52 Weeks, 52 Books
Week 10: The Baseball Economist
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When baseball season is underway, I simply can’t help myself in terms of leaning towards baseball books for my daily reading. In The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed, J.C. Bradbury addresses a series of topics in great detail examining them from an economist perspective. The first section addresses ideas within the game such as the lack of left-handed catchers, lineup protection, hit batters and managers & arguing with the umpires. As the book continues the issues examined move further away from the field ending up in the front office.
This book is meld of Freakonomics & Baseball Between The Numbers and is a must-read for any fans of sabermetrics. The Amazon.com Publisher review suggests the same yet oddly attributes Numbers to Bill James. Bradbury’s key tool to measure things is multiple regression analyses, which he uses to pinpoint data effects for things such as walk rates of a pitcher and Leo Mazzone’s coaching ability. Though the book is numbers heavy with several tables and figures, it rarely drags down the chapters. Just the opposite in fact as Bradbury articulates very well and keeps the stories moving smoothly.
While I didn’t agree with every conclusion drawn throughout the book, each is well-reasoned and expertly laid out. Like Freakonomics, it stimulates the brain and allows you to think like you never have before about some historical myths well-entrenched in the landscape of baseball. I especially enjoyed the chapters on lineup protection and left-handed catchers. The deep-dive into talent evaluation and how front offices do & should attribute value to it were also impressive.
My free time was limited when I was reading this book, but when I did take the time I breezed through this book. As an avid stathead and baseball fan, this book couldn’t have been more up my alley if it tried! I pre-ordered as soon as I read about it in the Wall Street Journal back in February and I wasn’t disappointed.
Week 9: How Bill James Changed Our View Of Baseball
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There are really only two ways to feel about Bill James: you either love him or you hate him. The two groups are said to be split between “stat geeks” and “traditionalists” or at least that’s how idiots classify it. Those that do not like James think he is a number-crunching geek that sees the game only in averages and ratios. Of course, they are the same group that hasn’t read a word of what he has wrote about the great game. To suggest that James cares only about the numbers and not the players and games themselves is silly at best and downright idiotic at worst. Furthermore, to discount James’ contributions to baseball as trivial again borders on overwhelming insanity.
How Bill James… is a collection of essays by colleagues, critics, competitors and just plain fans (the book’s words, not mine) that effectively details, through the lives of this individuals, just how powerful an effect James has had on the game. As has happened all throughout history, those that ride so hard against the grain are doomed to be shunned until you crack the thickheadedness of society. This is undoubtedly a book for James fans only. That is to say, if you don’t like him, chances are you don’t want to read 11 essays about how great he is.
I read somewhere (probably Amazon) that this read like 11 forewords to his next book yet the book never came. That isn’t the worst description of the book and frankly, I’m OK with it coming off like that. I think for those just discovering James or those not yet fans of his, this is a good introduction into James and his work. You can see how he changed the thinking of 11 people entrenched in some capacity or another within the baseball community.
– for baseball fans in general
– for diehard James fans
Week 8: Paradox of Choice
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Well if my last review was tardy, then this one is downright truant and my parents should probably be notified. I knew this would be tough, but it is even tougher than I expected. As I knew from the outset, it would be about disciplining myself to sit down and do my daily reading. A whirlwind of events in my life have taken away from my duties. I’ve been promoted, partied at the South by Southwest music festival, gone on a trip to Florida for Spring Training and watched my favorite sport open up its 2007 season. That said, none of that should have hampered my quest as much as it has. But it happened, so that’s that and let’s get down to business.
Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz is a compelling and fun read about the over-saturation of markets that are now offered to us. The subtitle of the book says it all, “Why More Is Less.” While Schwartz spends a good portion of the book detailing the anguish spent over decision making in the retail arena, it isn’t simply a book about how many choices we have while shopping. He discusses with significant detail the choices about career, family and personal life. While not categorized as a self-help book, there is no reason you can’t glean some lessons to execute within your day-to-day life that will in fact improve its quality.
One of the biggest tenets of the book is that the plentiful choice put in front of us actually achieves the opposite of its goal: it makes unhappy. He outlines the differences between “maximizers” and “satisficers” or those that want only the best and those that are willing to be happy with something that is good enough. His argument against being a maximizer is overwhelmingly compelling in my estimation as it often leads to regret, stress and dissatisfaction of choice. That isn’t to say that we should settle in every area of our lives, but rather we should be wise about when we choose to go the extra mile in decision-making (picking a lifelong companion) and when not to (picking a pair of pants).
Though Schwartz is an acclaimed academic and professor of social theory, the book is neither bland nor textbook in structure. Instead, Schwartz packs a wealth of a information into a tight 236-page read. I found the tone and pace of the book flowed extremely well despite the amount of the statistics flying around. Sometimes too many numbers can hamper a book, but his use of statistics was properly regulated always added just the right amount of expertise without diluting the point.
I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in society as a whole and the psychology that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.
