21.09.2020
21:08
The woman was the compiler of data for the Mexican Baseball League for more than two decades and she is owed the great collection of statistics on the king of sports
September 21, 2020 Share on FacebookShare Share on TwitterTweet Share on WhatsAppShare
Ana Luisa Perea (right), the woman who made history in the LMB by compiling statistics (Photo: Courtesy / LMB / Historical Archive of Baseball)
For years statistics and sports have gone hand in hand for various purposes, such as betting or forecasting. Nowadays it is common to enter official sites to consult the data, but how was it done in the past, when there was no internet?
In the case of the Mexican Baseball League (LMB), the great collection of statistics it holds is due to one person: Ana Luisa Perea Talarico . The woman did the work of accommodating the data for a little over two decades (1978-2003).
The woman passed away on September 17 , at age 80. For this reason, the Mexican organization recalled the great work that Perea Talarico did. Without his exemplary work, this wealth of data would not exist.
Ana Luisa was born on November 23, 1939 in the town of Carlos A. Carrillo, located in Ingenio San Cristóbal, Veracruz, in eastern Mexico. She had four daughters (Leticia, Maricarmen, Lilia and Rosa) and was the compiler for the Mexican Baseball League .
Unlike the work done today, Mrs. Perea waited for the mail to arrive after the games . In the envelopes came the annotation sheets of all the squares that make up the circuit.
“In the morning, the first task was to rescue them, verify that they were legible , understand who had played, calculate the times at bat , square the boxscore , make the comparison ; it’s like accounting, ”said César Galaviz Valenzuela , current Player Registration and Control Manager, in an interview with the LMB.
The manager entered the League in 1994 and in 2003 he replaced the compiler when he retired. Perea Talarico taught her to read boxscore and square it , something she had learned from her husband Antonio Silva Vidaurri.
José Luis Segovia , manager of material resources and general services of the MLB, also worked with the woman of statistics. She explained to the League that the woman from Veracruz did all her work by hand , then passed it to a typewriter, and later printed it for the press.
Ana Luisa Perea is owed the great collection of statistics (Photo: Courtesy / LMB / Baseball Historical Archive)
This counting of the numbers became more complicated over the years, especially due to an injury that caused full mobility in one of his legs. This was told by Yola Esquivel , wife of the famous chronicler Óscar “Rápido” Esquivel and friend of Perea Talarico.
“She was very hard-working. After a broken leg she had, Lic. Pedro Treto Cisneros (former president of the LMB) paid for the taxi to go to Coapa and take her to the Periodista neighborhood . Back and forth, because they needed her so much and they didn’t want her to lose her job because of how valuable it was, “Yola told the League.
In addition to the hustle and bustle of the day to day, all his work was noticeable on a larger scale at the end of the season. She was also in charge of providing the data for “Who’s Who” , a book published by the LMB that annually has the numbers left by the completed campaign.
“She did it when she started working on statistics and her only tool was a pencil and the typewriter,” said César Galaviz. “ The work was hard and very complicated. I honestly do not understand , without the technology of today, how complicated it was to generate it to provide it to journalists, “he said.
Now everything is different in statistical work, thanks to Baseball Advanced Media software (Photo: Enrique Gutiérrez / Diablos Rojos)
Galaviz Valenzuela remembers his teacher as “kind and sweet, but also demanding . “ For this reason, he commented that he felt obliged to do a meticulous job without errors, like that of the compiler.
“She became an expert in mathematics, statistics and everything that surrounds this data. He had an exclusive personality, in a limited area . Understanding baseball is difficult because there are so many rules and details that make it difficult, even for experts. She was a super expert in that environment full of specialists, ”said her apprentice.
Now everything is different in statistical work. The Baseball Advanced Media software , which ranks the LMB, adjusts the numbers, accommodates the leaders, and pinpoints the highest percentage per team.
“The last time I saw her was about four years ago. He began to lose his sight, imagine what pain after working so much with his eyes . Then her legs gave out and she started to get sick and we only talked to each other on the phone, “concluded her friend Yola Esquivel with nostalgia.
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