Baseball BeatJanuary 04, 2005
Abstracts From The Abstracts
By Rich Lederer

Part Twelve: 1988 Baseball Abstract

Bill James wrote the twelfth and final edition of the Baseball Abstract in 1988. Citing workload-related burnout, James made a "gut-wrenching decision" to stop producing the "world champion bestseller of baseball" that year. In describing baseball in the late 1980s, the back cover of the green and gold book proclaims: "These are the best of times and the worst of times." Well, for James' fans, it was the latter.

I was shocked when I learned that the Baseball Abstract was no longer to be. I mean, how could someone take away what had become a rite of spring? For me, awaiting the arrival of the Baseball Abstract each year had replaced the anxiety of looking forward to the new APBA cards during the 1960s and 1970s.

I figured we hadn't heard the last of ol' Bill but wondered if we would ever read his work in this type of format again. Oh, there were more Bill James works to come -- the Baseball Books of 1990-1992, the Player Ratings Books of 1993-1996, and the hardcover books about baseball history -- but never has there been another Baseball Abstract as we once knew.

James dedicates "my last Baseball Abstract" to his fellow table-game (Ballpark) league members from the 1970s.

As you reach the end of things, you look back to the beginnings. It was during this period, in trying to win that league, that I became obsessed with how an offense works and why it doesn't work sometimes, with how you could evaluate a trade and understand whether you had won or lost, with finding what information you would need to have to simulate baseball in a more accurate way. I had thought about these things before, of course, but to win that damn little league I had to know. That focused my interest in the game onto analytical questions; and then there was an economic accident, and there I was on the bestseller list.

James once again acknowledges Susie McCarthy, "the best wife in the world. Yes, it's true; the computerized rankings were just released on Tuesday by WWRS (World Wife-Rating Service), and Susie is ranked first again. . .Among husbands, by the way, I rated 912,474,384th, between a Yugoslavian alcoholic and a Jamaican guy who's been dead for several years." He mentions several others, including his agent, editor, Dan Okrent, Dallas Adams, Walt Campbell, Pete Palmer, John Dewan, and Don Zminda. "For all you do. This book's for you."

James writes several essays in the first section of the book. He discusses the best players of the day in "Rain Delay" in a conversational format reminiscent of Abbott & Costello's famous "Who's on First?" comedy routine. James opines that Wade Boggs is the best player in the game. He lists Tim Raines, Ozzie Smith, Don Mattingly, and Tony Gwynn two through five. Roger Clemens is the only pitcher in the top ten.

In "Platooning," James wonders why "we know almost nothing about it" even though "it is an old strategy, dating back at least to 1906." He studies the data from 1984-86 and concludes that the platoon differential is not only real but "a condition of the game, shared by everybody" rather than "a weakness peculiar to some players."

Owing to baseball's decision to reduce the size of the strike zone in theory while making it larger in practice by instructing the umpires to uniformly enforce the new rules, James predicts in "The New Strike Zone" that "runs scored are going to be down this year -- and attendance will be down right with them."

In the history of baseball, whenever runs scored go down, attendance goes down. When runs scored go up, attendance goes up.

A check of the records shows that runs scored declined by more than 12% in 1988 but attendance actually increased by nearly 2%. In 1963 -- the last time the strike zone was enlarged -- runs scored dropped approximately 11% while attendance fell by 4%.

In "Game Scores," James introduces his annual fun stat, "a kind of garbage stat that I present not because it helps us understand anything in particular but because it is fun to play around with." The purpose was to create a way to evaluate pitching performances on a scale of zero to a hundred, starting with 50 and adding one point for every hitter the pitcher retires, two points for each inning the pitcher completes after the fourth inning, one one point for each strikeout; then subtracting one point for each walk, two points for each hit, four points for each earned run, and two points for an unearned run.

James also discusses a couple of spinoffs -- "Cheap Wins" (any game in which a starting pitcher is credited with a victory despite a game score below 50) and "Tough Losses" (any game in which a starting pitcher is charged with a defeat despite a game score of 50 or better), which he details more thoroughly later in an article named after these two concepts. "The unluckiest pitcher, by far, was Nolan Ryan. Ryan was credited with no cheap wins. He was charged with 11 tough losses. . .Ryan's record was 8-16; had he been credited with a win every time he pitched well and got a decision, and been charged with a defeat whenever he pitched poorly and had a decision, his record would have been 19-5."

