John McConnell ’48

John McConnell ’48 said his children have taken to calling him “The World’s Oldest First-time Author.” Maybe that isn’t true, but McConnell, who’s 86, did just get his first book—the result of more than 20 years of work and statistical analysis—published by MacFarland and Company. The book, “Cooperstown by the Numbers: An Analysis of Baseball Hall of Fame Elections,” is a resource for baseball fans, but the data gathering started as a way for McConnell to learn to use a computer back when computer input was done with punch cards. McConnell, who lives in Long Beach, Calif., a Cornell Athletic Hall of Famer, was the first baseball coach at Long Beach State University. He’d kept the data for years, but it wasn’t till after his retirement that he thought it might be a good book.