Baseball's 2007 media: Part X

Continuing our reviews of what's new in baseball media:

The book: "How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball: By colleagues, critics, competitors and just plain fans," edited by Gregory F. Augustine Pierce (ACTA books, $19.95, 140 pages)

The windup: A dozen writers, researchers and baseball people discuss how Bill James' self-published books about the game starting back in 1977 affected not just how the sport is thought about, but how he inspired others to take a new look at other aspects of the world around us. Contributors include Baseball America senior writer Alan Schwartz, author John Thorn, Wall Street Journal sports columnist Sam Walker, Houston Astros assistant GM Daryl Morey, ESPN analyst Rob Neyer, as well as James' wife, Susan McCarthy. James also has the final essay, reacting to the premise of the book.

The pitch: Last year, author Scott Gray came out with "The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball" ($23.95, DoubleDay, 256 pages), but since then, James was included in Time magazine's list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." Why? That's the starting point for this, and for anyone who's simply disregarded his skewed look at trying to manipulate numbers and recalculate methods of valuing baseball players should take another look at him through the eyes of these essayists. In "The Arrogance of Bill James" by Gary Huckabay, the founder of the Baseball Prospectus, it's James' ability to "make tedious data accessable and even fascinating, when combined with his intimate and iconoclastic writing style (that) somehow cointributed to the perception that there was an arrogance to his work. The very items that made his material readable and enjoyable were often well outside the realm of strict analysis ... Ultimately, I think James' impact has been far greater outside of baseball than within it. He helped shape the culture of innovation in our society that's been responsible for many positve improvements." Pretty heavy stuff.
James, who today is employed by the Boston Red Sox in part because of how he influenced the way current GM Theo Epstein judges talent, says in his essay that his mode of operation might be what helps others cut through the clutter of extraneous statistics and finds the heart of the issue. "There is a certain advantage in not knowing anything, which is that, since I don't know anything, I am always dealing with questions, rather than answers. I start with the big questions, and I break those down into smaller questions, and then I break the smaller questions into smaller questions down to smaller questions and smaller questions still. Eventually we arrive at the level of factual questions that have answers." Got it? One of today's great thinkers, in small book form, is definitely worth pondering over between innings of a game you're watching.