Morley, O.J. and Bill James’ Beard

Posted: March 15th, 2008 | Filed under: Interviews | 26 Comments »

Everyone who reads this already knows the story. But it’s always worth telling briefly again. Bill James was born in Holton, Kan. and grew up Mayetta., Kan. which is about 10 miles South of Holton on Kansas 75. If you kept going 35 or so miles South on 75 — past Hoyt and Elmont and places like that — you would run right into Topeka, which you probably know from grade school is the state capital of Kansas*.

*This is how I had to break things down with Margo, who is from a little tiny town in Kansas called Cuba. Believe me, Cuba is SMALL — the kind of town, as my Dad used to say, where on one side of the sign you see “Welcome to Cuba,” and on the other side you see, “Thank you for visiting Cuba.” Anyway, I’m remarkably clueless when it comes to geography anyway, and when I asked for a Cuba location shortly after I moved to the Midwest, the conversation went like this:

Me: Where is Cuba again?
Her: So, do you know where Belleville, Kansas is? That’s about 10 miles away.
Me: No. Never heard of it.
Her: Concordia?
Me: No.
Her: Salina?
Me: I think I’ve heard of that one.
Her: Topeka?
Me: Oh sure, I learned in grade school that Topeka is the state capital of Kansas.
Her: So you know where Topeka is …
Me: Well, no, not really.
Her: OK, how about Kansas City. Do you know where Kansas City is?
Me: It definitely sounds familiar.

Of course now, I could name every restaurant in Belleville — not to mention Washington, Seneca, Hanover, Marysville, Hiawatha, Beattie, Sabetha. Married life!

Bill grew up loving the old Kansas City A’s — quite possibly the most inept baseball organization in baseball history (historically inept in that for their entire history the A’s NEVER won). But there was something about the A’s — hugely influential men like White Herzog, Charlie Lau, Tony LaRussa, Billy Martin, Harry Chiti (who would later be traded for a player to be named later, and that player turned out to be Harry Chiti), Dick Williams, Hank Bauer, Bill Fischer, Marvelous Marv Throneberry, Dick Howser, Hawk Harrelson (He gone!), Doc Edwards, Joe Morgan the skipper and Dave Duncan all played for the A’s — this of course does not include actual great players who were there too briefly, Roger Maris, Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Bert Campenaris and so on.*

*I don’t know if this truly is a large number of managers, announcers and characters — maybe if you look over any team for 13 years you would find the same amount — but it SEEMS like a lot.

Anyway, it was a colorful and frustrating team to be passionate about, and I’m convinced this played a big role in the unique way Bill would look at baseball. He played baseball, not well, I relate to this. Bill likes to tell the story about the day the Mayetta High coach gathered all the players around to go over their roles. Bill’s name did not come up, so he went to the coach afterward and said, “Coach, what about me?” And the coach said, “If you behave yourself, I’ll let you sit on the bench.”

He did play — hit .300 in a limited number of at-bats — went to the University of Kansas, where he studied English and developed his lifelong love for college basketball, went to the Army briefly and then kicked around with some odd jobs while he tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. By now you’ve no doubt heard and read the story about Bill working as a security guard of sorts at the Stokely Van Camp plant in Lawrence, Kan. — I always like to say he was keeping the pork away from the beans — where he spent most of his time writing down these odd baseball observations.

I don’t think there’s any good way in today’s climate to describe how strange — or how difficult — it was for him to do this. He had no computer, no easy access to statistics, no access AT ALL to any statistics beyond the simple box scores printed in The Sporting News* week after week.

*I asked Bill how weird it is to see what the Sporting News has become — and to see that it is moving to my hometown of Charlotte. “There isn’t a real Sporting News,” he said with some sadness.

After that, well, he kept going, starting writing the Baseball Abstracts, at first for very, very modest audiences and then — after being “discovered” in a Sports Illustrated story by Daniel Okrent — writing for a New York Times bestselling audience. Success is always a mixed bag — more good than bad, of course, but some bad — and Bill became famous, he didn’t like that a lot, he kept writing the Abstracts until the bad part seemed a bit overwhelming, he stepped away, he wrote some terrific books (including the indispensable New Bill James Historical Abstract which I pick up five times a week, minimum), was hired as an advisor by the Boston Red Sox, rediscovered by Michael Lewis in “Moneyball,” came up with Win Shares, won two World Series rings, and so on …

Bill and his extremely talented artist wife Susie have three kids — the youngest, Reuben, is now taller than his father — they live in Boston now, but they will move back home to Lawrence later this year.

