April 2009 ABUA Newsletter

2009 MLB Rule Books!

2009 MLB RULE BOOK SPECIAL
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The Official Baseball Rules is the official book that governs Major League Baseball, updated for the 2009 season, all in a handy pocket-size format. Includes all rule changes made to the rule book for the 2009 season. The most up-to-date rule book on the market!
From official playing field dimensions to all of the rules. The Official Baseball Rules has all the answers.

 

IBAF Names Donna Lopiano, Ph.D., as Chair of the Women's Baseball Committee

(LAUSANNE, Switzerland) The International Baseball Federation (IBAF) today announced that Dr. Donna Lopiano has been named the chair of the womens baseball committee. Dr. Lopiano is the former Chief Executive Officer of the Womens Sports Foundation, and has been internationally recognized for her leadership advocating for gender equity in sports by the International Olympic Committee, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports, the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. She is currently President, Sports Management Resources, a consulting firm based in Easton, Connecticut, USA.

“We are truly honored that Donna has decided to join us as we formulate our global plan for women’s baseball and its inclusion in our bid for the 2016 games,” said IBAF President Dr. Harvey Schiller. “There is perhaps no one more respected in sports or the development of women and girls in athletics than Dr. Lopiano, and we look forward to having her work with us in this very important endeavor.”

“Baseball is a global game that embodies all the ideals of the Olympic movement, and one of those ideals is fair play for all,” said Dr. Lopiano.  “I am honored that the IBAF recognizes the great global opportunity that they have in giving women of all ages the chance to take part in baseball at any age, and am looking forward to helping in any way that I can to get baseball where it belongs for both men and women, as part of the Olympic programme.”

The IBAF announced on 6 April that it would add a women’s discipline to its bid for the 2016 Olympics, and a committee to oversee the growth of the women’s discipline would be formed.  The organization has been accepting nominees for the committee from its member federations and interested parties, and will announce that committee in the coming days. 


Over 30 countries currently offer a women’s discipline, with an estimated 300,000-500,000 girls playing baseball globally.  Japan
won the bi-annual Women’s Baseball World Cup in 2008, with the next event slated for 2010 at a site currently out to bid.  The 2016 Olympic tournament, made of eight teams, would take the place of the World Cup during the 2016 calendar year.


DR. DONNA LOPIANO FULL BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Donna Lopiano is the former Chief Executive Officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation (1992-2007) and was named one of “The 10 Most Powerful Women in Sports” by Fox Sports.  The Sporting News has repeatedly listed her as one of “The 100 Most Influential People in Sports.”   She has been nationally and internationally recognized for her leadership advocating for gender equity in sports by the International Olympic Committee, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports, the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

Dr. Lopiano also served for 18 years as the University of Texas at Austin Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. During her tenure at Texas, she constructed what many believed to be the premier  women’s athletics program in the country; twice earning the top program in the nation award.    All eight University of Texas sports were consistently ranked in the nation’s top ten in Division I where they earned eighteen national championships in six different sports, produced 51 individual sport national champion athletes, 57 Southwest Conference championships and 395 All-American athletes, dozens among them Olympians and world champions.  Ninety percent of women athletes who exhausted their athletic eligibility at the University of Texas received a baccalaureate degree.  Prior to Texas, Dr. Lopiano served as an Assistant Professor and Assistant Athletic Director at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York

Recognized as one of the foremost national experts on gender equity in sport, Dr. Lopiano has testified about Title IX and gender equity before three Congressional committees, served as a consultant to the U.S. Office for Civil Rights Department of Health, Education and Welfare Title IX Task Force and as an expert witness in twenty-eight court cases. Dr. Lopiano has also served as a consultant to school districts, institutions of higher education and state education agencies on Title IX compliance and to non-profit organizations on governance and strategic planning. She received her bachelor’s degree from Southern Connecticut State University, her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Southern California and has been the recipient of five honorary doctoral degrees. She has been a college coach of men’s and women’s volleyball, women’s basketball and softball and coached the Italian national women’s softball team.

As an athlete, Dr. Lopiano participated in 26 national championships in four sports and was a nine-time All-American at four different positions in softball, a sport in which she played on six national championship teams. She is a member of the National Sports Hall of Fame, the National Softball Hall of Fame and the Connecticut and Texas Women’s Halls of Fame, among others.

In Need of Rescue, International Baseball Turns to Harvey Schiller

Even his closest confidants wondered why Harvey Schiller devoted his free time to return baseball to the Olympics. The task seems difficult to some, impossible to others, but everyone in Schiller’s elite circle said there was a catch. Impossible, they say, for anyone but him.

Of all the men or women the International Baseball Federation could have elected president, it chose Schiller, who runs a risk-mitigation company and has little direct baseball experience. N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern referred to him as St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

“There aren’t any executives with a background like his,” Stern said. “None.”

Tracing Schiller’s career path is like a cross-country trip without a map, full of random stops and unexpected turns.

A tall and commanding man with spiky gray hair, Schiller is known for an ability to break complex problems into smaller elements, an attribute he demonstrated early on at Michigan, where he earned a doctorate in inorganic chemistry in 1970.

The walls of his Manhattan office at Rockefeller Plaza are covered with pictures of him and notable others: Billie Jean KingAl GoreBill ClintonLance Armstrong.

