Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
July 24, 2003
Racism and Sabermetrics

Eric McErlain at Off Wing Opinion has a good roundup of criticism of the Ralph Wiley piece on Bill James.

On a more interesting note, I received an e-mail today which was also addressed to a number of baseball bloggers from Steve Sailer, UPI National Correspondent. The piece is titled Analysis: Baseball's hidden ethnic bias and is inspired by the Toronto Star's claims of racisim in the way the Blue Jays are run. The piece is thoughtful and well researched. He does call Beane the first Jamesian GM, although Sandy Alderson may fit that bill more precisely. But his historical research points to the long tension between power and speed:


Strikingly, the dispute between the baseball establishment and the sabermetricians is in essence a continuation of baseball's first great argument over strategy, the one between Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. Cobb, the greatest star of the early 20th century, believed baseball revolved around line drives and stolen bases. Ruth won the hearts of fans by bombing previously unimaginable numbers of home runs. Yet, in the minds of many baseball insiders and sportswriters, Cobb's cunning, elegant style remained preferred over Ruth's seemingly vulgar, showy antics.

What the elite didn't understand, however, was that that Ruth had a second arrow in his offensive quiver. By intimidating pitchers with his power to slam out of the park balls thrown down the middle, he forced them to try to nibble at the edges of the strike zone. When they missed, he'd accept a walk, earning as many as 177 free passes in a season. Batting behind Ruth, Lou Gehrig ran up enormous RBI totals.

Although Cobb's career batting average of .366 was the highest ever, significantly better than Ruth's .342, Ruth's on-base percentage of .474 substantially beat Cobb's .433.

Please read the whole article.

The other thing I want to note is that this is the first time a national writer has sent me a link to an on-line article, I assume, in order to get broader attention for the article. Bloggers send things to each other all the time in the hope of getting linked and reaching a broader audience. But now professional writers appear to be discovering blogs as a way to get their work seen by an audience interested in the work. That's great news for the blogosphere.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:40 AM | Management | TrackBack (1)