Book Review: Eric Seidman - Bridging the Statistical Gap

A few months ago, I received a copy of Eric Seidman's recently-released book, Bridging the Statistical Gap, that the author graciously agreed to send to me. As you can probably guess from the title, Bridging the Statistical Gap is a book about baseball statistics, but with a twist: looking to show "more casual fans that they're already very close to understanding the ultimate goal in sabermetrics but just don't realize it yet," Seidman wrote his opus hoping to lessen the gap of understanding between baseball fans. Think of Bridging the Statistical Gap as a field guide to the motivations of your modern stathead and you'll get the idea behind the inspiration.

For the most part, Seidman succeeds in his quest, primarily because he knows where to start. The book begins with a discussion of batting average - long a battleground between statheads and traditionalists - and why it (or slugging percentage or on-base percentage or isolated power or on-base plus slugging) is not the be-all end-all of statistical measurements of hitters. But as a part of his bridging philosophy, Seidman doesn't throw batting average out entirely; he brings up the slash line instead, incorporating batting average into a larger statistic that gives a slightly clearer picture of a batter's abilities, letting the novice take refuge in the familiar while offering him or her the opportunity to learn about more indicative numbers.

Seidman continues the theme of building on known quantities to reach unfamiliar ground, using the familiar metric of the quality start to introduce his own statistic (the adjusted quality start) and discuss new ways to measure the win/loss records of pitchers. As with the batting average discussion, the chapters on pitchers are full of clear explanations and examples of Seidman's ideas in action. Your head might spin a bit from all of the number tables, but the ideas have the power to stick.

The remainder of the book focuses on practical examples of statistics in action, albeit in the type of estoric situations number geeks love: Michael Jordan's year in minor league baseball; a new look at the old debate on clutch hitting; Cy Young and the greatest pitchers of all time; insight on what makes a great playoff pitcher. The point of all of these chapters is the same, though: anyone can understand (and dispute, if they choose) the methodology. Anyone can read the results and use the numbers in their own arguments about best and worst, taking part in the rituals that fans enjoy. Bridging the Statistical Gap doesn't have all of the answers and it doesn't answer all of the questions, but it does a great job of starting up a dialog that lets anyone participate.

Book Review: David Ortiz with Tony Massarotti - Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits

Three years ago, the woman who is now my wife asked me to name my favorite Red Sox player growing up. It was a tough question: I had always held an irrational affection for the Gator, but nothing resembling favoritism. "Well," she said, "how about now?" "David Ortiz," I said. No hesitation needed.

Thus when the publishers of Ortiz's new memoir, Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits, contacted me and asked me if I wanted review the book on this blog, I did a little jig: not only because a publisher was asking me for my opinion (one of the more gratifying things about running a blog is people acknowledging respect for your written thoughts), but because I would be writing about the writings of my favorite player. As it turns out, not too hard of a task: doing my best to keep things objective, I think the book is pretty good.

My biggest concern before I started reading My Story... was that the book might read like a typical post-game interview; a collection of bland quotes and carefully edited stories that said everything by saying nothing. I was curious as to how much of himself David would put into his book. I needn't have worried - it being David Ortiz I shouldn't have worried anyway - and I can happily say that the results, while occasionally a little repetitive, are an excellent window in Big Papi's thoughts, dreams and motivations over the ten years he's been in the major leagues.

Written in a fun, loose, conversational style that reads like an informal pre-season chat between Ortiz and the reader, My Story...has two big things going for it:

1. The free-flowing narrative Ortiz and Massarotti adopted when editing Papi's conversations. Everything fits the time line of Ortiz's life, from his childhood in the Dominican through his time in the minors and majors with the Mariners, Twins and Red Sox, but thankfully, there's no rigid structure. If Papi wants to introduce a side thread into the main weave of his story, he does so as naturally as if he was telling you the story in person. It's very effective style; I don't think there's a better way to make a naturally distant figure like a celebrity seem more human.
   
