Talk:Norm Wallen

From BR Bullpen

Any verification for the death date listed? - --Mischa 08:26, 17 May 2007 (EDT)

Hard to tell if it's correct or not. Some sites (Baseball Almanac and Retrosheet) list his death. Others and my slightly older edition of Total Baseball do not. I found a "Norman Walentowski" in the Social Security Death Index... his date of birth matches but year of birth is one off. I found a burial record for the same man in Milwaukee. My hunch is, it's him, but I'm going to try to track down an obituary to be more certain. -Chisoxfan 12:11, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

OK, I got the obituary for Norman Walentowski from the Milwaukee Journal, Wednesday, June 22, 1994. It confirms he was a former major league baseball player for the Boston Braves and confirms the death date of June 20, 1994. However, it says he was age 76, which would mean he was born in 1918 (as stated in the Social Security Death Index) rather than the widely accepted 1917. Thoughts? -Chisoxfan 22:16, 22 April 2008 (EDT)

SABR confirms year of birth as 1918. "Widely accepted" should be taken with a grain of salt. In many of these cases, no one has checked the information provided by the teams way back when against the official documents. Usually, data bases such as the Social Security Death Index are more reliable than records in the baseball encyclopedia. --Philippe 19:03, 3 March 2009 (EST)