* * * * * * *

In the Team Comments in Section II, James writes a companion piece to the Minnesota Twins review called "The Gap" in which he discusses the need for front-line talent when it comes to the postseason. "I've been trying to tell people every World Series time for ten years that in a short, crucial series, depth don't count."

James leads off the Kansas City Royals segment by announcing, "It is dangerous for a baseball team to have too many players with the same weakness, no matter what the weakness. . .So in building a ballclub, you have to be aware of the weaknesses of your stalwart players, and avoid duplicating those weaknesses among the replaceable players."

The fan in James emerges in "The Hobby", a three-page article that sympathizes with Bo Jackson and his desire to play professional baseball and football. He takes manager Billy Gardner to task for his handling of Jackson as well as Bret Saberhagen, the latter in a piece entitled "The Kansas City Managers." Saberhagen had won the Cy Young Award in 1985 and had 15 wins (including five complete games in which he had given up only two or three hits) at the All-Star break in 1987.

The problem is, Saberhagen was pitching too much. Now, I don't mean that pitching 161 innings in a half-season is necessarily destructive. Working in a four-man rotation, seven innings a start and occasionally eight or nine, for some pitchers, might be all right. The critical factor isn't the number of innings pitched, but the number of innings pitched when tired [my emphasis, not Bill's].

James lists Saberhagen's innings pitched for his first 18 starts (9, 8, 8, 9, 8, 9, 7, 9, 9, 5, 9, 9, 9, 7 2/3, 9, 9, 7, and 9). "In the game that he pitched 7 2/3 he threw 142 pitches. What makes this so irritating, in retrospect, is that it was so unnecessary. Those games include wins by the scored (sic) of 13-1, 10-2, 6-1, 4-0, 4-1, 6-1, 10-5, 6-0, and 10-3. In Saberhagen's first 16 starts the Royals outscored the opposition 99 to 35. In game after game, the risks involved in letting somebody else finish up would have been minimal; the worst reliever in baseball couldn't have lost more than a couple of those games."

Not surprisingly, Saberhagen "wasn't the same pitcher" in the second half of the year. Sabes went on to win his second Cy Young in 1989, but it turned out to be the last time he pitched as many as 200 innings in a season. Although Saberhagen was an effective pitcher the rest of his career (75-56, 3.47 ERA, 4:1 K/BB ratio), he never approached the supremacy he reached in 1985, 1987, and 1989 when he was 21, 23, and 25 years old, respectively.

James compares his days in the military when "generals were in the habit of thinking of manpower as a free resource" to the Seattle Mariners, who "treat talent as if it were a free resource." At the time, the Mariners had a streak of 11 consecutive losing seasons -- the longest since the Kansas City A's run of ineptitude ended in 1967 -- and it was James' belief that it was "due to the organization's failure to perceive a simple reality: that young men who can play baseball are precious to baseball teams. You shouldn't give one away unless you also acquire one." By the way, it took Seattle four more years before it had its first winning season (out of 15) in 1991.

"As a sports fan you hear a lot about momentum. As a scientist you'll have a hell of a time proving that any such animal exists," James writes in "Momentum, Ad Nauseum." By studying the issue, he concludes "that which is called momentum in baseball is not a characteristic of play but a characteristic of the perception of play." He calls momentum "one of those superficial concepts that is hard to resist if you don't think it through" and says "the illusion of momentum will in time, I think, be overpowered by its own absurdities."

James, in a study regarding lineup construction, reports that the number of runs scored was the highest in the first inning ("the only inning in which you get to decide who will hit"), the lowest in the second inning ("when the bottom of the order comes up"), and almost the same in innings three through seven.

What was surprising, however, was this: If you took the first two innings and added them together, the average was not up from the standard for innings three through seven. It was down. What does that mean? By setting the lineup for the first inning, managers are exercising a degree of effective determination over not one but two innings, the first and the second. They accept the cost of a poor second inning in order to get the benefit of a strong first inning -- and they lose on the deal! They wind up scoring fewer runs than if they just started the lineup at a random point.

