Bill James Moves On, Leaving Lofty Legacy
PLUS: REMEMBERING THE LOYAL, LOVABLE PETS OF 1999 BRAVES
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
In the inaugural Hall of Fame Classic in 2009, starting pitcher Bob Feller was 90 years old! His team won, 5-4, with reliever Lee Smith notching the W . . .
Later games included such teams as the Knucksies (led by Phil Niekro) and the Wizards (named for Ozzie Smith) . . .
Fred McGriff, a Class of 2023 Hall of Famer, was the only player to enjoy 30-homer seasons with five different teams . . .
Carlos Beltran polled 46.5 per cent in the balloting, suggesting he will eventually be enshrined; every candidate who bested 42 per cent in their first try eventually won election . . .
Twelve players got less than 5 per cent, the minimum required to stay on the ballot.
Leading Off
Baseball after Bill James
By W. H. Johnson
Alan Schwarz, a Pulitzer Prize nominee and New York Times journalist, called him the “most influential baseball writer of the 20th century; it’s not even close.” Alan Schwarz was not wrong.
Bill James, who this fall published the “walk off” edition of his annual deep-dive into baseball’s structure, the Baseball Handbook, will forever be the ultimate baseball outsider who changed the way we watch the pastime.
Yes, he worked for the Red Sox for awhile, but his sundry analyses of the game have always been created from the perspective of the rest of us. It was James’ ability to frame information, arrange the data if you will, in ways that actually addressed specific questions, that separated him from his contemporaries and elevated his work to ground-breaking levels.
We all had access to the same data as James, but for over 40 years he took that information and gave it form. The information was the water, and the individual questions he posed the cups in which the water took shape.
He moved us from annual The Sporting News books and Who’s Who in Baseball to higher levels of understanding of what really happened between the lines, and his work has proven so influential that he spawned a whole generation of statistical and data analysts, all seeking to better understand the game between the foul lines.
For example, as with Tom Wolfe’s work researching and crafting his book The Right Stuff, the seminal examination of the inner sanctum of military aviation culture in the late 1950s and the subsequent transition to NASA and the space program in the ‘60s, (all from his perch as a non-invested observer), James’ role as baseball outsider allowed him to question some of the sacred cows of the game, the knowledge and knowing, the ontology and epistemology of the national pastime, without violating any unwritten professional codes.
His perspective as an outsider has always allowed him to be direct — blunt even — in his analytical process, and his conclusions have both entertained his audiences and stimulated incalculable thought about something so specific and arbitrary as the game of baseball.
With the closing of his website, Bill James Online.com, and the end of the Annuals, it is time to consider the future of baseball analysis for those of us who remain.
For all of James’ fascinating analytical forays, the one differentiating characteristic of his work has always been the quality of the writing. His ability to express new and challenging ideas (see: 1982 Baseball Abstract, et al) in ways comprehensible to the casual non-statistician (aka most of us), allowed several generations of fans to share his curiosity. James’ ability to not only develop quantitative tests of his theories, but then to explain the results intelligibly, often bordered on pure literary genius.
As James wrote in his introduction to This Time Let’s Not Eat The Bones, an entire book of his technical writing without actual numbers, “The Baseball Abstract abounded in statistics for precisely the same reason that a book about economics is almost always replete with economic statistics…I was always aware that this made the book, for many people or even most people, indigestible…For a book to succeed it is not enough that it will be accessible to everyone; it must exert a positive attraction to someone.” It is that final observation that forms the real core of Bill James’ legacy, and the part of baseball analysis that will most likely be missed the most.
Even a cursory look at the easily accessed trove of today’s online baseball analysis reveals an embarrassment of riches, especially in contrast to what existed in the 1980s.
Fangraphs, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball-Reference, Baseball Savant and so many other wonderful sites have gathered and parsed extraordinary amounts of data and applied quantitative tests and developed analytical programs that dwarf the basic work that Bill James performed throughout much of his career (until the introduction of Bill James Online).
Yet James’ ability to explain his inquiries, his methods, his conclusions, and then his extrapolations, remains unequaled. His gift with words was terrific from the start and only grew over time, and will be an inextricable part of his legacy for as long as there is a reading audience for baseball. That communication is what must be replaced or replicated as the field of analytics matures.
There are some supremely talented writers in the James’ genre working today. Joe Sheehan jumps immediately to mind, but any list of such writers offered here would necessarily be incomplete due to space limitations. Still, the advances of social media and the attendant compression of expression are unintentionally narrowing the qualitative scope of questions, and are, more and more, demanding reliance on simple regurgitation of numbers for the technical audience. Solve for X, that thinking goes, and voila, the mysterious fog of the game should clear.
If it were only that simple.
The next generation of popular baseball analysts will probably need to study their messaging as much as their message.
