Bill James is a pretty smart man
by sammy on Apr 2, 2008 12:37 PM PDT
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Printhttp://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/bill-james-answers-all-your-baseball-questions/
A long Q and A with Bill James on the NYT Freakonomics blog. Good reading.
My favorite quote:
The people who analyze politics on television say absolutely ridiculous things with a frequency that would make the laziest baseball announcer look like Socrates by comparison.
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Thanks for the link.
My favorite quote comes from the "why Billy Beane's stuff doesn't work in the playoffs" question.
"It’s like asking a physics professor whether there is a God. Scientists don’t know anything more about whether there is a God than morons do, because it’s not a scientific issue. This isn’t something I can measure. It’s a matter of faith. "
Actually, this one is better.
Q: Has looking at the numbers prevented you from actually just enjoying a summer day at the ballpark? Have we all forgotten the randomness of human ballplayers? By reducing players to just their numbers can we lose sight of the intangibles such as teamwork, friendships, and desire.
A: Does looking at pretty women prevent one from experiencing love? Life is complicated. Your efforts to compartmentalize it are lame and useless.
Raul gets mentioned!
As a defensive liability. Good to know we're not the only ones who see that.
Makes sense. Sports tend to generate their
own interest--that's kind of the whole point. Political pundits need to pad advertising revenue by drumming up artificial excitement and emphasizing pointless, sensationalist narratives. Have I mentioned how much I hate the mainstream media?
The Freakonomics Blog
Is pretty great. I loved the posts where one of 'em would watch episodes of The Wire with real life gang leaders.
by iheartjavelinas on Apr 2, 2008 10:02 PM PDT reply actions
I loved that series of posts.
If you're a fan of The Wire and read any of the two billion articles written about the show and David Simon this year, I humbly present the best blog post on the wire on all the internets combined:
http://www.ftrain.com/the-wire.html
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