Somehow people got the idea that I might want some baseball-related books for Christmas. Levi gave me The Hardball Times Baseball Annual, which certainly contains more “adjusted win shares” data than any other baseball book I’ve owned. My mother gave me For the Love of Baseball: An A-to-Z Primer for Baseball Fans of All Ages, the only downside being that they used Babe Ruth to illustrate “B” instead of “R.” And my father gave me a book consisting mainly of old photographs called Baseball in Tampa Bay, which has mercifully few pictures of the Devil Rays.
Original comments…
Levi: Jim–
I figured you probably wouldn’t be all that into the charts and graphs part of the book (Although check out the one that shows the Cardinals leading the pack in both runs scored and fewest runs allowed!), but I thought you’d enjoy:
1) The piece on looking back at 2004 from 2054
2) The piece where the guy speculates how baseball would be different if Eric Young had only gotten four more hits in 1991.
3) The fact that these guys put together a web site, were successful with it, and decided to turn it into a self-published book.
thatbob: I personally think it’s appropriate to illustrate “B” with The Babe, since it’s not his real first name. But it might be inappropraite to illustrate “B” with Babes Adams, Twombly, Borton, Danzig, or Dotel, because they’re not really important enough.