The Essence of Baseball

There are endless ways to take in the game of baseball. Like a kaleidoscope, turning one’s perspective slightly will display a new spectrum of vision. Some perspectives are more beautiful than others, some are easier on the eye, and some appear confusing because the manufacturer inserted too many confetti pieces. In the past year, my baseball kaleidoscope has been twisted and turned, broken and fixed. Sabermetrics, the hip term for the development of baseball statistics, has created a filter for my vision of baseball. Sabermetrics has been a magnifying lens but a cloudy one.

Numbers have always been a part of the game, and they are continuously taking over every aspect of baseball. Mainstream TV viewing has been changed forever by the integration of player, team, and league statistics. We have reached a time when every broadcast team includes a baseball statistician, whose only job is to research, compile, and arrange numbers to plaster over the screen. These numbers are very educational, especially to the casual viewer and fan. In addition to their playing experience, announcer’s commentary is supplemented by statistics which creates a broadcast appealing to a wider audience. However in order to keep the “jocks” of their viewership roped in, very rudimentary and commonly known statistics are used, such as batting average, home runs, and runs batted in (RBI). They provide viewers with a quick, easy summary of how talented, powerful, and reliable a player is.

As kids watching MLB games, my friends and I dreamed of playing in the majors. I’ve grown older, and I now dream not of being a professional baseball player, but of becoming a broadcast sports statistician. When I see that Jimmy Rollins has an OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) of .753, instead of thinking how that statistic relates to Rollins, I think of the formula and data needed to calculate OPS and the small hunchbacked sports nerd sitting under the desk of the “jock” announcers, tapping on the knees of the broadcast team while holding up scraps of paper with scribbled notes.

Another part of my obsession with baseball and statistics is cards. Cards upon cards litter my bedroom floor, some worth less than the cardboard on which they are printed, some worth more than most people carry in their wallets. As I sit in my room reading through Bret Boone’s stat line, I think of his career, that one game I saw him play, and the windy summer bike ride with him in my pocket, fresh out of a newly-crumpled wrapper. I don’t collect for financial profit; I collect for personal memories and a greater connection to my heroes on the ball field.

From boys carefully sliding cards into their bike tires to create their new motorcycle, to intense profiteering collectors, to attic discoveries, to jersey-embedded cards, baseball cards are a timeless part of baseball. Originally symbolic of America’s passion for baseball, cards are now a treasure monopolized by a capitalistic and impersonal culture. The initial purpose of baseball cards was to popularize the major leagues, and close the gap between common man and paid athlete. The front has always featured a picture of the player, in order to put a face with the name on the card, and allow the holder to recognize that player on the field, or to hang on to memories of watching that player. The back, though, has evolved considerably more than the front.

Originally left blank due to a simple unawareness of the benefits of printing on both sides, the backs grew to be covered with statistics, info, and copyright information which only young eyes can read without a magnifying glass. But the beauty of the back is that despite the small print, the common fan can understand every piece of information because the statistics are the generic ones also shown on TV. Companies like Topps, Bowman, and Panini struggle desperately to grasp a wide audience, and they cannot risk appealing to the niche of sabermetric-minded people like myself at the cost of losing the common Joes who ditched math homework to play yard ball. In order to obscure the fact that the compilation of statistics on the back highly resembles an Excel spreadsheet, companies splatter on color schemes and logos. Although at the same time, ‘fun facts’ are disappearing from the backs of cards. In past decades, the standard card included a written sentence about the player, anything from an obscure record he had to what his minor league manager thought of him. The owner of the card could remember that Ted Williams had a craving for seafood the next time a Red Sox game was on TV. Sometimes prophetic, other times comical, these tidbits connected the card owner to the ballplayer as a person. These tidbits made the players human.

