"Moneyball:" The Movie

When I talk about the bizarrely large impact that Bill James has had on American culture, I'm thinking about, oh, that Brad Pitt is starring in a movie version coming in September of Michael Lewis's book Moneyball. Pitt plays Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, whom Lewis celebrated for accepting the sabremetric revolution launched by James. Instead of looking for the best athletes, Beane found guys who can hit home runs and get walks.

Jonah Hill plays Beane's quant, Philip Seymour Hoffman is A's manager Art Howe, and it looks like Kevin Costner has a role as somebody because it's a baseball movie. Here's the trailer (via Jonathan Last), including exciting killer dialogue from Aaron Sorkin like, "Because he gets on base."

There's an alternative interpretation of Oakland's success in the early 2000s, which is that the franchise already had a history of playing Moneyball (i.e., guys who can hit home runs and get walks, such as the Giambi Bros., Michael Tejada, and David Justice) under the previous general manager Sandy Alderson (1983-1997), when Oakland went to three straight World Series (1988-90), which is three more than Billy Beane has accomplished. 

In this subversive view, the man who introduced Moneyball to Oakland wasn't Beane or Alderson or whomever, it was Jose Canseco, "the Typhoid Mary of steroids."

I like Bill James and Michael Lewis, but these journalists made a lot of money by not mentioning the elephant in the baseball living room: steroids. 

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Popular Crime" by Bill James

For a long time, Bill James, the famous baseball statistics analyst, has been promising books on non-baseball subjects. Now, he's delivered one, Popular Crime, on the history of crime stories. I review it in my new column in Taki's Magazine.

It’s a read-250-books-and-write-another-one effort. James summarizes scores of notorious killings from Lizzie Borden through JonBenét Ramsey. He has a proven record of pattern recognition ability and solid sense, so anything he writes is of some interest. 

For example, did Bruno Hauptmann really kidnap Charles Lindbergh’s baby in 1932? The evidence of his guilt is overwhelming, says James. What about Dr. Sam Sheppard, whose controversial 1954 murder trial inspired The Fugitive? Guilty, although not as charged; James figures he hired a hitman to kill his wife. O.J.? Oh, c’mon … 

Read the whole thing there.

But the real reason to read Bill James is not to watch him recount single events but to watch him draw inferences from masses of data. But there's a structural problem with the whole project: popular crime stories are popular precisely because they are Man Bites Dog stories. James is perfectly aware of that (pp. 36-37), but it seems to get him down because he's always coming up with observations about crime in general that aren't true about popular crime and thus he can't use the stories about criminals in his book to illustrate his observations.

For example, he went on The Colbert Report and mentioned in passing that murderers don't tend to be good looking. A reviewer on Amazon was very offended by that: What about Ted Bundy? What about Robert Chambers, the Central Park Preppie Killer? I think this is a pretty common reaction outside of hardcore baseball statistics fans.

What James needed was to start Popular Crime with a chapter describing Unpopular Crime. He needed to synthesize typical examples of run-of-the-mill crimes that don't get books written about them. For example, the typical acquaintance killing might be a few people are drinking, one guy says something insulting to another guy, the girls laugh at him, so the humiliated guy gets so mad he goes home and gets his gun. What's his plan for getting away with premeditated murder? He kinda hopes the cops don't notice the dead body.

James needs that kind of frame for his book.

My old articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Hall of Fame and Steroids and Naked Ballplayers

Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar got voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame today. Nate Silver wonders if too few players are getting in these days, what with there now being 30 teams and larger populations to draw from. In his first year of eligibility, Houston Astros slugger Jeff Bagwell didn't get in. Silver says:

Steroid use — actual or suspected — is another issue. Rafael Palmeiro, whose case was debatable on the statistical merits anyway, and who was actually suspended by Major League Baseball for steroid use, would not have made my ballot. Like Tyler Kepner, however, I cannot understand docking Bagwell for mere suspicion of steroid use when there is no evidence of it. 

I can. For one thing, players have 15 years of eligibility to get voted into the Hall (and if they fail there, can get picked by a Veterans Committee later). But they can't get kicked once they're in. So, what's the rush? Blyleven had to wait 15 years to get voted in. Why not wait awhile to see what shakes out? Let's see what turns up. This would only be a major injustice to Bagwell if he suddenly drops dead before he gets in. And if he suddenly drops dead ...

One advantage that working sportswriters have over statistical analysts like Silver in voting on whether players who hit a lot of homers during the steroid years should be entrusted with permanent Hall of Fame membership is that many of the sportswriters, unlike the stats analysts, saw these players naked in the locker room. For example, when Jeff Bagwell went from a .516 slugging average at age 25 to a .750 slugging average at age 26, how much different did he look with his jersey off? Statistical analysts like Nate don't know. I don't know either. Some of the sportswriters who get to vote for Hall of Famers do know, and have, I would guess, talked to other voting sportswriters about it.

Personally, I don't know, I've never heard any rumors about Bagwell. 

Tyler Kepner in the NYT says he's voting for Bagwell and all the other sluggers who haven't gotten official caught:

Circumstantial evidence can be used against anybody. Mike Piazza might have been the most productive offensive catcher in baseball history. But suspicion of steroid use has dogged him, even though, like Bagwell, there has never been a tangible link.

Did Piazza use steroids? I don’t know. He denied it in 2002 by explaining, “I hit the ball as far in high school as I do now.” [Piazza was drafted in the 62nd round out of high school by the LA Dodgers, and he was the brother of Tommy Lasorda's godson, so he wasn't all that awesome in high school.]

All I know for sure is that Piazza played like a Hall of Famer and should be enshrined for that. The New York Times does not allow its writers to vote for the Hall of Fame, but to me, the playing record is the only fair way to measure those who were never suspended for using steroids. 

The rumor I heard in the 1990s was that sponsors often wanted to feature Piazza shirtless in ads, but his back acne was so bad this made for a major issue. (Acne on the back is one possible symptom of juicing.) I recall finally seeing a commercial of Piazza shirtless, but with so much backlighting he was more or less in silhouette.

To me, the tough question is Barry Bonds, who was a first round Hall of Famer before, evidently, he started juicing in 1999. A lot of these other guys might not have gotten close to the Hall without the juice. Rafael Palmeiro, for example, was traded away by the Cubs because they had Mark Grace to play first base instead of him. Grace is the model of the pretty good player, the slick-fielding firstbaseman who never hit more than 17 homers in 15 seasons in little Wrigley Field, who doesn't belong in the Hall. He got only 4% vote for the Hall in 2009 and was dropped from consideration.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer