Bill James Appreciation Thread (1 Viewer)

"Every morning when I wake up I always remember dreams, and I always have," James said. "Seven days out of 10, I remember a dream about baseball. Baseball is central to how my view of the world is organized, and I tend — to my detriment — to see the rest of the world as an extension of the principles that I look for in the study of baseball.

"I don't think you could take baseball out of it for me at all."

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'Encyclopedia Brown said:

I've always wondered why he seemed to have it in for Sparky Anderson.

James has downplayed Sparky's influence on the Big Red Machine, and really got on him about staying on too long in Detroit.

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When Enos Cabell was hot early in the year, you'd ask Sparky Anderson about him and Sparky would say "Enos Cabell is a we ballplayer. You don't hear Enos Cabell saying 'I did this' and 'I did that.'" I think that's what drives me nuts about Sparky Anderson, that he's so full of brown stuff that it just doesn't seem like he has any words left over for a basic, fundamental understanding of the game. I want to look at a player on the basis of what, specifically, he can and cannot do to help you win a baseball game, but Sparky's so full of "winners" and "discipline" and "we ballplayers" and self-consciously asinine theories about baseball that he seems to have no concept of how it is, mechanically, that baseball games are won and lost. I mean, I would never say that it was not important to have a team with a good attitude, but Christ, Sparky, there are millions of people in this country who have good attitudes, but there are only about 200 who can play a major-league brand of baseball, so which are you going to take? Sparky is so focused on all that attitude stuff that he looks at an Enos Cabell and he doesn't even see that the man can't play baseball. This we ballplayer, Sparky, can't play first, can't play third, can't hit, can't run and can't throw. So who cares what his attitude is?

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Eephus said:

Nice Posnanski piece about the great man at 65.

I'm not a big fan of parallax scrolling websites but the photo of Omar Moreno with a World Series ring is hilarious in a way.

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