For a long time, the main baseball numbers (or numbers at all) that a young kid cared about were the jersey numbers of his hometown team. When big number 9 walked towards the plate with his bat over his shoulder and a cap atop his head, fans knew that their savior Roger Maris was about to hit. Whether or not Maris had selected that number out of remembrance of a deceased relative or simply because it was the only jersey number available didn’t matter. In fan’s minds, 9 = Maris. Maris = 9. And when little league seasons began, you can bet that young kids everywhere pushed and shoved to grab that #9 jersey. I’ve been fortunate enough to have worn #9 multiple times, due to my quick reflexes and iron grip. Although I may have hated the number 9 the week prior when I had to solve 9x = 43 + 83 in math class, the number now has no mathematical importance to me. On the field, the only identification of Maris from the bleachers was the crisp 9 on the back of his jersey. And the Yankees did not retire Maris’ name, but they retired his number and raise a pennant etched with #9. The number is the number of their hero and now no future player will wear it. That jersey number is inseparable from Roger Maris, and the glory of his career.

For the managers in the dugout though, they could care less what number their players wear. They care more about different numbers: batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. There is no emotional attachment to these statistics, and managers and analysts define players by the numbers they carry. Somewhat like criminals being admitted into a prison, baseball players are stripped of personality and labeled “batting average .287.” Managers are not hired to become friends with their players. They are hired to lead them to wins, manage the optimal lineup, and direct the hunks of muscle where to stand. Now that more and more statistics are available, managers will dive after whatever they believe will guide them towards managing the most wins that season. “By analyzing baseball statistics you [can] see through a lot of baseball nonsense” such as personal relationships and fanfare (Lewis 57). Managers can’t afford to get cute and let best friends bat next to each other in the order. Those two players aren’t ‘friends.’ They are on base percentages 0.345 and 0.412 who play right field and 3rd base.

Nevertheless managers are human. And humans have emotional sides, and gut feelings which obscure objectivity. This often leads to irrational in-game decisions, which either make the manager look like a genius, or cause the fans to dig out their pitchforks and torches. Broadcasters and reporters have restricted access to the dugout, clubhouse, and manager’s brain. Thus the public can never know as much about the players’ conditions as the manager, who has unrestricted access to players’ habits and feelings. As I am watching a game, I may slam my fist down in rage at the sight of my favorite player and the team’s best power hitter sitting on the bench to start the game. However I may simply be missing something which the manager and that player know. The player could be feeling sick, have family issues on his mind which are distracting his play, or could have gotten into a row with the manager. After all, baseball players are humans too.

One man who dedicated his life to pushing aside the distractions of the emotions and subjectivity in baseball is Bill James. While working as a night security guard at a meat factory, James began to speculate on the current state of baseball player evaluation, and ponder whether it could be done more effectively. Sans computer, James pored over newspaper box scores of major league games to obtain his data and compile analyses. James was not a professional mathematician of any sorts at this time, but he knew enough such that he was able to revolutionize baseball metrics. Because of his work, the culture of baseball analysis, fantasy baseball, and sabermetrics came to life. The information and data had always been there, but James looked deeper and analyzed further. His work has been so eye-opening and truth telling because “Bill James is a very, very smart guy who doesn`t just understand information, but [he shows] people a different way of interpreting that information” (Baseball’s Stat Man). The ‘father of sabermetrics’ led the battle of the outside ‘nerds’ with statistical insight against the inside ‘jocks’ of management with the guts and experience to inspire biographies. The ‘nerds’ strived to see their mathematical evaluations of players put to use; the ‘jocks’ wanted nothing to do with any mathematical mumbo jumbo and knew their familiarity and decision making were the keys to managerial success. As the seasons have gone on, the fight to integrate advanced statistics into the game has been won, and sabermetricians are still pushing on the accelerator.

It has even trickled down to the youth leagues across America. I have played in local baseball leagues for the past 14 years. Ever since I was 8, when our coaches started to keep scorebooks during games, I received a summary of my statistics at the end of each season as a gift from my coaches. Every coach has done it differently, some with much less enthusiasm than others. But there is always a very simple Excel spreadsheet filled with very simple statistics and the season totals at the bottom. Most 10-year-old kids would give a quick glance to their batting average, check how they compared to the rest of us, and then crumple the paper up into their pocket to go play some wiffle-ball. However I wanted to check out every number on the sheet and compare my stats to my major league heroes. The spreadsheet as a whole was a blown-up version of what the back of my personal baseball card would say. The next time I flipped through my collection or watched a game on TV, I would surely be comparing myself to the pros, and haughtily laughing at Jim Thome’s lowly 0.207 batting average compared to my contract-worthy 0.389 average. I would eventually join back into the wiffle-ball game, with a crisply folded paper in my right pants pocket.

