This is a book for fans who can never get enough of baseball statistics and their use in analyzing player performance. First published in 1984, it was at the vanguard of a revolution in thinking about all the stats the game produces. The new edition carries a fresh introduction, an examination of the book’s impact to this day, and a ranking of the best players of all time up to the present.
Here’s an excerpt from “The Hidden Game of Baseball”:
“In the beginning, baseball knew numbers and was not ashamed. The game’s Eden dates ca. 1845, the year in which Alexander Cartwright and his Knickerbocker teammates codified the first set of rules and the year in which the New York Herald printed the primal box score. The infant game became quantified in part to ape the custom of its big brother, cricket; yet the larger explanation is that numbers served to legitimize men’s concerns with a boys’ pastime. The pioneers of baseball reporting – William Cauldwell of the Sunday Mercury, William Porter of Spirit of the Times, the unknown ink-stained wretch at the Herald, and later Father Chadwick – may indeed have reflected that if they did not cloak the game in the ‘importance’ of statistics, it might not seem worthwhile for adults to read about, let alone play.”
