Video: Baseball like it oughta be

Good stuff…baseball is boring and he made it interesting.

It’s boring only to those who don’t understand what’s going on. When I was listening to Cubs radio broadcasts in the ’80′s they had a commentator for [the idiot] Harry Caray, whose name was Steve Stone, a former standout pitcher for the NY Mets; he understood the game. Listening to him, I began to appreciate the subtleties of the game. There is a whole chess-game-within-the-game going on, with outfield and infield position adjustments, pitch selection and location, all depending on not just the hitter, but the score, the count, the number of men on base, etc. I also REALLY encourage everyone to read the book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis (Norton, 2003, available cheap in used editions). How advances in statistical techniques used by market traders (sp. fractals) began to be applied to baseball statistics, producing a whole new way of thinking about what makes a quality ball player, enabling the A’s to make and do well in the playoffs for a few years with the lowest payroll in the game (until everyone else caught up with the new thinking). The chapter in which Billy Bean (A’s manager at the time) is horsetrading with two other managers on two different phone lines at the same time is worth the price of the book itself. Saying that baseball is boring is like saying there is no difference between chess and checkers; it reveals one thing, and I don’t have to spell out what that is.

smellthecoffee on June 3, 2007 at 10:22 AM