Bleacher Creature Feature

#21: High BP

25 July 2002

On several occasions in this space I have sung the praises of the annual volume Baseball Prospectus, which is put together by a bunch of cool guys led by chief editor Joe Sheehan. BP has basically filled the vacancy left when Bill James stopped doing an annual baseball book (first the Baseball Abstract, then The Baseball Book) by doing in-depth (and sometimes groundbreaking) analysis of both teams and players, of trying to find better ways to use baseball statistics (and in some cases better statistics) to determine the true nature of how well a player plays and how useful he can be to the team, and generally writing entertaining prose about baseball. (A favorite quote, on Mariano Rivera's cutter: "it's responsible for more sawed-off lumber than Paul Bunyan on a meth bender.")

They're not always right, they don't always agree even with each other, but they provide a loving depth to baseball analysis that I enjoy the heck out of.

They also maintain a fantastic Web site at BaseballProspectus.com, which has regular updates, primary among them being Sheehan's occasionally inaccurately named "Daily Prospectus" and Chris Kahrl's weekly-but-not-always "Transaction Analysis," with other columns including "Aim for the Head," "Doctoring the Numbers," "6-4-3," "Breaking Balls," and others by the staff and the occasional guest writer. If you like this column, you'll probably like at least parts of their site, too. (They've had some of the best analyses of the ongoing labor mishegos -- a topic that I, for one, am deliberately avoiding writing about like the plague -- and they've even thoughtfully collected them into one page o' links called "Baseball and Economics.")

They also try to touch base with their readership. They've been organizing "pizza feeds" all across the country, and since two of the BP guys are in New York (and Sheehan is a transplanted Noo Yawka in town on vacation), they set up a couple this week. I was lucky enough to get into the first one Wednesday night and had a blast. A bunch of us sat and talked about a variety of subjects ranging from George Steinbrenner's ego to the Cablevision/YES battle to Sunday's game against the Red Sox to the pros and cons of bunting to the idiocy of the Weaver trade to the utter masochism of Boston fans. (According to BP's Doug Pappas, at Fenway they show a "highlights" reel on the DiamondVision that includes Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Buckner's legs and all. Buh? Why on Earth do they show this? At Yankee Stadium, time stops at Game 6 of the 2001 Series. Way to sell the team, guys....) We also speculated on what would happen if the Red Sox and the Cubs both made the Series. I postulated that it would go six games and then the sun would go nova; someone else said it'd be a Groundhog Day-type scenario, where the game before it all ends would be relived over and over and over again.....

It was a great night -- I only stayed for two hours, and could easily have remained longer but for being totally exhausted from the recent deadline nonsense.

Thanks, guys!

Speaking of masochism and the Red Sox, as part of the "new civility" that is allegedly the policy at the Stadium these days, fans are not allowed to wear shirts that utilize the verb "to suck," nor utter chants that do likewise. The former are asked to remove or turn inside-out said shirts, and the latter are threatened with removal. Enforcement of the verbal end of this wasn't much in evidence on Sunday (hell, they would've had to escort Sections 37-42 of the bleachers out of the Stadium en masse), but in the spirit of cooperation, I have some alternative suggestions:

"Boston chokes!" Not an epithet at all, merely a statement of fact.

"1918!" An oldie but a goodie, and it's just a number....

A roll-call-style chant of assorted names: "Bill Buckner," "Roger Clemens," "Wade Boggs," "Babe Ruth," etc. No comment is needed there, just the names will be enough.

Not an offensive word in the bunch.....

Speaking of BP, I will end with a quote from Sheehan's 24 July "Daily Prospectus" column:

"How, exactly, does a crappy team spend 10 hours at a ballpark, get outscored 26-4--including 26-0 over the previous 15 innings--and then put up a five-spot to break the hearts of a contender and its fans?

"Sometimes, this game is just weird."

(And then win the next night, 9-5 to put said contender farther out of first place than they've been all year. Weird indeed. Now if they can beat Pedro tonight.....)

NEXT: Early Saturday Monring Thoughts

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