Bill’s latest book is called The Bill James Gold Mine and it is sort of an overture for the many, many fun tidibits, stats and thoughts you can find on Bill’s Web site. I love the Gold Mine because to me it is Bill as I know him — random, funny, thoughtful, opinionated and yet not entirely convinced. It’s not a baseball preview, exactly, and it’s not a stat book, exactly, and it’s not an organized book even in a limited way like Bill’s other books. It’s the kind of book where on one page you can read that the Florida Marlins had 106 games last year where the starter’s Game Score was less than 50, and a few pages later learn that Houston’s Wandy Rodriguez junked his slider in 2007. Anyone who reads this site knows that’s my kind of book.

In honor of the Gold Mine: This will be an entirely random discussion. Of course, it would have been anyway.

A couple of other things worth knowing: Bill is working on his first non-baseball book — a book about true crimes — that will, everyone hopes, come out next year. I’m really excited about it. Hearing Bill talk about true crime is absolutely fascinating. It’s one of my favorite things. Second, Bill will be featured on “60 Minutes” at some point real soon, and so that why I ask him about Morley Safer. Yes, this is a very random interview:

* * *

Q: In the Gold Mine you made what I took to be a fun swipe at yourself; you wrote something along the lines of “When I was younger and a better writer.” Well, in a brief burst of seriousness, you’ve been at this for 30-plus years now; how do you feel about your writing now compared to your younger days? ?
Bill: I may lack perspective on the issue. I am very different person now than I was so many years ago, and in some ways I am a better writer and in other ways not as good. In some ways I lack the willingness to go back—I wouldn’t want to go back to being careless of people’s feelings, as I’m afraid I was years ago—and in some ways I lack the ability. In other ways I hope I am better. But I don’t have a clear view of what the balance is, and I don’t think I would have the courage to see that issue clearly if I had the ability.*

*I think Bill’s writing is sharper in many ways … I love the older stuff too, but as a writer who enjoys the use of language, the construction of sentences, the set up of jokes, the ability to get in and out of ideas, I think Bll’s better than he’s ever been. I’m not talking here about the audacity of his baseball ideas — it’s possible that Bill’s best ideas of baseball came years ago in those furious, early days (it’s also possible that his best ideas about baseball are private ones that he only shares with the Boston Red Sox). But pure writing, he’s at the top of his game in my opinion.

Q: Can you even believe how much more information is available now? I mean, now you’re able to determine pretty specifically how many pitches out of the strike zone that Vlad Guerrerro swings at (616 pitches; that’s 53% of the pitches he swung at). it has to amaze you sometimes to think about how much different it is from your days of cutting out boxscores out of the Sporting News.

Oh, it’s beyond belief. I’m just stunned by it every day, the immense rush forward in the information base. It is as if we have moved forward 30 generations in 30 years.

Q: OK, Sam Sheppard. Innocent or guilty? (Sam Sheppard is, of course, the Cleveland doctor who was jailed for killing his wife and then freed and acquitted later in a new trial — most believe, though it has been vigorously denied by various producers, that Sheppard was the basis for the show and movie “The Fugitive.”).

Bill: My belief is that he set up the murder and co-operated with the murderer (Richard Eberling). I probably shouldn’t say that. … don’t want the theory spreading into the discussion before I publish my book, but on the other hand you can’t be paranoid.

I saw an American Justice episode about the case last night, and then checked Wikipedia. Interesting enough, both of those sources make the same error. They both say that Sheppard claimed that the murders were committed by a bushy-haired man, and he did, I guess, but not until years after the fact. The bushy-haired man was introduced into the case not by Sheppard by a passing motorist, and Sheppard eventually signed on to that theory, after it became popular.

Q: To baseball. The thing I love about the Gold Mine might be, I admit, something that might turn off someone else. Randomness appeals to me. I love bouncing from a box showing what Chone Figgins hit on balls in play (.404) to a note about Prince Fielder hitting 18 home runs to straight away center field. But that’s me. This is obviously not a baseball preview in the truest sense, and it’s not an organized book the way the handbook or the abstracts were. What are you hoping for here?

