Wild Goose Chases

Hello all.

I haven't blogged in a long time because I've moved to Canada. I got a one-year position at the University of Calgary back in March, and I finally moved up here at the tail end of July. I took a long time making my way up North, stopping to see a lot of old friends along the 1,700+ mile route between here and Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. I finally arrived on August 6th. My stuff--or most of it, at any rate--didn't get here until the 16th of August; my parents came the week after that, and my internet was only hooked up on or about the 1st of September. I put in a good three-day weekend getting the 2007 stats up to speed once that happened, and I've been pre-occupied with working my paying job at the University (i.e., teaching) ever since.

But now I seem to have a spare moment to write again.

There are many reasons why I decided to move up to Calgary, but one of the more interesting (and relevant) ones is that it is relatively close to a town called Kalispell, in Montana. I first became aware of the importance of Kalispell to the history of baseball statistics when I read Alan Schwarz' book, The Numbers Game, about three years ago. In it, he cited a number of Bases Produced precursors in the history of twentieth century statistical thought. The earliest one he found--though he did not recognize it as such--was in a journal called Baseball Magazine, which was first published in 1913. A man by the name of J.H. Hamel, from Kalispell, Montana, had written to that magazine, in one of its earliest issues, and put forth the following proclamation:

"What we need is a system by which the batter will get credit for the number of bases that are gained with his help. My plan is to give the batter credit for all the bases gained with his help plus the number of bases he himself hits for, and to divide by the number of times he goes to bat. For instance...Banks goes to bat four times and gets two singles, one with a man on first and one with a man on second who scores. Thus he gets credit for five bases, or a batting average of 1.250"

One unforeseen problem I had in crossing the border was that I did not realize I would have to export my car in order to officially register it in Canada. I could only grimace and confess my ignorance when when the customs agent at the International Peace Garden asked me where the title to my vehicle was; it turned out that it was in a file cabinet, in the moving truck, somewhere on its way up to Alberta. In true Canadian form, the customs agent courteously told me I could keep driving to Calgary, but that I would have to bring the title back down to the border--once I retrieved it from the file cabinet--to present it to U.S. customs when I exported my car.

Once my stuff finally arrived, I decided that--as long as I had to go down to the border anyway, I might as well take the time out to visit Kalispell, and see if I couldn't figure out exactly who this J.H. Hamel might have been, or what he could have possibly left behind.

I drove down to Montana on the 19th of August and headed into Glacier National Park, almost as soon as I got there. Massive forest fires were burning all across the western United States at that point, shrouding the entire Park--and most of the rest of northwestern Montana--in an eerie haze of sweet-smelling smoke. It left me with little to photograph in Glacier--despite the fact that it was one of the most scenic places I'd ever seen. And I was far from disappointed when I finally got my chance to see Wild Goose Island in person.

My first night back in the U.S., I holed up in a Motel 6 room and watched the Coon Rapids Little League team play--and win--a game against the Maryland team in the Little League World Series. While I watched the game, I pulled out the Flathead County phone book and found three listings under the name of Hamel in the area.

The next morning, I actually called one of them. I had worked out, in my mind, a script about how I was down in Montana from the University of Calgary, doing research on a book I was writing, and I was wondering if maybe you might be related to a J.H. Hamel, who lived some ninety years ago?

No one picked up the phone when I called. Perhaps it was for the best.

Undeterred, I checked out of the hotel and paid a visit to the Flathead County courthouse. I had a laundry list of things to look for in the courthouse records department from a friend of mine who likes to do genealogy; I found out quite quickly that none of them would be of much use, as the courthouse had no record of any J.H. Hamel on file. The friendly lady in charge of the records department--who claimed to go by the name of Jan--sent me off in the direction of the local library, however, and informed me of the existence of an LDS "Family Research Center" on the outside of town.

Encouraged by this good news, I paid a visit to the library first. There I found out that the census records for Kalispell and surrounding areas had all been transferred to an online search system, which certainly seemed a lot more convenient--though much less appealing--than the old microfilm storage system. So I gave their online system a whirl, and found out...

There was no J.H. Hamel in the Kalispell census records, in either 1910, 1920, or 1930. A few Hamels popped up, here and there, in various places in Montana--most of them having been born in Canada, and quite a few of them living in a place called "Frenchtown", but there was no J.H. among their numbers.

I found out that the online census records were only searchable by heads of households, so I thought for a second about sifting through the entire 1920 Montana census, trying to dig up a J.H. Hamel who might be living in some other family's house, but, ultimately, I decided against it in favor of checking with the Mormons, to see what they might know.

But I didn't get very far with them. I found the LDS stake without any problem, but discovered a sign on the front door, claiming that the Family Research Center would be closed for all of August. And it was only open a couple of days a week the rest of the year.

So. The man who first envisioned a world of Bases Produced remains a mystery. Was he born in Canada? Did he ever really live in Montana? Are any of his other writings still in existence? Did he possibly keep track of any Bases Produced stats in his lifetime? Is there anybody still left in Kalispell who can remember who he was?

I may never know. But I think I might head back down to the Mormons in October. Playoff baseball is hard to come by on Canadian TV, and a jar of good peanut butter is even harder to find. With or without the legends of baseball's statistical past, both of those commodities will be in good supply down in Montana in a couple of weeks.

Until next time,
Steve