WSJ: Futterman: Baseball After Moneyball

We can’t find socks that shape to our feet, we’re sick of it. SICK OF IT!

The Baseball Geeks Become Insufferable

...“I’m O.K. until someone starts explaining to me why Bobby Abreu is better than Roberto Clemente,” says the longtime broadcaster and MLB Network host Bob Costas, an early Bill James disciple. “Then I’ve had it.”

Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent hates speaking out against statistical analysis because it makes him sound like a Luddite, which he swears he isn’t, but he says numbers are often taken out of context.

“I remember sitting at Joe DiMaggio’s funeral and listening to [former Yankee teammate and American League president] Dr. Bobby Brown explain how there were no statistics kept on how many times Joe had stretched a single into a double in the eighth inning or later and then come around to score the winning run, or made a spectacular catch or throw to save a game.

“He said he saw those things and rated Joe at the top because of it. The only numbers he cared about were how many pennants and championships the Yankees won when Joe was in center field. It was brilliant because Bobby was a man of science, a cardiologist who had played with Joe and he was arguing that you can only take the numbers so far.”