Book Review
How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball
By Thomas Fischer - Contributing Writer
04/09/2008
For someone who has never read the Bill James Baseball Abstracts from the 1980s, that's not to say I wasn't old enough then but simply not exposed to the genre, I really enjoyed the compiled essays in this very good book. Each was a tribute the the man who changed the way many look at the game of baseball. I especially liked the touch of putting in the shorter reflections by "just plain fans". There are thirteen essays including the last word by Bill James himself. They are all very well written essays just by baseball writers, but include others such as Strat-O-Matic founder Hal Richman, Bill's Wife Susan, and Daryl Morey assistant GM of the Houston Rockets.
Each of the authors in this book went to great lengths to extoll and honor the legend of the man who for more than twenty years has worked to reverse the backward way of thinking about our national pastime. Each author talked about their first impressions of Bill James and his writing and what it meant to them and in several cases how it influenced their life choices.
Some if not all of the shorter reflections in this book talked about how Bill changed not only their view of baseball but also their view of life itself. These eye opening testimonials revealed much more than a man who has written about baseball for twenty years. Many of them made me think of something I heard on an episode of the X-Files. Like Fox Mulder, Bill James is a redwood among mear sprouts and though most of us think of him that way, according to the writers in this book James doesn't think of himself that way. On the contrary, the humble Bill would say he has much more work to accomplish.
By his own admission, Mr. James doesn't think of himself as that good of a writer, though we all know better than that, and he is adamant that he doesn't know it all. I would argue that he knows more than probably any hundred baseball minds put together and I am sure he has a lot left to teach us. The writers in this book know all about the work of Bill James and attest to Bill's character, knowledge and true contribution not only to baseball statistics but to the American way.
I would recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in baseball. Further, I would like to thank Mike San Clemente, Baseball Stratogists, and ACTA Sports for giving me the opportunity to review this terrific book. I was a lot of fun to read and I had a hard time putting it down til I had finished it.
http://www.actapublications.com/, then click on Sports.