N.Y. Times: Buster Olney Answers Your Baseball Questions

Word life!  This is basic Freakonomics.

Q: What’s your favorite Rickey Henderson story? — Nann

A: Last spring, Rickey went on the ESPN radio show Mike and Mike and, one by one, he addressed the Rickey legends deeming them either truth or myth. He acknowledged that yes, in fact, he did frame the rather large bonus check (I think it was for $1 million) rather than cash it; yes, in fact, he did suffer frost bite in the middle of the summer because he fell asleep on an ice pack in the trainer’s room; and he acknowledged other stories.

The game is getting younger and younger and younger, which makes sense when you look at other sports like tennis and golf and the N.B.A. Part of the reason why this is possible is that I think young players have a much better sense of their own pitching or hitting mechanics when they reach the big leagues than they did 25 years ago. Recently, I watched a replay of Ron Guidry’s 19-strikeout game on YES, and I was stunned by how so many veteran players really had poor hitting mechanics and seemed to make fewer adjustments than what you see with hitters these days. The players are younger, and in some respects (but certainly not all), they are better.

A[n awards] vote based purely on a Sabermetric analysis would have its pitfalls… There was one year when a star player told a couple of writers that he would never speak to them again if they voted for a certain rival on their ballots, a situation that threatened to undermine that team’s clubhouse; and after confirming that appalling story, there’s no way I would’ve ever voted for that player for M.V.P., a situation that a SABR-like approach would’ve never addressed.