The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics

Other reviewers have done a good job with this book, but I wanted to add my opinion. I wasn't sure if someone could take the history of baseball statistics and turn in into a book even non-statheads could enjoy. However, Schwarz pulled it off. I am into statistics so this book was even more enjoyable for me. I found it interesting that so many intelligent people took time out of their days to work on baseball stats. A heck of a book, highly recommended.

...who this book was meant for. I bet you do too. You'll need a copy too. I read Alan Schwarz' "The Numbers Game" just before I read Michael Lewis' "Moneyball", and I'm better off because of it. Schwarz was acknowledged by Lewis in his own book (while Schwarz was writing this one), and there are a few passages that are strikingly similar. Lewis is a better writer; Schwarz is a little more "clumsy" I guess. Not as elegant. But still, he tells a story of such breadth it's a bit staggering. He does so with deft, concise descriptions. They're often funny as all get out. The two books work like two hands, interlocking. The depiction of "baseball" is more detailed after spending time with both. Schwarz places "Moneyball" in a bigger perspective; Lewis brings "The Numbers Game" down into every day baseball. Here, Schwarz starts with the guy who invented baseball statistics, Henry Chadwick. He then leads us through decades of baseball theory, the development of baseball cards, Strat-O-Matic and Rotisserie (fantasy) baseball, computers, SABR, baseball reporters, fans, players, politics, coaches, the Internet and a whole host of wacky baseball enthusiasts who become hopelessly addicted to the world of baseball stats. Roth, Cook, Dewan, James, Podesta, Evans, Beane... And this in less than 300 pages. This is nothing short of amazing. While I raced through this book, I thought of two close friends of mine. One, a man of about 60, who on occasion has waxed rhapsodically about the box score. How he loved to simply peruse the newspaper and consider each game in it's two-inch square recapitulation...HE belongs in this book. Another, a guy my age (41), shared my pre-adolescent love for baseball by going to Dodger games, watching the All-Star games together, playing Little League and collecting baseball cards. He continued on with his fascination by playing Strat-O-Matic, high school ball, and getting involved with Rotisserie leagues where I did not. HE belongs in this book. Now that I think about it...they both already are in this book. These are the guys who fill every paragraph of this tome. Baseball isn't just "baseball." To those who do not "get it", that statement is simply moronic; to the rest of us, it makes all the sense in the world.

This book is an absolute delight to read for the baseball fan regardless of how many histories of the game you've already read. Alan Schwarz has delivered a perfect blend of Baseball history and the evolution of statistics that we today take for granted as being integral to the game. In this book we learn that wasn't necessarily always true and Schwarz takes us inside the development and the arguments surrounding the relevance of various stats. At the same time the characters involved both in the statistical sense and in the game itself are colorfully described. This was a wonderful book that entertained and educated on a subject that legions of baseball fans are absorbed in every day. The stats and their development are weaved into the history of baseball creating a unique historical view of the game we love.

I 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.

Did you know that when RBI first appeared in newspapers in 1879, fans were so outraged by this new stat that the Chicago Tribune apologetically eliminated it? Or that range factor--supposedly invented by Bill James in the 1970s--predated fielding percentage by four years? Or that before shaking the sabermetric community with his DIPS theory, Voros McCracken was a punk rocker?It's not just the history of statistics; it's the story of their inventors. So many of baseball's statisticians have been wonderful characters. Their stories are amazing--one soldier stationed in Norway made extraordinarily in-depth computations by hand from hundreds of box scores tracked and sent to him by his father.One of the more fascinating aspects of the book for me was how analysts from all generations all too often came to the same conclusions. F.C. Lane developed run values in the 1910s that almost perfectly match Pete Palmer's Linear Weights system. George Lindsay created an expected runs matrix in the 1950s, long before The Hidden Game of Baseball was published. And it seems like every statistician has loathed the sacrifice bunt for over a century.The discussion of errors in baseball's historical stats was remarkably disturbing. Averages could be off by 100 points, and many efforts to right these mistakes inexplicably met great resistance. You'll shake your head thinking about the all too many people who would rather Ty Cobb's hit total stay locked at the number they know than the truth.Alan Schwarz writes a riveting history of our favorite sport's numbers. From the numbers themselves--RBI, DIPS, PECOTA, they all get a mention--to the people behind them--Henry Chadwick, Bill James, Voros McCracken, and everyone in between. They're all a part of a till-now unknown story. Schwarz even leaves us salivating at the end with his preview of what Tendu and MLB.com have in store for the future ("That's the slickest f---in' thing I've ever seen in my life.").Whether you've engaged in heated arguments over an MVP award, debated Linear Weights v. VORP, or simply been engrossed by the back of a baseball card, this book demands a place on your bookshelf.