Monday, October 05, 2009

Bill James and the Invention of Common Sense



It is Bill James' birthday. The author, sabermetrician, and Senior Advisor for Baseball Operations for the Red Sox is 60 today.

James is probably the single most influential baseball author working today. A former night watchman, James has an intense dislike for cant and foolishness, and has spent his life analyzing topics, predominantly baseball ones, with rigorous logic. His writing is passionate, sometimes cruelly so, but always strictly commonsensical.

I have been reading him for as long as I have followed baseball, and consider his "Historical Baseball Abstract" one of the books I would want to take with me to a desert island. Happy birthday, Bill James.

2 comments:

  1. Other books on that list?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great question. I think I'll make that a whole new post. Warning: you may be inadvertently complimented during the exposition for said post.

    ReplyDelete

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