The implication is that lineups are not constructed properly. "The largest determination of how many runs are likely to be scored in an inning is whether or not the lead-off man reaches base. If the lead-off man reaches base, the number of runs that will probably be scored in an inning is about three times as high as if the lead-off man is put out. . .The one player who is least likely to lead off the second inning is the number-three hitter. . .Thus, the one player who is most likely to start a successful inning and the one player who is least likely to start the second inning are the same player.

"Further, the traditional baseball thinking puts in the fifth spot the slow-moving slugger with the low on-base percentage. . .Think about it. Who leads off the second inning most often? The first inning ends 1-2-3 a little less than 30 percent of the time. The most common lead-off man for the second inning is the fifth hitter -- the one player in all the lineup least suited to be a lead-off hitter!"

James wonders if it wouldn't make more sense to put the player with the high on-base percentage in the fourth spot and the one with the low on-base percentage in the third spot. What do you know? Maybe Felipe Alou gets it after all. Although I would prefer to see Barry Bonds bat first or second, it follows why Alou would bat him fourth rather than the more traditional third slot for such a hitter. The only disadvantage in sliding a player down in the lineup is the loss of approximately 18 plate appearances per spot/season.

In the St. Louis Cardinals segment, James writes about the advantages and disadvantages of the running game. He doesn't buy into the incidental benefits generally but does in the case of the 1987 Redbirds.

The stolen base, it is argued, puts pressure on the pitcher, breaks up the infield, and takes the double play out of order. While all of these benefits are real, it is my belief that in general, in the normal case, the hidden benefits of the stolen base are canceled out (sometimes more than canceled out) by hidden costs of the running game. The running game can create a balk, and it can create an error on the pitcher; it can also lead to a runner being picked off first base without being charged with a caught stealing, a hidden cost which doesn't show up in the box score. The running game can distract the pitcher; it can also distract the hitter. Hitters who take pitches to allow the runner to steal often find themselves behind in the count, and for that reason the aggregate batting average of all hitters following a stolen base attempt is awful. The stolen base attempt can break up the infield and allow a hit to get through, but if the runner just stays on first base he'll add 30 points to the batting average of a left-handed hitter by forcing the first baseman to stay close to the bag. If you steal second you give those 30 points back. In general, it's a wash; the negatives and positives balance out.

James explains that first-run strategies are well understood when it comes to the sacrifice bunt but not when applied to a stolen base attempt.

If a batter attempts to steal second and is successful, he increases his own chance of scoring a run, but does almost nothing to increase the chance that any other player will score. If he attempts to steal and is thrown out, however, this decreases not only his own chance of scoring but that of every player who will bat in the inning. There is a big, big difference in your chance of scoring a run if you reach first base with no one out or if you reach with one out.

So the runner, in attempting to steal, is doing something to decrease the other players' chance of scoring, and nothing to increase it. Thus the effect of the stolen base attempt, like the sacrifice bunt, is to increase the chance of scoring one run, but to decrease the chance of scoring several runs in an inning.

James develops his idea further by stating that "not all runs in a baseball game are equal. The first few runs that you score are crucial. After five runs, each run is, as economists say, of diminishing utility, meaning that it will have less probable impact on the win column. . .One of the possibly legitimate arguments for the running game, then, is that it tends to rearrange runs into more productive groups."

In the case of the Cardinals, James reports that they were only eighth in the majors in runs scored, yet scored less than three runs fewer times than any other team. He says the Cardinals were 15-9 when they scored just three runs whereas most teams lose almost two-thirds of such games.

In "Management," James reduces a manager's job "into three levels of responsibility" -- (1) game-level decision making, (2) team-level decision making, and (3) personnel management and instruction. James praises Whitey Herzog as a successful manager who "makes decisions on all three levels at the same time." He proceeds to list "some very fundamental premises of Herzog's managing which receive very little attention" such as:

  • Never have anybody on your roster that you won't use. If you lose confidence in a player but keep him on the roster, you're making the roster smaller.

  • When a player loses his aggressiveness he loses his value.