Tolerance.

Q: Seriously.

I have always depended on the tolerance of strangers, to quote Blanche what’s-her-name. Many of my books or most of my books are intended to have a “magazine feel”—that is, to be not a unified whole but a collection of parts competing for your attention. It’s just the way my mind works. I tend to read books—even organized, linear books—by flipping back and forth through them until I have everything.

Q: Strange to think that your mind can’t stay on one topic … Did you like Morley Safer?

Bill: Loved him. Morley was on his way to Rome. He goes to Rome once a year or so, rents studio space and spends a few weeks painting water colors. Hope he doesn’t mind my saying that.

Q: Back to baseball. In the Gold Mine, you talk about Justin Morneau, you talk about how he had a miserable clutch year in 2007. At the same time you are quick to point out again that you take no position on if clutch hitting is an random aberration, a skill or something in between. You’ve been at the heart of this discussion for a long time, and I just KNOW you love going over it again. What are your thoughts now on hitting in the clutch?

Bill: Well, I’ve really only had two positions on the issue, although I may have fractured the presentation of them so that it appears to be more. One is…. was … that other researchers said there was no evidence of there being any such ability, and I signed on to that, and the other is that I looked at it from a different angle and decided that we were hasty in signing onto that and that the evidence was unpersuasive, therefore that we should study the issue as if we really believed that clutch hitters did exist, and see what we had. Which turns out to be a surprisingly contentious position.

Q: A few quick team-oriented questions. Start with Atlanta: It looks like Jeff Francoeur is trying to learn how to walk again. I figure this will be an annual story right up to about 2019 — the “Francoeur looks to be more patient” headline. (In the AL, the perennial headline will read: “Bonderman has located change-up”). I think it’s certainly worthwhile for Jeff Francoeur to walk a few more times per year — and I think, as he gets older, he will naturally do some of that. But as a skill, do you think the ability to walk really be learned at this stage?

Bill: Players generally increase their walk rates with experience, and the increases are highly variable. I think there have been players who started with very low walk rates and wound up with substantial numbers of walks, but I’m too tired at the moment to study the data and find them*. Willie Stargell drew 19 and 17 walks in his first two seasons of 100+ games, and eventually drew as many as 87, with three seasons over 80.

*A Bill James Pozterisk — I got this bit of research from Bill a day later: OK, I found some examples. I used the rate of one walk for every 10 at bats as a historical standard, and then looked for players who were below that level early in their careers and above that level late in their careers.

The best example I found was Johnny Evers, breaking at 1907. In 1903, essentially his rookie season, Evers walked only 19 times with 464 at bats. He walked 28 times in 1904, 27 in 1905, 36 in 1906, 38 in 1907. . .steady increases, but through 1907 he had 2,467 career at bats with only 151 walks (-96 walks vs. standard.) He continued to increase his walk totals after this, however, drawing as many as 108 walks in 1910. After 1907 he had 3,670 more at bats with 627 walks (+260 walks.)

The next 25 players in terms of a large turnaround in walk rates were:

1) Ty Cobb before and after 1912.

2) Harold Baines before and after 1987.

3) Sammy Sosa before and after 1997.

4) Hank Aaron before and after 1961.

5) Craig Biggio before and after 2001.

6) Phil Cavaretta before and after 1939.

7) Eddie Collins before and after 1910.

George Brett before and after 1979.

9) Gary Sheffield before and after 1993.

10) Rafael Palmeiro before and after 1990.

11) Robin Yount before and after 1982.

12) Pete Rose before and after 1968.

13) Tommy Leach before and after 1910.

14) Julio Franco before and after 1986.

15) Cy Williams before and after 1921.

16) Alex Rodriguez before and after 1998.

17) Rod Carew before and after 1972.

18) Barry Larkin before and after 1990.

19) Steve O’Neill before and after 1916.

20) Willie Stargell before and after 1966.

21) Tris Speaker before and after 1909.

22) Bill Dickey before and after 1935.

23) Al Kaline before and after 1954.

24) Chris Chambliss before and after 1980.

Q: To Chicago … you write about one of my favorites, Jim Thome, and his remarkable ability to hit with power the opposite way. It is extraordinary to me just how far Jim Thome’s shots to center and left-center carries. In my childhood/college years the guy I remember with power the other way was Dale Murphy — it seemed like he hit a lot of homers to center and right. Who was the opposite field power hitter you recall?

