The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract

Bill James was light years a head of any other baseball historian. He, more than anyone else, brought about the statistics revolution. Billy Beane, Theo Epstein and the “Moneyball” people running teams can trace their genesis back to Bill James.

The 1986 historical abstract is masterpiece. Not only was his stat work miles ahead of anyone else’s he is an engaging and funny writer. His ability to show the hard facts that Gary Carter was a much better player than Bill Dickey is balanced with funny articles about Don Mossi the ugliest major leaguer ever who could “ugly to all fields.”

The Godfather of modern baseball thought and analysis.

This book completely and irrevocably changed me from someone who thought that RBI were an important measure of a players ability to someone who regularly argues that there is no such thing as the 'clutch fairy'. While some of James' ideas weren't yet fully formed, you could see where it was headed.

This is the old 80's edition, someday I will buy an updated edition.

Picked this up the other day (after not touching it for fifteen years) to see what James had to say about pitching - and how it changed once the home run became a part of every teams offense. Ended up reading the whole book simply because I couldn't put it down. The revised edition is better - but this is still a classic and well worth reading.