Reddit reviews The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract

Finally, I get to participate!

The best source for information on this is Mike Sowell's book The Pitch that Killed, which covers both the context of Chapman's death and the pennant race of 1920. Statistical information is generally taken from Baseball-Reference.com.

Baseball was in a transitional period already when Chapman died. The game, which had been nominally professional since 1867 and truly professional a few years after that, had only recently consolidated around the National and American Leagues as the true, major leagues. The game had been dominated by pitchers for much of its 20th century history; huge bats, fast players, improving fielding technology, and a variety of other factors had combined to pull down what had been very high scores in the 19th century. The game had been growing rapidly in popularity for a couple of decades, and was seen as a fast-paced, rowdy alternative to other, more gentlemanly pursuits such as cricket.

But in 1920, baseball was undergoing a true, existential crisis unlike any that it has seen since. Though emblematized in the Black Sox scandal of 1919, which was unfolding through the 1920 season, gambling had become a plague on the game, as many players openly took bribes and few were punished for it -- Hal Chase, who was about as big a star as baseball had in the 1910s, was famous for it, and may have been a go-between for Arnold Rothstein and the Black Sox conspirators, and he wasn't alone in doing this sort of thing.

Though star players were well-paid (Ty Cobb made $20,000 in 1919, or about $275,000 in today's dollars), most players in this period were working class guys who went home and worked in the offseason. For many men, including most of the Black Sox, the hint of real riches that came from game-fixing and side-betting was more than just greed: it could materially change their financial situation, and all for a modicum of effort (though a fair amount of risk). With its credibility shot and its finances vastly more precarious than they are today, MLB faced ruin.

Meanwhile, the way the game was played was being revolutionized by Babe Ruth. I won't wax too poetic about Ruth, but it's important to understand some bullet points about him, because what happened after Chapman plays into how Ruth changed the game:

1. It's not just that Ruth had those seasons in which he was hitting as many home runs as the rest of the league combined; to some degree, it was almost inevitable that someone would start swinging for the fences and discover that it worked. It's that Ruth's descendants and contemporaries explored the area near, and under, his records, but almost never surpassed them.
   
   
2. The way Ruth played the game was not only incredibly successful, but it was hugely profitable. Why do the Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball, while the Giants play in San Francisco? The Giants had been a vastly more successful and profitable team to that point -- but Ruth revolutionized the game, and along the way, revolutionized the Yankees' finances.
   
   
3. For more than 40 years after Ruth's advent, baseball was played in a slow, station-to-station manner that emphasized home runs, a state of affairs that did not begin to change until massive integration and westward expansion changed the environment in the 1960s.
   
   Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, Chapman, Mays, and the pitch that killed. Mays was Ruth's teammate, a submariner, the Yankees' ace, and not a popular man within the game. He was a hard man, a bit of a loner, and he threw pitches that took full advantage of batters' fears of being hit to get his outs. This was in the days before night baseball, remember, and one of the jobs of a pitcher was to dirty up a ball, using dirt, spit, tobacco, shoe black, and any number of other things that might obscure the ball; too, umpires were not nearly so quick to replace balls, and so, as the game wore on, the ball came to take on a gray-brown color, and was often misshapen and prone to flying in unpredictable ways when pitched or hit. Mays, as a right-handed submariner, used this (and was not alone in using this) as a way of disguising his pitches and keeping batters off guard: especially in early- and late-season games, later innings were often played in semi-crepuscular conditions, meaning that any batter digging in against Mays and his brown ball was literally gambling his life on his ability to pick a speck of brown out of the darkling skies.
   
   Now, is this actually why Chapman was hit? It was the middle innings of an August game in New York, a game that only lasted a couple of hours and would have been started in mid-afternoon -- in other words, probably not, at least the weather conditions part of it. But Mays was famous for dirtying the balls, and it's probably true that a brown ball would be harder to see in almost any conditions than a shiny white one. And a lot of people assumed it was. The death of Chapman, coming at the same time as the Black Sox scandal, put a real fright into people. It contributed to the culture of reform that brought forth increasing professionalism, the hiring of a commissioner (the vastly overrated Kenesaw Mountain Landis), and similar things.
   
   The main thing that happened to the culture of the game is that the practice of scuffing the ball became much less common, as rules that were already on the books started to be enforced. Also, though it's hard to find hard data on the matter, umpires were instructed to constantly cycle in new, white balls, so even those that were doctored never became brown and flat. These two changes, along with Ruth's teaching the world to play baseball, fed into the game changing massively -- the game changing, basically, into what it is now.
   