  • If a player doesn't want to do the job that you need him to do, get rid of him.

  • Everybody has to play defense. If a player can't play defense it's hard to find an offensive role for him either.

    Nonetheless, James correctly predicts that Whitey is "reaching the end of his effectiveness in St. Louis" despite the fact that the Cardinals were the defending National League champions and a World Series participant in three of the previous six seasons. "I suspect that Whitey Herzog may have managed his last championship team in St. Louis." The White Rat resigned 2 1/2 years later, having gone 195-209 (.483) in that interim period.

    James questions Frank Cashen in the New York Mets comments about the need for players to spend at least one full year in Triple-A. "My theory is that once a player has proven that he can play AAA ball, every extra game that he plays in the minors will make his career less than it would otherwise have been."

    James mentions Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, Dwight Gooden, Babe Ruth, Robin Yount, Kirby Puckett, Tony Gwynn, Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose, Andre Dawson, and Ozzie Smith as players who didn't spend a full year at AAA. "The position that every player has to play a full season of AAA ball is, I think, intellectually indefensible. The vast majority of the greatest players in baseball history played fewer than 300 games of minor-league ball."

    Speaking of Dawson, James ridicules his selection as the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1987. "There are occasions in your professional life that make you think you're not making any progress. The election of Andre Dawson as the National League's MVP is one of mine." He states that Dawson "couldn't have been one of the thirty best players" in the league, listing 20 players who created more runs per out "without adjusting for illlusions of context." James points out that "Dawson's statistics were tremendously inflated by playing in Wrigley Field" (.332 with 27 HR vs. .246 and 22 HR on the road).

    So why did he win the MVP Award? I know what some people will say. It wasn't Dawson's statistics, it was his leadership and his throwing arm. People will say that, but you know it isn't. You don't give him an MVP for "leadership" on a last-place team. Half the time, the MVP Award goes to the league leader in RBI. That's not leadership; that's statistics. And if they really understood his statistics, they wouldn't have done it.

    In "SQ, IQ" James reviews speed quotient -- a concept he introduced the year before -- and unveils intelligence quotient as "another characteristic of a player that is useful both on offense and on defense." He identifies five characteristics of an intelligent baseball player: (1) the tendency not to make errors, (2) command of the strike zone, (3) effective baserunning relative to speed, (4) consistency, and (5) growth.

    Although speed scores "can be independently verified by watching players run. . .I can't say that somebody is stupid unless I can support it." James mentions Luis Salazar and Alfredo Griffin as players who have low intelligence scores even though the latter "is not regarded by those who know him as stupid, not at all." James suggests that Griffin "may be smart, but he doesn't play smart." He believes Ozzie Smith would be the highest-rated player, followed by Raines, Carlton Fisk, Mike Schmidt, Gwynn, Keith Hernandez, Phil Bradley, Brian Downing, Mattingly, Eddie Murray, and Ryne Sandberg.

    * * * * * * *

    The centerpiece of the final Baseball Abstract are the comments in the San Diego team segment that have become known within the sabermetric community as A Bill James Primer.

    Of all the studies I have done over the last twelve years, what have I learned? What is the relevance of sabermetric knowledge to the decision-making process of a team? If I were employed by a major-league team, what are the basic things that I know from the research I have done which would be of use to me in helping that team?

    1. Minor-league batting statistics will predict major league batting performance with essentially the same reliability as previous major-league statistics.

    2. Talent in baseball is not normally distributed. It is a pyramid. For every player who is 10 percent above than the average player, there are probably 20 players who are 10 pecent below average.

    3. What a player hits in one ballpark may be radically different from what he would hit in another.

    4. Ballplayers, as a group, reach their peak value much earlier and decline much more rapidly than people believe.

    5. Players taken in the June draft coming out of college (or with at least two years of college) perform dramatically better than players drafted out of high school.

    6. The chance of getting a good player with a high draft pick is substantial enough that is clearly a disastrous strategy to give up a first-round draft pick to sign a player like Rick Dempsey, Pete Falcone, or Bill Stein.

    7. A power pitcher has a dramatically higher expectation for future wins than does a finesse pitcher of the same age and ability.