James engaged his audience as partner, with the former sort of ‘thinking out loud’ in his writing, tacitly engaging the reader to think along with him, and then encouraging that reader to perhaps take a concept or an idea a little farther, to expand our collective perspective on the game.
It was deeply statistical, yet simultaneously warm and approachable. It was wonderful, and it will be exciting to see who will emerge as the newest thinkers to keep us reading in the coming years.
IBWAA member W.H. “Bill” Johnson has contributed to SABR’s Biography Project, written extensively on baseball history, and presented papers at several related conferences. Bill and his wife Chris currently reside in Georgia. He can be contacted on Twitter: @BaseballStoic.
Cleaning Up
Old Braves Calendar Profiles Pets of the Stars
By Dan Schlossberg
During my annual Christmas week cleaning, I came up with a mint-edition 1999 Braves calendar featuring present and past stars of the team with their pets.
Produced in conjunction with the Atlanta Humane Society, the handsome calendar is a keepsake even 25 years later.
Founded in 1873, AHS is the city’s oldest charity, serving people and animals for more than 150 years. It works hand-in-hand with the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The calendar is terrific.
It opens with Tom Glavine, nestling his retriever Golden in front of a fireplace. Notable in the picture is a Silver Slugger bat given to Glavine as the best-hitting pitcher of 2013. It features a full-size bat positioned vertically and a silver-framed plaque indicating the pitcher’s name and accomplishmehts.
The February picture features then-manager Bobby Cox, cruising in his 1974 Volkswagen Bug with his shitzu Rosa.
John Smoltz is the main man for March, shown with his silken terrier named Ginger. Naturally, the pitcher is portrayed in one of his favorite settings: a golf course.
April’s top page is filled with the imposing presence of Hank Aaron, relaxing at the lake with his German shepherd Hercules. The 1999 date was the 25th anniversary of Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s lifetime home run record on April 8, 1974.
Javy Lopez, who collects remote-controlled airplanes, is shown with one of them in a May picture that also include three brown puppies seeking to be adopted through the Atlanta Humane Society.
Switching from canines to felines is not surprising when Andres Galarraga is the cover boy, as he is for June. In this particular picture, The Big Cat is surrounded by eight kittens.
Chipper is chipper in July, where he’s shown with a pair of golden retrievers named Savannah and Georgia (CJ also has a son named Shea, since he hit so well at Shea Stadium).
Andruw Jones is living proof that you can take the man out of Curacao but you can’t take Curacao out of the man. He’s posed with Groucho, a gray-and-white parrot, as he enjoys a pool lined by tropical foliage.
Like Chipper Jones, former Braves lefty Denny Neagle is a golden retriever guy. The September cover boy is flanked by dogs Bailey and Lily as he darts about on a Harley motorcycle.
John Schuerholz, the architect of the Braves teams that won a record 14 straight division titles, is the man of the hour in October, where he’s shown with his Cockapoo named Cuddles. Not surprisingly, there are golf balls and baseballs on his desk.
Ryan Klesko is Mr. November, at least in this 1999 calendar. His canine colleagues are Old English mastiffs Burt and Billie.
Greg Maddux is the only one wearing glasses in December, where he’s at his locker petting Peaches, a German shorthair mix.
Not to be overlooked are Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, who divided their time between Atlanta and Montana. Their companions in the January 2000 page are Chief, a black lab, and Roxie, a golden retriever.
It’s sad to note that the pets portrayed in the calendar have passed over the rainbow bridge. Pet owners know dogs live 10-15 years and cats perhaps a little longer.
Maybe Andruw Jones’ parrott is still chirping, however, and doing its Chip Caray imitation. “He’s safe! Braves win!”
Proceeds from sale of the calendar went back to the humane society, which can be contacted at 404-875-5331 or www.atlhumane.org.
Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is an animal lover and pet owner whose current menagerie includes Chelsea, a 14-pound, 14-year-old mix who is part Yorkshire terrier, part poodle, and part Shi Tzu. His email is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
Ebbets Field oddities:
★ The right field scoreboard/wall had 289 different angles, a concrete bottom, metal scoreboard, wire screen, and jutted in and out at various angles. Carl Furillo had coaches hit balls off the wall so he could learn all the angles.
★ In left field, the foul line was ON the low retaining wall behind visitors’ bullpen.
★ Before Schaefer Beer signed up in 1949 (for the last nine seasons at Ebbets), ad space was used for War Bonds, Consolidated Edison, and an appliance store.
★ The legendary Abe Stark sign (HIT SIGN, WIN SUIT) went up before World War II; Woody English of the visiting Cubs won two suits in one game.
★ The famous Rotunda, replicated by the New York Mets at CitiField, had a bat-and-ball chandelier hanging from its ceiling.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
Gary Sheffield hit 30+ HRs for five teams too, joining Crime Dog. They are the only two.
Ted Simendinger
Ponte Vedra Beach, FL