Danny Tartabull had one year with the Royals about 1987 when he hit more than a dozen opposite-field home runs, but then the year after that he only hit one. Frank Howard’s power was to straightaway center. Those guys were good power hitters, but Thome is a different animal.

Q: The best and worst Bob Dylan songs?

Bill: I love the 1983 album Infidels, which includes Man of Peace and Neighborhood Bully, which I think are both great. Are they better than Blowin’ in the Wind or Tambourine Man or the Times They Are A Changin, probably not in any kind of objective way. People constantly site Wiggle, Wiggle as his worst song, and that’s what I thought to the first time I heard it, but after I listened to it a few times I actually started to like it.

I can’t stand the cynicism and negativity of Positively 4th Street and Like a Rolling Stone, and frankly a lot of his work from that era seems pretentious and full of adolescent posing. But that’s probably because I’m 40 years older now than he was when he wrote those songs, and it’s hard for me to relate.

Q: To Kansas City: You write in the book about how the Royals should realize now what they have in Esteban German (lifetime .373 OBP; minor league .393 OBP) and lead him off. I agree. They should. But they won’t. It leads to something weve talked about often … lots of people think that German would wear down and be ineffective if given 550 at-bats. I believe this — more than his defensive liabilities — is holding him back. It may be true, he may wear down, and I realize that baseball people have to guess at the future. But it seems to me that teams hurt themselves with these preconceived notions by making decisions without letting the process play out — heck, what do you have to lose? Why not GIVE German the 550 at-bats and see if he wears out?

Bill: Right. It’s outsmarting yourself, and losing the promise of the situation. The baseball equivalent of “I can’t ask her out because I don’t want to lose our friendship.”

Q: More Kansas City. I know intellectually that where a hitter bats in a lineup — to a large degree — does not matter. So why is it annoying beyond words to see Ross Gload hitting third?

Bill: Because, on some level, you’re rooting for the Royals, and having somebody hitting third who is obviously not a third hitter is like waving a banner that says “we’re not really competing here.” You’re playing the Yankees and A-Rod is hitting third for New York and Ross Gload is hitting third for Kansas City, you feel like it’s a surrender.

Q: To Boston: I know you thought that Coco Crisp had a terrific year defensively last year — you sent a few of us an excited email about your general amazement. You are obviously pretty well known for being logical and searching for answers and so on, but you also are an emotional fan: Did you get a whole new feeling about centerfield defense watching Coco?

I wouldn’t say so exactly. It was more like this: that for almost three months, every time there was a ball that you didn’t know whether the center fielder could make a play or not, he did. After about two months of this you started to relax when somebody hit a screaming line drive into the gap, figuring Coco would run it down because he always did. It was more like a long series of successes than a revelation.

Q: In The Office*, were you happy or ultimately disappointed that Pam and Jim got together?

Bill: Relieved. They couldn’t have kept that going any longer; it would have fallen flat. If they hadn’t gotten together it would have ruined the show because it would have turned into a cliché.

*It just so happens that The Office is both of our favorite TV show. I was skeptical about The Office because Margo and I loved the original British Office so much. More than skeptical. The first year of The Office — which was a virtual frame by frame copy — was, I thought, awful because it was so derivative. But then the American Office found its voice and took off in my mind, because of the writing, because Steve Carrell’s so great, because of the secondary characters and because I believe it is humanly impossible not to fall in love with Pam.

Q: To the Mets: What collapse was worse — the 1964 Phillies or the 2007 Mets?

Bill: The ’64 Phillies.

Q: I’ve become more and more bothered by unearned runs. If you were doing statistics now, would you even HAVE errors?

Bill: Well, I used to think about defense that way, but at some point I stopped. If I was inventing basketball, I wouldn’t have foul shots, but if I was starting a new league I would because they’re part of the game.

Q: Why did O.J. Simpson get off?

Bill: Because the American jury system doesn’t work as well as we like to believe it does. There are five elements here: failures of the investigators, failures of the prosecutors, failures of the judge, failures of the jury, and the deliberate actions of the defense attorneys.

