We’re proud to announce Steve Dittmore’s Jim Gilliam: The Forgotten Dodger won SABR’s Ron Gabriel Award for best research, published or unpublished, about the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The Ron Gabriel Award, given out by SABR’s Casey Stengel Chapter in New York, honors the author(s) of the best research, published or unpublished, on the subject of the Brooklyn Dodgers completed during the preceding calendar year. Eligible works include, but are not limited to, magazine and journal articles, previously unpublished chapters or articles in anthologies or other books with multiple authors, unpublished research papers, written versions of oral presentations, books, databases and websites.
Ron Gabriel (1941-2009), a native of Brooklyn, New York, and longtime resident of Bethesda, Maryland, was a former Vice President of SABR and instrumental in establishing the Bob Davids Chapter, which serves the Washington-Baltimore region. He was founder and president of the Brooklyn Dodger Fan Club, and a charter elected member of the Brooklyn Dodger Hall of Fame. You can read the full award release here.
Raised by his mother in the Jim Crow South, Jim Gilliam’s passion was baseball. His career was a journey beginning on the sandlots of Nashville to a pro career launched in the Negro Leagues to the first wave of Black players breaking the segregated gates of Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Jim Gilliam never commanded the spotlight, yet he was instrumental in the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers reaching seven World Series, winning four, during his career. He never had a permanent position and was frequently the subject of trade rumors. Remembered as a role player, Gilliam sacrificed his statistics for the good of the team. In the first book-length biography of the Dodgers great, Dittmore tells the story of Gilliam’s rise in the baseball world, from rough times in the Negro Leagues to more glamorous times in the majors. Gilliam’s story parallels the many changes in Major League Baseball, from segregated rosters to the first Black stars, as told in this deeply researched account of the forgotten Dodger.
“Stephen Dittmore has done a fine job of bringing Gilliam to our attention with this thoroughly researched biography of the guy the Dodgers couldn’t seem to do without, no matter how many times they contemplated replacing him.” From reviewer James E. Overmyer in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Fall 2026
Read more about Jim Gilliam: The Forgotten Dodger at the August Publications website.