2. To help establish historical perspective and to keep Ortiz's story in context, Massarotti wrote several interjectory chapters that he calls "Stepping Out of the Box." Each chapter covers someone from baseball who's had an effect on Ortiz's professional career - Pedro, Theo, Torii Hunter - and reinforces, in Massarotti's sportswriter style, one of My Story...'s main themes: no man succeeds on his own. Mixing with Papi's looser interviews, the straightforward Massarotti chapters give the book a nice balance.

All of this praise is not to say the book is perfect; as I mentioned above, David does start to repeat himself a bit at the end, as he tries to drive home his point about needing a support network to really succeed, but overall I found Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits an interesting and inspiring read worth the price of admission.

A Strange Coincidence

A couple of weeks ago, I was up at my parents' house in the Boston area, digging through their bookshelves for new reading material, when I came across the 1990 edition of The Red Sox Reader, a collection of writings on the Sox by a number of famous journalists and authors who are either Red Sox fans or fans of one particular player (mainly Williams or Yaz). Intrigued (it was the same day as the Fenway Tour, so I was in the perfect nostalgic mood), I dug in to immediate reward: pages of excellent writing on all of the noble heartbreaks of the past 100 years of Red Sox history, palatable without pain (I realized) only because of the fortunate combination of 2004 and the unbounded hope of spring. Not all of the selections are gems, but the inclusion of selections like John Updike's farewell to Ted Williams, Roger Angell's deconstruction of the 1978 season and David Halberstam's epitaph to the final fateful game of 1949 make this book a winner and well worth the read.

A couple of days ago, I reached Thomas Boswell's piece, "The Greatest Game Ever Played," a blow-by-blow coverage of every up-and-down moment of the one game playoff on October 1, 1978. All of the sudden, one page jumped off the page and hit me square between the eyes:

The Keep Your Sox On faithful sat silent in their fireman caps decorated with the names of their undependable deities: Boomer and Butch, Soup and Scooter, Rooster and Pudge, Eck and Louie, Big Foot and Spaceman, Dewey and Yaz.

Half an hour later, after an untold number of fevered Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia searches covering every combination of Keep Your Sox On, rooting group and fireman helmets I could think of, I was still puzzled. Who were these fans in their helmets, sporting the same moniker as my blog 26 years before the name popped into my head? Was this coincidence a case of Jungian collective unconsciousness, or had I encountered the phrase earlier in my life as a fan and buried it in my subconscious, where it waited for the right moment to bubble to the surface? More importantly, does anyone out there know anything about this group of fans? If so, put it in the comments section; I want to know the deal.

Coming Soon: David Ortiz, The Book

A few days ago, a representative from the company that's publishing Big Papi's upcoming memoir emailed us and asked us if we wanted to review the book, which hits the streets on April 17. Despite the rather unassuming title (Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits - I would have gone with something badass like David Ortiz: The Kratos of Baseball), we agreed to take a look at the book because, if nothing else, reading up on Ortiz's take on life sounded like fun. The publishing rep was nice enough to send us an excerpt beforehand; here's a quick taste of the style (excerpt copyright 2007 by David Ortiz with Tony Massarotti):

Seriously, bro, I'm not joking. Every time I go someplace where the peopel have never met me before, they all tell me the same thing: I look fatter on TV. I'm a big dude - I'm six foot four and between 255 and 260 pounds - but I try to take pretty good care of myself. In baseball, you have to. Like most guys, I'm in the weight room a lot during the season and I try to eat right, but I'm a big dude. Even my teammates give me sh*t about it sometimes. But I wear a really big uniform that must make me look fat on TV, so every time I meet someone for the first time, they look surprised that I'm not this big, fat guy.

I always joke with them: "Who do you think I am, Kevin Millar?"

(Trust me, bro. Millar would say the same thing about me.)

I have a feeling this book will be a pretty awesome read.