Monthly Archives: April 2012

Curve Ball by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett: a short review

The book’s enjoyable if you’ve some background in academic statistics, but it’s likely difficult reading if you’ve not encountered that notation and vocabulary. I worked my way through the discussions, but was rummaging through four-decade-old memories from time to time. It’s certainly an essential book if you’re seriously interested in serious baseball analysis.

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The Best of Baseball Prospectus: a review

The best stuff is classic. BP published Voros McCracken’s “How Much Control Do Hurlers Have?”, likely the most influential sabermetric essay published in this century; it’s here, as are several author’s reactions. Rany Jazayerli’s delightful, twelve-part exploration of the free agent draft is reproduced as written; it’s fun and informative (though this is one of the places where a the book’s web origins really show; a rewrite would surely make things more coherent). Keith Woolner and James Click explore the areas sabermetrics had not, as of their essays, examined; everyone should read these essays for an overview of the discipline’s landscape. There’s a representative selection of Christina Kahrl’s delightful Transaction Analysis columns; I always looked forward to those. Joe Sheehan, Doug Pappas, Nate Silver, Gary Huckabee, Jonah Keri, and Dayn Perry are all represented; Derek Zumsteg, sad to report, is not.

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A Princess of Passyunk by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff: a short review

Magical Reality comes to Polish immigrants in early-1950s South Philly. Faith, family, love, and baseball. And a cockroach or twelve.

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Nikon 1 V1: after three weeks

I like the V1 camera. I like it a lot. It takes excellent photographs, is light weight, and is generally easy to use. It’s reasonably flexible. But there are issues. What follows is largely a discussion of things I wish Nikon had done differently, so there’s some danger you’ll think I dislike the camera. That would be a false impression.

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