative relates to Point One of Project COBB’s three-point mission:
“To support efforts to research and publish historical details of British baseball.”

There is no dressing-up the facts: British baseball has been poorly chronicled throughout most of its history, and in some cases whole seasons have simply disappeared. Surprisingly, however, a little digging can unearth a goldmine — if you know where to look. What’s more, a sense of great satisfaction and joy is to be had both during and on completing a research project.

The more you think about it, the more it begins to make sense. The more unanswered questions there are (and unanswered questions are a particular speciality of British baseball history), the greater the opportunity for researchers. And what better way to keep the “hot stove” burning during the winter than to engage in some research of your own?

You don’t need to be an academic or a trained historian to conduct research, but you do need to apply certain skills that you might have from other walks of life. These include critical thinking, working with missing information and weighing up competing pieces of evidence with the utmost impartiality.

The variety of potential research topics is as boundless as your imagination. You could aim to tell the story of a whole season from an earlier era of the game. You might tackle the history of a particular locality over a longer time-frame. Or you might aim to answer a solitary, but vexing, question.

For anyone who can prove their research pedigree, consideration could be given to a place on the British Baseball Hall of Fame’s panel of electors, which comprises individuals who have experience in researching the history of British baseball (any proposed additions to the panel are put to a vote).

Where Project COBB fits in:

One of the three overarching aims of Project COBB is to support efforts to research and publish historical details of British baseball. As part of this goal, Project COBB can offer a “sounding board” for research ideas, suggest potential contacts or leads, partner you with other researchers and help to publish and promote your research once it has been written up.

Right now, Joe Gray is looking for one or more research associates who can travel to Colindale in North London on occasional Saturdays, particularly during the off-season, to collaborate with him on some exciting new projects.