prone to enthusiasms….
I’m a baseball fan, and a baseball researcher. Both interests are represented here.
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We’ve straightened out the pitching situation–Scott McGregor’s magically appeared on the mound. And we’ve released Ingram from his baserunning duties so he can return to QC’s CF. emBut: We’re still lost track of one out. That will haunt us.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
March 28th 2011
This is a book mainly about the northside ballpark, and about the team executives who’ve been responsible for maintaining it. Although many ballgames are described, and seasons are summarized, the Cubs (and the ChiFeds who first resided here) are not the book’s subject. This is not a shortcoming, but is occasionally disconcerting.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
March 22nd 2011
There’s still some refining to do, but this is the first edition that feels like the commercial versions. Great fun.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
March 15th 2011
In May of 2006 Jeff Sackmann announced that he’d begun publishing splits (left/right, day/night, home/away, etc) information for minor league players. His Minor League Splits (MLS) website became one of the most valuable minor league stats sources. He’s no longer providing the information in an easily accessible form, but he’s made the underlying data available. This is potentially an immensely valuable resource, as it may enable folks to study the disparities in performance between players taking the field at different levels of professional competition.
Filed under Baseball CrankSpace Posted on March 12th 2011
Here, in the third edition, Bill James finally finds the voice we all love (or hate). And the Abstract’s rapidly moving toward its mature format. Every team gets an essay, most of which are interesting; a couple are used to demonstrate concepts. And there’s a long essay, purporting to compare Guidry’s season with Rice’s, which puts all the basic sabermetric tools on display. There’s also considerable exploration of the limits of the available defensive statistics.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
February 24th 2011
On January 24 of 1996 I began work on what would evolve into MWLguide.com, but the site’s original URL was www.wp.com/JOWO/. The first page, built from a template supplied by my Web Pages host, was an early draft of this biographical page–that bio’s structure remains basically theirs–and two days later I’d composed A Fan’s Guide to the Midwest League in Lotus Word Pro and uploaded it to the site.
Filed under Baseball CrankSpace Posted on February 3rd 2011
The front-of-book and back-of-book essays which ultimately built the Bill James legend are only there in embryo. The most-discussed statistic seems to be opposition errors, with results which strike Bill as counter-intuitive; errors increase as the quality of opposition decreases. Perhaps the weaker teams are seeing weaker defensive lineups, he speculates. Wonder if he followed up. This is certainly checkable in these Retrosheet days.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
January 22nd 2011
The book is essentially descriptive, but has pretensions toward analysis. There’s a lot of good material here. The first three chapters are a history of player/management relations in baseball. The remaining six chapters are topical, and examine such matters as agent behavior, player interactions with field managers, race relations, and salary arbitration. Unfortunately, the presentation is largely anecdotal; even when the author tries for analysis the result is often inconclusive, superficial, or unconvincing. I was, frankly, hoping for more.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
December 15th 2010
This book lacks the wicked black humor of Klinkowitz’ other baseball novel, Basepaths, with which it shares some characters. All the same, the best stories here are both absurd and delightful, while others are passionate, and others simply preserve well-observed moments. Well worth a few hours of your time.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Posted on
November 22nd 2010
Well-executed but nonetheless fairly typical tourist-oriented ballpark guide. A few of the ballyards are not currently involved in anything resembling an organized league.
Filed under
Baseball CrankSpace
Bookworm Alley
Posted on
September 30th 2010
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