When I was older and had discovered my talent and interest in math, I began to construct a sabermetric formula of my own. Not only would I surely have my own baseball card, I would be the creator of a statistic which appeared on the back! I thought of a statistic which would start me on my sabermetric career: clutch performance. I had never before seen a metric to measure who hit better in crucial game situations on any baseball card or newspaper article. So I compiled all the factors I knew differentiated clutch situations from non-clutch situations: run differential, outs, inning, runners on base, and pitcher WHIP. I valued how much each of these contributed to making an at-bat clutch, and added them together into an equation only a mother (or I) could love. I bravely and boastfully posted my formula on internet discussion boards ready for the sabermetric glory to rain down on me. But my dreams ran full force into the harsh face-slap of reality. Comments pointed out that somebody already had created a formula to measure how clutch a player is. And it was more refined and proven than mine. I realized how little of baseball has been left uncovered by sabermetrics. All elements of baseball have been picked apart and prodded at by calculator-bearing, degree-holding adults. The sport has been objectified in every way possible.

So many people have an interest in baseball, and for a smorgasbord of reasons. Many fans follow the game because of the connection with a team passed down from a father. There are also those who played T-ball many years ago and never lost their love for America’s game. Some decide to bet on the games, and many watch because of fantasy baseball. More so than other sports, baseball combines extreme mental and physical challenges as a poet combines the literal and symbolical. We love baseball because of the connection to American life, and to ourselves. In between innings, we see the players joking around with each other and talking about the personal aspects of life. After all, they are human too.

Moneyball, the book turned movie written by Michael Lewis, captured this human element in both book and movie form. It was definitely not the first story centered on sabermetrics which reached the public, but it was the first to become discussed among fans of baseball and people who never had much of an interest. The focus of Lewis’ book is around Billy Beane, and the 2002 Oakland Athletics ballclub whom he managed. At the time, the A’s had very stingy owners (relative to other MLB teams) and were consequently faced with the challenge to field professional-level talent with one of the smallest budgets in professional baseball. Beane was a very competitive person, and he was antsy to take on the challenge his owners presented to him. In order to do so, he turned to work done by Bill James, and continued by Beane’s young-blood assistant Paul, to determine who the most impactful players in the game really were. Then the search for these players (many unorthodox and viewed as strange by everyone in the league and the media) began, the goal being to pay them the least amount feasible. Using on-base-percentage as a leading qualifier, the team was able to find many unknown diamonds in the rough and field a competitive team.

However the Athletics ran into trouble when they experienced a clash of personalities in the dugout. Billy and Paul had signed players solely for their statistics, and in many cases had never seen the player in person before he walked into their clubhouse for the first time. Mathematically, the team was bound for success (and they would later find it). But early on in the season Beane realized the team did not share his passion for and dedication to winning. He discovered players joyously dancing in the clubhouse after a loss, and could not tolerate the choices some players were making off the field. So the A’s cleaned house. The men they had sought after to build the ultimate roster were baited to other teams. Three of their eight starting position players were traded. Beane turned the team around, and the author, Lewis, observes how the Athletics blended subjective and objective methods the rest of the season.

Hundreds of books about baseball statistics have been published before, so why did Moneyball do so well as a book and on the screen? This was not the first (or the last) time a team had used sabermetrics to make roster and lineup decisions. But the movie and book were largely popular because they were an inside view of MLB player evaluation and were an underdog story. Many other books about sabermetrics have been published, but people were not as interested to read a baseball-themed statistics textbook. So Michael Lewis created a statistics-themed baseball story. Moneyball taught sabermetrics at a simple level and in only a moderate amount. The backdrop was a very personal story with many side themes and personal and emotional anecdotes. The book was successful because of the human element of baseball.