The defense attorneys were doing what they were supposed to do within the system, so you can’t really attribute any of the miscarriage of justice to them. In the other four, I would say 1% of the blame goes to failures of the investigation, 5% to the failures of the jury, 30% to the failures of the prosecutors, and the rest to the failures of Judge Ito, which would leave 64% for Ito. I think Ito was (is) a good man and a good judge, but he was confronted with a very unusual situation, and he just didn’t react quickly enough to stay in control. It’s like. . .he was a very good bull rider, but this was an unusual bull, and he got thrown off and trampled.

Q: Devil Rays or Rays?

Bill: I’m going with Gamma Rays. And players traded away from the team are now X Rays.

Q: How far does Kansas basketball go this year? ?
All the way, man. This is the best the team has been playing entering the tournament in years. A bunch of guys at the office are trying to trap me into some bet by which, if the Jayhawks don’t win the tournament, I have to shave my beard*.

*This blog strongly endorses this bet.

Q: I know that you haven’t really kept up as much as you might like with many of the new Sabermetric studies and theories. But I’m curious, again as both an insider and outsider: How cutting edge is the stuff being done outside of baseball by fans with Retrosheet and a spreadsheet? And how open do you think people in baseball are to the studies and theories out there?

Bill: Well, one thing that has surprised me very much is how useful it is, as a practical matter, to understand the history of the game. But I’ll get in trouble if I explain what I mean by that, so I won’t.

I think some of the stat research has wandered off into a never-never land where researchers are talking to one another but not to anybody else, but certainly not the Retrosheet people. Everybody uses their work. The pitch stuff is exploding right now, the Pitchf/x from MLB.com. We’re trying to figure out what to do with it, and people outside baseball have much more time and energy to put into that question than people inside baseball do, so we’re generally following the lead of amateurs and outsiders. Or at least I am.

Q: To Arizona: I believe that the Diamondbacks have the best 1-2 pitching punch in the NL, maybe baseball, with Webb and Haren. I recall you’ve looked at this … if a team has the two best pitchers in the league, isn’t it surprising how often they DO NOT win? I seem to recall this is like having pocket aces in Texas Hold ‘em …

Bill: Yeah. . . I did a study about this a few years ago. There were two years in the mid-1990s when the Royals had the two best pitchers in the American League, but finished around .500 (one year Appier and David Cone, another year Appier and Montgomery.) I’m not sure Haren is Arizona’s number two, by the way. Micah Owings in pretty good, too.

Q: Do you have any feel at all for how this steroid age of baseball will play out? In five years, assuming that baseball testing takes hold and everything calms down, do you think people will start feeling a certain forgiveness toward this time? Or are we likely to still be wringing our hands — as best seen by a Hall of Fame without the all-time hit leader, all-time home run leader, the first 70-homer man, a 3,000-hit, 500 homer guy and perhaps the best pitcher of all time? (And if that happens, do you think they could start a renegade Hall of Fame, maybe put it in Hoboken where it probably belongs anyway? Or Cincinnati?).

Bill: Well, we have a Hall of Fame already without the all time hit leader. I don’t know. I can’t look into the seeds of history, to borrow from MacBeth, and say which will grow and which will not.*

*What a copout. Quoting MacBeth. Sheesh.

Q: Aren’t the 1975 Reds the best team ever? I’m asking for a book blurb here.

Bill: The Greatest Book Ever about the Greatest Team Ever.*

*Never mind; Bill can quote MacBeth all he wants.

Q: You recently went into the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame in a neat ceremony with a great class that included Joe Carter and Phil Stephenson. Phil was a big-time star at Wichita State and was recently named college baseball player of the century. OF THE CENTURY! Now, no offense, but Phil Stephenson played for Wichita State in the early 1980s — what the heck took so long getting him into the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame?

Bill: They had to wait 17 years for the century to be over.

Q: What is your favorite nugget in the Gold Mine? I really like that Aaron Harang’s Reds went 24-10 in games he started. I think we should start looking more closely at team victories, especially with pitchers going fewer and fewer innings and victories going to relievers for less and less reasonable reasons.

Bill: Yeah, I like that, too. I actually cited that in an interview I did this morning. ..yesterday morning. Also I was very impressed by the fact that the Baltimore Orioles went 3-22 when they scored four runs. Can you imagine rooting for a team that loses 90% of the time when they score four runs?*

*Yes. I can imagine it.

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