    8. Single-season won-lost records have almost no value as an indicator of a pitcher's contribution to a team.

    9. The largest variable determining how many runs a team will score is how many times they get their leadoff man on.

    10. Any one of the following:

  • A great deal of what is perceived as being pitching is in fact defense.

  • True shortages of talent almost never occur at the left end of the defensive spectrum.

  • Rightward shifts along the defensive spectrum almost never work.

  • Our idea of what makes a team good on artificial turf is not supported by any research.

  • When a team improves sharply one season, they will almost always decline in the next.

  • The platoon differential is real and virtually universal.
  • Feel free to clip and save this Primer. It's James at his best.

    * * * * * * *

    In Section III, James subjectively rates the players and separates the rankings and comments for the first time. Rather than providing brief comments on every starter like in years past, he chooses to focus on 63 players but spends at least one full column on each of them. James also adds a new feature ("in a word") to describe each player.

    George Bell, slugger. Wade Boggs, offense. George Brett, ballplayer. Gary Carter, fading. Will Clark, aggressive. Roger Clemens, excellence. Eric Davis, dynamite. Darrell Evans, efficient. Carlton Fisk, forty. Kirk Gibson, intense. Dwight Gooden, recovering. Tony Gwynn, golden. Rickey Henderson, electric. Keith Hernandez, dependability. Don Mattingly, hitter. Mark McGwire, powerful. Jack Morris, ace. Dale Murphy, Cooperstown. Eddie Murray, consistent. Kirby Puckett, adorable. Tim Raines, brilliant. Cal Ripken, regular. Ryne Sandberg, complete. Mike Schmidt, immortal. Darryl Strawberry, graceful. Ozzie Smith, wizard. Alan Trammell, homely. Lou Whitaker, anchor. Robin Yount, classy.

    In Section IV, James informs his readers that STATS (Sports Team Analysis & Tracking Systems), "a company run by some friends of mine (Dick Cramer and John Dewan), plans to collect a pitch-by-pitch, play-by-play database for every game played during the season." He distinguishes STATS from Project Scoresheet ("a not-for-profit group that collects scoresheets from every game for the benefit of its members") and states that he is no longer associated with the latter despite being its founder, "although I'll still do anything I can to help them too."

    At the moment, some of the directors of Project Scoresheet and STATS tend to see themselves as being competitors and are engaged in some stupid squabbling over absolutely nothing. There is no fundamental reason why both groups cannot succeed. . .My effort in this field has been to break the Elias monopoly, and to insure for the fans permanent access to the records of the games. I support both groups because I think we're better off with two independent sources for public access, rather than one; indeed, if there were a third credible effort I'd support that, too. But you've got to remember, guys, that Elias is still there and still wants desperately to deny everybody else access to the scoresheets. Nothing would make them happier than for you two to push each other over into insolvency. Watch your ass, OK?
    * * * * * * *

    James puts the finishing touches on the Baseball Abstracts in "Breakin' The Wand."

    Well, it's time for me to go. The Baseball Abstract has been good to me. Starting this project twelve years ago was a casual decision. . .In retrospect, it is fortunate that I had not the foggiest idea what I was up against. . .I had no idea how difficult it would be, once I had written the book, to turn it into a commercial product.

    . . .The first book was very far from being what I wanted it to be. I did the second book because I knew that I could do a better job than I had done on the first. In the first effort I had compiled data, but had not had the time -- or, indeed, the self-confidence -- to write about the material.

    . . .In the years 1977-1981 I produced the book every year out of my home. I wrote articles about teams and players, and typed them up and had them photocopied and stapled together, and we sold them. . .We never sold very many copies -- about 2,200 tops, I think -- but good things happened as a consequence of doing the book.

    James believes his work built a bridge between the mountains of traditional wisdom and statistics. "A statistician is concerned with what baseball statistics are. I had no concern with what baseball statistics are. . .I was concerned with what the statistics mean." His audience was not the public but an informed public. "I was aiming at the top of the pyramid. . .By assuming an intelligent audience, I developed a small audience, but an audience with which I had a wonderful relationship."

