Exactly what I expected- a pleasant feature that didn’t do James’ work justice. I liked Theo Epstein’s comment that James’ value to the Red Sox is more often the questions he asks than the answers, because it suggests the important truth that Sabermetrics isn’t about slide rules and formulas but simply about thinking.
I didn’t like Terry Francona’s, “I pay attention to the numbers, but ultimately it’s about human beings….” nonsense. And then there was Morley Safer saying, “at the end of the day, isn’t it just about a guy with a bat and a guy with a ball…”
Thanks for clearing that up, Morley. I thought it was about a guy with a bong and a guy with a harpsichord…
For decades and decades, the media has been in head-over-heels love with crusty old-school scouts blithering about how they “don’t need no goshdang charts and tables to find me a player when I can just squint into the sun and see baseball oozing out of a kid’s pores…”’
How come nobody ever said, “You know it’s funny, Crusty, but all along I thought baseball was a about a guy with a bat and a guy with a ball…?”
You see what I’m saying? Why do people have this reaction do James’ work, or to the thinking he pioneered? Are they saying that Sabermetrics dehumanizes baseball? How?
If Morley Safer did a profile of Warren Buffet, would he listen to Buffett’s “numbers” and “technical anaysis” and say something like, “at the end of the day, isn’t capitalism about a guy making something and a guy buying something….”
I realize I’m making too much of this, but geez. Any candidate who promises to lift the moratorium on thought has my vote.