   Mays was left bitter after the incident, if later interviews he gave were any indication. He'd always been a rough-and-tumble pitcher with a reputation for throwing at people, including a notorious incident with Ty Cobb several years earlier. He felt he became a pariah within the game, though he'd never been popular, and there is evidence to contradict him (a substantial raise over the offseason, for instance). Some were shocked that he, unlike some Yankees teammates, never went to Chapman's assistance; he also pitched several more innings that day. It's true that, despite a fairly illustrious career that continued for several more years, he received only passing support for the Hall of Fame -- though he, like Chance and the Black Sox, was dogged by gambling rumors that he denied but couldn't shake.
   
   Were guys scared of Mays? Well, yeah. But they'd always been scared of him. It was how he got outs. Baseball was a tough man's game in those days, and though I'm sure it gave guys pause, there wasn't a wave of people refusing to play when Mays pitched. I can't imagine there were a lot of illusions about what was possible when playing baseball for those guys. Chapman wasn't the first guy to get beaned. He was just the first one (that we know of) who died.
   
   Interestingly, the Indians -- who won on the day Chapman was hit -- would overtake the Yankees in September to win the pennant even without their star shortstop, and eventually beat Brooklyn in the World Series. (Chapman was a good hitter and known to be a good fielder, though there's no statistical data to give us any accurate reading on the latter statement.) This may have been because the man who took over for Chapman was a 21-year-old former football star named Joe Sewell, who would end up in the Hall of Fame himself eventually.
   
   EDIT: Additional sources: The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, retrosheet.org
   
   FURTHER EDIT: I noticed two minor errors in rereading this. They are:
   
   
4. Though there were rules about ball conditions that were generally not enforced, I left a clause off that sentence -- after the Chapman incident, and almost directly as a result of it, the spitball per se was disallowed, with a small list of pitchers grandfathered in. Mays was not on that list, but still had his best season in 1921.
   
   
5. The 1920 pennant race was tight straight through, but I implied that the Indians were behind the Yankees in the standings on 16 August, the day Chapman was hit. They were, in fact, tied with the White Sox, half a game ahead of New York, on that date. Both the Indians and Yankees fell behind Chicago after the Chapman game, and Cleveland would be behind New York and Chicago both as late as 30 August.

(1) Read, bruh. I can't vouch for it personally, but I've heard the book Watching Baseball Smarter recommended with high regard. And it's almost literally the exact thing you asked for. Here are some other good book recommendations:

• Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Hard to believe that the book is sort of old hat at this point, but it still serves as a very readable introduction to advanced statistics.
  
  
• The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James (mostly). This book is good toilet reading, if you have a massive toilet on which to perch it, and your bowel movements are glacially paced. James ranks the best players at each position, and goes on a witty, decade-by-decade jog through the history of the game.
  
  
• The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango. Are you a "math person"? Read this book, you'll like it. It's an introduction to sabermetrics that explains the important first principles of statistical analysis, builds an important statistic (wOBA) from the ground up, and then applies all of that knowledge to answer specific questions about baseball strategies and to debunk, verify, or qualify some of baseball's hoary "conventional wisdom."
  
  
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. This book is not about baseball, but it's still great and you should read it.
  
  (2) You'll want to start watching the game more, if you can. Find a method (like MLB.tv or, you know, your television) to do so. Massive exposure does help you learn, and it's a fun, if inefficient, method. Osmosis. That's just science.
  
  (2b) Depending on the broadcast crew, it's sometimes addition-by-subtraction to mute the television.
  
  (2c) If you have MLB.tv Premium and intend to follow your favorite team, I recommend watching the other team's broadcast. You know enough about [TEAM X] already. Learn something new about [TEAM Y], instead. Unless, of course, (2b) applies, in which case maybe your best bet is MLB.tv's option to overlay the radio broadcast on the TV video. Barring that, the liberal application of the DOWN VOLUME button is always an option, and then, like, listen to Chopin's Preludes. Don't be That Guy and lean too heavily on No. 15, though. There are 23 others. Expand your horizons.
  
  (3) When you go to games, keep score. Sure, there's a guy a few seats over in a striped button-down and pre-faded jeans (Chad or something) who will mock you mercilessly for it. Sad for you, you've lost Chad's respect. But, oh, the things you'll gain. A free souvenir. A better grasp on the flow of the game. The priceless power to answer the "what did I miss" and "what the fuck just happened" questions that litter the air at ballgames, tragically disregarded and forgotten like the syllabi from Chad's last semester at Bromaha State. You can learn how to score ballgames here. Fuck Chad.
  
  (3b) Go to games alone now and then. Did I mention that, in some company, it's rightly considered rude to score a ballgame like a trainspotting anorak? Not in all company, mind you. But I like going to some games alone to avoid the messy politics of divided attention altogether.
  
  (4) Bookmark a few websites. Quick stat references include FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and Brooks Baseball. Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, and the Hardball Times are all good. FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference both have subscription options that allow you to access enhanced content for a small fee, which is worth it if only to support the yeoman's work that they do compiling and sorting our beloved numbers.
  
