Bill James

The New Yorker has an article on Bill James and his work for the Red Sox in their July 14/21 issues. Unfortunately, it is not available online.

Couple of good bits:

Norman Mailer and screenwriter William Goldman were two of the 75 people who purchased the first edition of his Baseball Abstract.

"He is a self-described 'scientist', who frequently reveals little concern for precision, a relentless counter who can't be bothered with individual sums."

"He has long been revered by rationalists for promoting the virtues of objective analysis, and yet, after an extended hibernation from writing about contemporary baseball-- during the nineties he focussed mainly on the history of the game-- he reemerged on the statistical scene with a new metric to define the over-all contribution of each player, whose formula has a built-in 'subjective element,' allowing him to adjust the numbers more or less as he pleases."