The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics Review

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The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics ReviewI was looking forward to reading this book for a while. Alan Schwarz has become one of my favorite writers (Baseball America, ESPN.com, New York Times, etc.) about baseball during the post-Bill James era because he's not afraid of confronting the science and theories (not necessarily truth) of OBAvg., OPS, DIPS and a host of other relatively-new methods to extract and measure baseball performance. He's obviously a fan of the past and the mystique/history of our national pastime, but he's also intelligent and skeptical of conformist thinking and open to evaluating the next, new thing.
Choosing baseball statistics as a subject - one that's exploded in importance during the last 15 years (with the concurrent increase in players' salaries and availability of cheap computers) -- Schwarz's book tells a surprisingly riveting story.
The hero's aren't John McGraw, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson or Lou Brock who changed the way baseball is played. Rather, they are the men like Henry Chadwick, Allan Roth, Earl Weaver, and of course, Bill James who've changed the way the way we interpret, measure, and yes appreciate baseball through the myriad of statistics.
If you think the most interesting thing about a baseball card is the picture, this book is not for you. But if you, like many (most?) baseball fans know what the numbers 714, 61*, 1.12 and .366 mean, then you will enjoy this book immensely. If you liked "Moneyball" and want to get the story on how baseball evolved from scorecards and boxscores to MLB.com and on-demand hitters' "spray charts", "The Numbers Game" is essential.
From the first boxscores and play-by-play newspaper accounts (I didn't know they did that!) that allowed a world without radio or television to "experience" baseball, to Branch Rickey's secret weapon as he built the Dodger dynasty of the 1950's, to the new crop of intelligent, numerate GM's, the analysis and appreciation of baseball has changed as much as the game itself has.
Even though I am quite numerate with respect to baseball statistics, I enjoyed the way this book put the history of it all together in a very compelling way.The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics Overview

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