With Schiller, three degrees of separation usually suffice. He earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, learned football under Al Davis at the Citadel and wears dog tags gifted from George W. Bush.

“I would venture that no one in the world has his range of depth and experiences,” said Daniel L. Doctoroff, the president of Bloomberg, L.P., and a former deputy mayor of New York.

But what makes Schiller particularly qualified to lobby for baseball’s return to the Olympics is something else: people have long turned to him in times of need.

Even as the youngest member of his squadron, Schiller flew with pilots who had crashed on their next flight. He identified the boxers who died in a plane crash in Warsaw for USA Boxing while he was the chairman of the Air Force Academy’s chemistry department.

He helped George Steinbrenner start a lucrative television network for the Yankees, worked with Bo Schembechler to build a football practice field at Michigan and helped reshape the United States Olympic Committee in the early 1990s.

Schiller has plunged into his latest project with the same vigor with which he attacks his strenuous daily workouts. Although the executive committee for the International Olympic Committee does not meet until June and voting will not be conducted until October, Schiller has traveled the world, making baseball’s argument, pressing flesh, issuing updates via Facebook.

“Somehow, through my whole life, I have always been the person that people have sought out when there’s some kind of tragedy,” he said. “No one hires me when things are great.”

Brooklyn Roots

Those who know Schiller best have followed his winding career path — as the commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, as the U.S.O.C.’s executive director. They know that his bosses included Ted Turner and Steinbrenner and that he headed an asset management company for athletes and entertainers.

They describe Schiller as a human bookshelf, a devourer of novels and almanacs, the quintessential “Jeopardy!” contestant. They marvel at his penchant for innovation, his random telephone calls with enterprise ideas, the way Schiller, who turns 70 in April, had a Facebook page before his daughter did.

His family described a driven father whose military hardness and intimidating nature have melted around his grandchildren.

“Everyone was afraid of my father,” said Erica Schiller, his daughter. “And when I say afraid, I mean absolutely petrified by him. When you get to know him, he has a very soft side. He’s eccentric and he’s intimidating, and he teeters and totters between those two.”

Friends find in Schiller a fierce competitive streak, an executive who organized touch football games at the academy and who was unafraid to give college students a forearm shiver.

They find a seeker of adrenaline, an athlete who has completed several legs of the Tour de France, who not only befriended Olympic athletes but also attempted almost every Olympic sport, including ski jumping, luge, biathlon and team handball.

“He is magnetic in the sense that you really wanted to find out what made him tick, so you hung on, because you wanted to solve the riddle,” said Mike Moran, who worked with Schiller at the U.S.O.C.

Schiller was shaped in large part by his surroundings.

Brooklyn produced the drive. He grew up there, the son of a father who drove a truck for a meatpacking company and a mother who worked in sales. He took any job that paid, starting at age 15 by selling scorecards at Ebbets Field. Later, he ripped newspapers in a fish market, delivered suits and waited on tables.

The Citadel provided discipline, a regimented approach to life. Years later, while interviewing with the SEC, Schiller told the university presidents that he had come from an institution that did not lie, steal, cheat or tolerate anyone who did. He said they represented institutions teeming with all four vices.

He landed the position.

Vietnam gave Schiller his first test in crisis management and taught him to cope with stress. He volunteered for service in 1966 and eventually piloted C-123 planes on about 1,200 missions out of Saigon.

At the Air Force Academy, Schiller and his colleague Dr. Hans Mueh, who is now the athletic director there, would sit in Schiller’s office and kick around ideas for the future. Schiller told Mueh he would make a million dollars by age 40. He made much more than that.

The U.S.O.C.’s move to Colorado Springs led to Schiller’s involvement with the organization, which led him to volunteer for USA Boxing, which ultimately led to much more.

Schiller turned down an offer to run the U.S.O.C. once but finally accepted the position in 1990. With the help of Steinbrenner, who headed an overview committee, Schiller restructured the U.S.O.C. while dealing with issues like the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating fracas.

Moran said Schiller’s five years as executive director was the most effective period of leadership in U.S.O.C. history, pointing to increased drug testing and athlete support.

This pattern continued throughout Schiller’s crisscrossed career path. At YankeeNets, for example, his arrival in 2000 coincided with a period when the Yankees, the Devils and the Nets ranked among the elite teams in their sports.

Finn Wentworth, a fellow board member at YankeeNets said, “He’s the Warren Buffet of sports timing.”

Craving a Challenge

Why baseball? Why now? “Because he’s fearless,” said Jay Kriegel, another friend who worked with Schiller on New York City’s failed 2012 Olympic bid. “He’s fearless and he’s endlessly optimistic. He’s brimming with energy, with excitement, with possibility.”

Especially with returning baseball to the Olympics.

Issues include scheduling (the best players are in the middle of their season during the Olympics), drug testing and news media coverage. Schiller must also navigate lingering anti-American sentiment abroad.

“Other than that, I think it’s easy,” he said. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

Moran, for one, dismissed those who believe the man who has solved everything has now taken on the problem he cannot fix. If he closes his eyes, Moran said, he can envision Schiller throwing out the first pitch in 2016 in Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo or Madrid.

“This is as tough as anything he’s every tackled,” Moran said. “But that’s why there’s a chance they’ll get back in. And if baseball doesn’t make it, somebody else will ask him to do something else. Guaranteed.”