    Okrent wrote an article about James for Sports Illustrated in 1981 and several publishers expressed an interest in distributing the Abstract at that point. He signed with Ballantine Books and the first edition sold well. "The second edition sold better. The third edition sold better. This remains true; I don't think we've ever had a year when the sales didn't increase. It became the best-selling baseball book each season."

    After the book became successful, there was a period of years in which it was not rational for me even to consider whether I wanted to keep doing it. Having written the book for several years for almost no money, I couldn't walk away from it the minute it began to pay off. The process of writing this book is so exhausting that...every year since 1978, I have told Susie in the spring that this would be the last year of the Abstract.

    I made it to the end of this contract, and the time has come to consider whether or not I should sign another. I have decided not to.

    James discusses how the relationship with his readers changed over the years from a "virtual love fest" to one in which he was getting "more and more letters that irritate the living hell out of me. People have started assuming that I am a goddamn public utility or something. I get letters from people telling me that I do this well but that I shouldn't do that and I should do more of that and less of this and try some of the other. If they irritate me enough, I write back "Dear Jackass: I am not your employee. It is not my function to write about what you are interested in. I write about what I am interested in. If you want to read it, read it. If you don't, don't. But DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT."

    James says that he only wrote about 30 such letters the last year but was concerned about how many more he would need to write in the future. "I think that whenever a writer finds that he is beginning to dislike his own readers, it's a very clear sign that he's heading down the wrong road."

    I've also got to say, guys, that having done this, I've now done all I can do. I can't help you any more. . .I leave the field to whoever is playing in it. Because four months a year of cyclical depression has gotten too much for me. Because I am no longer certain that the effects of my doing this kind of research are in the best interests of the average baseball fan. Because I wonder if anything I found now could have any real impact on the game. Because I have been repaid for my years of doing this book in anonymity, and no longer have any claim to go on drawing paychecks from it. Because while I have enjoyed doing this book, I have only one lifetime and many dreams. Because I have confidence that I will make a living one way or another. Because I feel that I am on a collision course with my own audience. Because I suspect that my leaving the field may be in the interests of sabermetrics.

    Because it is time to go, friends. I'm breakin' the wand, exit stage right. I hereby release any and all of my formulas, theories, and other systems of analysis to any other analyst who wishes to use them and to call them by name (runs created, value approximation method, etc.) either for private or economic use, even by Elias should they so desire. I'll be doing other things, writing other books. I won't be hard to find. I hope that some of you will enjoy those other books. I know that some of you won't, and that's all right, too. It's been good.

    Bill James
    Sabermetrician, Retired
    February 1988

    It's been good? Wow! What an understatement. Thanks for the Baseball Abstracts, Bill, and for all your wit and wisdom over the years.

    * * * * * * *

    Abstracts From The Abstracts:

    1977 Baseball Abstract
    1978 Baseball Abstract
    1979 Baseball Abstract
    1980 Baseball Abstract
    1981 Baseball Abstract
    1982 Baseball Abstract
    1983 Baseball Abstract
    1984 Baseball Abstract
    1985 Baseball Abstract
    1986 Baseball Abstract
    1987 Baseball Abstract

    [Additional reader comments and retorts at Baseball Primer.]

  • Comments

    Just as you were sad when the last abstract came out, I'm sad that you're wonderful series has now come to a close. Thanks for the great work, Rich.

    *your* wonderful series

    Strange how vivid James' writing is, 17 years later. Some of those sentences you quoted I practically know by heart -- but I wouldn't have guessed that, Richard, until you brought them back for us. Thanks for a wonderful series.

    I remember getting the '88 Abstract. I had been reading James' work since the '82 issue and was hooked. I was living in DC and kept calling around to several bookstores waiting for it to come out.

    My usual practice had been to quickly flip through the book and then go back and read it in no particular order. Walking the streets near Dupont Circle while reading the little blurb about IBBs and, I think, Dale Murphy, I stopped to cross a street.

    When I looked back down, the pages had flipped to the second page of Breakin' the Wand. A sentence stood out and I read from there. Coming to the end, I began to realize that this was it, something was coming to an end. A joke? It couldn't be real. I went back to the beginning of the article and started over. I looked at the introduction. It just couldn't be.