  (5) German chess great Emanuel Lasker is believed (incorrectly) to have said that "if you see a good move, look for a better one." Good advice. Too much of the history of baseball analysis is the history of people getting stuck in comfortable places and refusing to interrogate their own ideas about the game. Sabermetricians have made careers out of just pointing this out, and even some of them do it from time to time. Also, on the level of pure self-interest, baseball ignorance and bad teeth have this much in common: Keeping your mouth shut hides them both. If you have a good opinion about a baseball topic, look for a better one.
  
  (6) Watch a some decent movies about baseball. Sugar is excellent and disturbing. Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns is available on Netflix and worth watching. You drink his nostalgic Flavor-Aid at your own peril: At times, Baseball is about as edifying as having a good, 19-hour stare at a Norman Rockwell painting. It's still in a class all its own as a baseball documentary. You should also watch Ed, starring Matt LeBlanc, because it'll teach you not to take strangers on the internet seriously when they give you advice.
  
  (7) When you go to games, wear whatever the hell you want. This has nothing to do with understanding baseball, but it annoys me when people make a big deal out of policing the clothing that others wear to sporting events. Sitting front-row at a Yankees-Tigers game in your best Steelers jersey and a pink Houston Astros BP cap? Whatever. You be you. You be you. I once watched as a perfectly innocent college student was denied a free t-shirt from a Nats Park employee because he (the student) was wearing a Red Sox shirt with his Washington cap. That was pretty fucked.
  
  (8) Take the EdX Sabermetrics course. Others have recommended this, with good reason. It's a wonderful introduction to advanced analytics, and you get a taste of programming in R and MySQL as well. You don't need a CompSci background. I sure didn't.
  
  Hope this helped.
  
  Footnote: Chad-hating is actually too easy. Truth is, I've never really been mocked for scoring games. Once, I even bonded with a Chad-esque guy sitting next to me at a Braves-Nats game here in Washington. He was pretty drunk, but we talked Braves baseball while he drank and I drank and I scored the game and he drank more. He seemed utterly engaged by the scoring process in that guileless, doe-eyed way that only the drunk have mastered. That's the Chad I loved.

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is a lifetime's worth of idle baseball reading.

In Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract, he talks about being part of George Bell's arbitration team one off-season. One of the things he did was compile a list of all the errors that George Bell made the previous season and show that NONE of them actually accounted for a run in a game the Jays lost that year.

This could very well be one of them.

Side note: If you haven't had a chance to read that book, I HIGHLY recommend it. It's VERY out of date now (it came out in 2001), and his "Win Shares" method of determine player value has been picked apart (and replaced by WAR), but it is probably the single best book ever written for learning about the history of baseball and the players. He has entries for the top 100 players at each position, and lengthy stories/explanations about every decade of baseball. One of my favourite from the 1980s section:

> Most Aggressive Baserunner: Alfredo Griffin

> One thing I have always wanted to do was to document Alfredo's baserunning exploits. He really was phenomenal. I personally saw him score from second on a ground ball to second, scoring the lead run in the top of the ninth. I have heard about Alfredo doing things like going first-to-third on infield outs, moving second to third on a pop up to short, scoring on a pop out to the catcher, and taking second after grounding into a forceout. Alfredo figured that if you left the base ahead of him unguarded, it was his. Somebody ought to make a documented list of those basepath heroics, with dates and specifics, before it gets away from us.

check out baseballprospectus.com

Baseball Between the Numbers is good:
http://www.amazon.com/Baseball-Between-Numbers-Everything-About/dp/0465005470/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278466320&sr=8-4

Bill James Historical Abstract is an awesome read. Ranks players throughout history, by position. Needs updating, but still a great read
http://www.amazon.com/Bill-James-Historical-Baseball-Abstract/dp/0743227220/ref=pd_sim_b_4

Also, Fangraphs.com is a good, up and coming site as well.

Bill James is considered the grandfather of baseball analytics and just retired from his gig working for the Red Sox after 17 years. His book, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is a great starting point in your journey because it really does a nice job of melding the historical with the analytical. Certainly, his seminal work isn't as math-focused or cutting-edge as a lot of the newer stuff involving things like spin rates and launch angles. But as a resource, it lends context to the development of sabermetrics and gives insight into the thinking involved.He also produces the Bill James Handbook prior to each season. He's written a number of other great books regarding baseball, all with an analytics bent.

His writing is lively and opinionated. A few years ago he took issue with Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as the one-stop arbiter of player value. He believed that that just like his win-shares system, there is folly in believing that any stat is truly capable of painting the entire picture of a player's contribution. This elicited quite a bit of discussion among statheads, including a reasoned response from Dave Cameron of Fangraphs.

