Statistically Speaking: World Famous StatSpeak Roundtable: July 14

With Pizza Cutter, Eric Seidman and ol’ busselfutt himself…Bill James.

Question #2: With instant replay on pace for an August 1st trial run, is there any merit to the inevitable dissenting opinions as to the purity of the game and such? Or is this hands down a great idea in the sense that it will hopefully put an end to all of the disputed home run calls?

Bill James: Well, thank you for presenting me with two really horrible options there. The “purity” of the game vs. an end to all disputed home run calls.

I don’t know. I don’t think people pay money to see umpires make mistakes, and I don’t think it is fair to umpires to leave them in a position where everybody gets a better look at the play than they do. Do you guys use spell check, or do you turn it off and insist that the public get to see that you can’t spell “territory”, or “occurred”, or “amature”, or whatever it is that you can’t spell? I need all the help I can get. Do you celebrate the fact that the good people of Florida can’t figure out how to count their votes within a few hundred thousand, or do you wish they would figure this out and stop busselfutting the elections? I’m guessing that most people prefer to have as much help as they can to get things right.