    I had started reading James as a teenager, had gone off to college and formed friendships talking about baseball based in no small part on his analytical take on the game. As it said on the cover of the '88 Abstract, it wouldn't be baseball without it.

    There are plenty of people whose research is more detailed and more thorough. There are a handful of writers whose prose is better or at least much more consistent. But there will never be another writer who so sparks my curiosity and interests. There will never be another Abstract.

    Rich, until now I had forgotten how crushed I was when I read that James would stop publishing. Were we going to be stuck with Elias forever? Thankfully, that didn't happen either.

    To me, the most impressive thing about James is that I can still vividly recall just about everything he wrote.

    When I try to think about Elias, the only thing I remember is when they tried to disparage James. (e.g., they talked about how Rose's walks couldn't have made up for his overall poor hitting contrary to James; "you won't find 55-one hundredths multiplied by..."; clutch hitting).

    If you come across some bad baseball analysis, you can somehow trace it back to Elias. If you come across good baseball analysis, you can somehow trace it back to Bill James.

    To me, the most impressive thing about James is that I can still vividly recall just about everything he wrote.

    When I try to think about Elias, the only thing I remember is when they tried to disparage James. (e.g., they talked about how Rose's walks couldn't have made up for his overall poor hitting contrary to James; "you won't find 55-one hundredths multiplied by..."; clutch hitting).

    If you come across some bad baseball analysis, you can somehow trace it back to Elias. If you come across good baseball analysis, you can somehow trace it back to Bill James.

    I loved reading James but his last edition of the Historical Abstract, notwithstanding the usual gems, was hard to take in spots: anti-professionalism, borderline homophobia and oh, by the by, psychology is a crock.

    I remember reading one of his books--I think it was excerpts from a web chat he had with his colleagues (Neyer, et. al.) and there was a conversation about the movie "Citizen Kane". James hated the film and had no problem ridiculing anyone who liked it. The problem, according to James, was that people were beating their chests about what a great movie "Kane" was and they couldn't back it up--unless they were a "hummasexyall" (his word).

    I always thought the great irony of James was that with regard to the arts and on a variety of social issues he would exhibit a streak of anti-intellectualism.

    Still, with regard to baseball, there's no one else I'd rather read.

    I just returned this evening after being on a whirlwind trip to and from Miami. I went back to root my Trojans on to victory in the National Championship game. And win they did!

    Thanks everyone for the nice comments attached to this article as well as all the previous Abstracts From The Abstracts reviews. I enjoyed doing this series immensely and am hopeful of having some related pieces up in the near future and perhaps something even bigger down the road.

    Kindest regards,

    Rich Lederer

    I'll join the chorus thanking you for typing up these excerpts. I've never been much of a baseball fan and I was too young to read these early Bill James books when they were published, but I have greatly enjoyed reading the blogs of them and seeing how ahead of his time Bill was with the analysis of baseball. (Analysis of sports being something I enjoy, often far more than watching the sport itself, especially in the case of baseball, which tends to bore me.)

    The insights into James' personality are also interesting. I'd read a few online chats and other Rob Neyer related features with him, and thought he was an onery old coot and enjoyed how snippy and petty he could be at times, even in a quick online chat. Reading these though, I see that he was that way all along, and perhaps even more so; the concept that he might have mellowed in his old age would never have occurred to me before reading the defensive screed he threw into the end of his last Baseball Abstract.

    I know lots of writers occasionally think that they hate their fans for wanting their work to be something it isn't, but other than Anne Rice's recent Amazon.com outburst, I've seldom seen one of them put it so clearly into print. Ironic how the doggedly-determined personality that served James so well at digging up info and asserting it against all conventional wisdom is so exactly unsuited to defending his opinions in a public forum, or even the afterward to his own book.

    To paraphrase Bill, "I'm right, any critic is wrong, and they're most likely a stupid ass as well." The fact that he was often correct in this conclusion only adds to the fun.

    Rich,

    Thanks for rehashing James' early works. It was good to think back on those players. Are you planning on reviewing James' Player Ratings Books. I don't have the old Abstracts but have all the Rating Books and they get me through the dark days (between Super Bowl and spring training games). I can open any of them for an enjoyable trip to the "reading room."