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How Bill James Changed Our View of the Game of Baseball | 
 enlarge | Authors: Rob Neyer, Alan Schwarz
Creator: Gregory F. Augustine Pierce
Publisher: ACTA Sports
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.98
You Save: $7.97 (40%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 378630
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 139
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0879463171
EAN: 9780879463175
ASIN: 0879463171
Publication Date: March 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Hardcover with dust jacket, minor edge wear from store shelf but no notable damage - new never read Most orders shipped from IL. USA within 24 hours.
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Book Description
If all you think Bill James has done is changed our view of baseball, then maybe not. But if you add in how this guy from Lawrence, Kansas, with "mismatching sox and dirt under his fingernails," has changed how people think about a lot of things, including baseball, then maybe he does. Here are twelve provocative essays by people who know James' work well, interspersed with shorter reflections by "just plain fans" and concluded with a last word by Bill James himself. Articles include: - Freeing My Mind by Alan Schwarz
- Ten Things I Learned from Bill James by Dave Studenmund
- The Arrogance of Bill James by Gary Huckabay
- Prove It by John Thorn
- James, Tenace, McGraw and Kluszewski by Hal Richman
- Selling My Soul to Bill James by Sam Walker
- Slapping Myself on the Forehead by Steve Moyer
- The Collision of Sabermetrics and Fantasy Baseball by Ron Shandler
- Baseball, Basketball, Whatever by Daryl Morey
- Ready for the Next Question by Susan McCarthy
- The Bill James Way of Life by Rob Neyer
- Bill James Is Worth the Wait by John Dewan
- The Last Word by Bill James
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 ultimate teacher April 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bill James has educated and influenced his readers in a way that few writers (or educators) ever do. He's largely responsible for a generation of internet writers and a number of savy front-office types. This book is a collection of essays that pay homage to James and focus on how James changed the writers' views, work and in some cases, lives.
The best essays are by Dave Studenmund (the editor of The Hardball Times Annuals), Daryl Morey (the assistant GM of the Houston Rockets) and Gary Huckabay (one of the founders of Baseball Prospectus).
Morey wrote that James taught him not to "assess value to randomness" (pg. 95).
Huckabay's piece is titled "The Arrogance of Bill James." Here is a passage from his essay:
"Cries of 'arrogance' are often the first reaction of an existing power structure to the suggestion of change. It's true not just in baseball but also in virtually every industry or enterprise, from politics to the arts. However, for the group that happens to be in power, making the decisions that actually drive the enterprise or industry, the disquieting reality is that the true arrogance is not displayed by the upstart with the new idea but the calcified inhabitants of the positions of power."
Huckabay goes on to explain why baseball execs and baseball writers have reacted so negatively to James over the years. His essay is, by far, the best in the book.
There are a number of sidebars that are written by regular readers of James (some are engineers, professors or writers). Some are interesting, some are tedious. There is nothing really new in this book; it's just an appreciation.
One should be familiar with Bill James' work before tackling this book.
 A Paean to Bill James February 10, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As most paeans, this is short on conclusions and long on feelings. If you've read Bill James' work, there's nothing new. It's nice to be reminded of some of James' best lines, but that's not enough excuse to read the book. On the upside, it's very short. The writers are mostly very skilled and are more or less the people one would hope were there. But for no apparent reason, random fans get a sidebar here and there, and they, sadly, are not all capable writers. All in all, go reread one of James' books instead.
 Only for Those Already Within the Temple February 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Whether I would recommend this book to a friend depends on a single fact, whether that friend knows the work of Bill James and feels that it changed how the friend views the world. If the answer is yes, then this book is the path to inform my friend that he is not alone, but shares a sense of wonder with numerous talented and accomplished folks. If the answer is no, then this book is a puzzling hagiography to a crusty curmudgeon who spent his life on trivialities.
Others may argue, with cause, that the book could have provided more insights into James, his work, and his character. But if we accept the thesis that the primary goal of the book was to assure the readers that they are not alone in their deep appreciation for what James has brought to their lives, then the book succeeds admirably.
Highlight: The Susan McCarthy chapter is an intriguing insight into an unconventional but successful marriage. Lowlight: The formatting, with its numerous distracting sidebars, was a poor choice. For the latter, I'll subtract a star. But if, like me, you discovered James in the 1980s and he has informed your world view ever since, you should read this book.
I'm not sure September 17, 2007
When you talk hardcore Bill James fan, you talk about me. Have all his book since BB Abstract 1980, read everything. There is very little stuff worth reading or new in this book, the best coming from Hal Richman. Not a bad reading but nothing out of ordinary, bordeline boring at worst. This is the problem; when we see something about Bill James, we always expect something extraordinary, something new. Not in this case
 A Slim But Important Volume May 12, 2007
8 out of 13 found this review helpful
My favorite Bill James insight has absolutely nothing to do with baseball. It was in the Abstract the year he bought a computer, and the insight was that computers are incredibly dumb. He would type things the way he always had, and then make one mistake and the computer would execute that mistake as perfectly as it had all his correct commands, and he wondered why the computer couldn't learn. And although computers can, in certain instances, learn (which is why Google will suggest that your search was different from the one you misspelled, for instance), they have gotten, in my opinion, even dumber, as you can get a message that is in perfect gibberish that you have to accept or cancel, and you have no idea what it is. Microsoft Word will still prompt me to use "Paste Special" to make something into HTML even though every one of the million times I've used it, I used it to make unformatted text. And everytime computers are dumb, I think of Bill James and his wisdom 20 years ago about computers.
Today, if there were a new Bill James, a community of Bill James lovers would grow up instantly though MySpace pages and the like. There would be a Bill James Web Ring of fan sites and everyone would know everyone else was out there. But for those of us, like the contributors to this book, who were experiencing the Abstracts in real time (I bought the 1982 Abstract at Waldenbooks; I can remember the day), we were all discovering this really good writer who had insights into baseball and into life that we could use in everything else we did. As the books shows, some of them turned out to become engineers as well as sportswriters. I use James's insights and methodologies in my law practice (don't tell my clients).
And it's reading those stories of how each writer came across James and used James and took his lessons to heart and benefited from it that are at the heart of this book. It could have been longer, but every essay in it is interesting and thoughtful. Some criticize James for some things (which would please him) and some get him wrong (which wouldn't surprise him), but the general sense is that this is a labor of love for people just like me for whom the insight has been life-altering without once needing to enter any place more intimidating or serious than what Bull Durham called the church of baseball.
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