He also maintains a website with free and paid content, billjamesonline.com.

I am a pretty big fan of the analysts on MLB TV. I have no idea if you have access to it, but they are great.

As far as a strategy guide, I really have no idea. I mean, there must be one (or a thousand), but I have never heard of it. (For instance, I would have no problems recommending The Art of War by Sun Tsu, if you asked about tactics and strategy in battle... I can't think of a baseball book like that. It might be because strategy and tactics in a baseball game are so fluid, even pitch to pitch, not to mention season to season.)

I can recommend the Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James. He is one of the statistician guys that started the "Money Ball" school of thought, and the Abstract is a great read. Large and LARGE, but great.

And, of course, watch the games. If you are in the Los Angeles area, the Dodgers broadcasts with Vin Scully are nothing short of the best, ever.

I like your approach but "comprehensive" may be difficult. The game is old and a lot's happened. That being said, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract is excellent. From there, you may want to read up on certain teams/players that you're interested in. Welcome to baseball.

Sports writing has a long, rich tradition and it's probably worth tapping into some of the older stuff.

The New Yorker has printed some great sports writing, and this collection has articles going back almost 100 years. The most famous is John Updike's description of Ted Williams' final at bat at Fenway.

Dr. Z has some great stuff. His book "The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football", published in 1984, blends statistics and subjective insight in a way that anticipates modern sports writing. The chapter on Marion Motley is wonderful.

You've heard of Bill James. I like this abstract but he has a lot of good work.

Boxing has a long tradition of being elevated by great writing. My favorite boxing writer is AJ Liebling, some of his best work is collect in The Sweet Science.

There's a ton of great stuff out there I didn't mention. I think it would be a mistake to draw mostly from writing from the last 10 years.

How much reading do you want to do? If you want to just get caught up on every team/player for next season in a long but fun to read book format, I'd suggest putting in your order now for this years Baseball Prospectus. It's more thorough than any sane person would ever need it to be, but I can't recommend it enough if you're looking for detail. For more current news, Fangraphs and Baseball Reference are solid for stats and info, while the various SB Nation sites have more team based stuff.

If you want more history, the Ken Burns Baseball series is on Netflix, and is a ton of fun to watch. If you're more of a reader, the Bill James Historical Abstract doubles as a nice doorstop, but has a nice, fun look at the past.

Other than that, lurk around here to catch up on big news and general public opinion, and maybe try to get yourself into a fantasy league.

Edit: Almost forgot podcasts (I love podcasts, but I'm new to baseball podcasts, so grain of salt and all). Productive Out's PRODcast is pretty fun, it's two guys from Thrice and Kowloon Walled City (if you're into music at all) basically shooting the shit. Effectively Wild is more baseball-centric, but updates more frequently. I've heard mixed reviews on the Fangraphs podcast, both rave positives and really negative, but haven't given it a listen yet myself.

I picked up the 2003 copy. This one

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0743227220/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_dEWByb8ASVHM2

The first thing you should do is brush up on the rules. Baseball isn't as complicated as something like American Football, but compared to something like soccer or tennis it's pretty complex. You know those card games where you try to tell someone how it's played and they get so confused and you end up saying "Just watch us play for five minutes and you'll get it." That's about how complicated baseball is. This website looks like it's a decent introduction. Although nothing beats just sitting and watching a game.

You should absolutely subscribe to MLB.TV when the season starts. It's a bit expensive, but it's worth it. You will be able to watch every single game live, or later on if the time difference is an issue. Watch as many games as you can to figure out which team and players you like the best. And be aware that the two leagues have different rules. The National League plays pure, unadulterated baseball the way it was always intended. The American League is an abomination upon all that is holy to the game and features an old fat guy called the DH batting in lieu of the pitcher, this has tainted the game like a homeless man blasting malt-liquor fueled diarrhea on freshly fallen snow. There's a total of 2,430 games a year, so the cost is about a nickel per game...or at least that's how I justify the price to my wife every April.

For a history of the game check out the documentary series "Baseball" by Ken Burns. All of them are available on YouTube. I've seen the whole thing quite a few times, but still watch it all the way through every January or February while I'm waiting for Spring Training to start.

And if I could give one gift to every baseball fan on earth it would be the The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. Think of it an a more in depth companion to Burns' documentary series. It's a MASSIVE book, but one I pick up every few months to skim through or to reference something. The first section (roughly 300 pages) covers the game, decade by decade from the 1870's through the 1990's, covering historical events, the construction and destruction of stadiums, the negro leagues, how the equipment and tactics changed etc. The second section gives bios of a ton of different players throughout history and then ranks the top 100 by position. It may not be THE book for a complete baseball novice, but its something every fan should have. It helps me get through the off season every year.