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The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics

Alan Schwarz

The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics - image
Rating: 4.5/5 Stars
Rank: 2874
Sports journalist Schwarz brings to the fore this intelligent, smartly researched and often hilarious look at the use of statistics in baseball, which Schwarz definitively shows to "date back to the game's earliest days in the 19th century." It will delight any fan who memorizes the numbers on the back of trading cards or pores over newspaper box scores.

The book's success is rooted in its focus on the people "obsessed with baseball's statistics ever since the box score started it all in 1845," rather than being about the statistics themselves. The reader is presented with enthusiastic but unvarnished looks at such key figures as Henry Chadwick, whose love for numbers led to his inventing the box score grid that remains, Schwarz shows, "virtually unchanged to this day"; Allan Roth, the numbers man hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers who was as important to the team's success as its famed GM Branch Rickey; and the all-but-forgotten work of George Lindsey, one of the first people to apply statistical analysis to weigh various baseball strategies.

Delivered in a delightfully breezy and confident style, this volume also serves as an excellent alternate or parallel history of the sport, as we see how the statistics influenced the game itself—such as the banning of the spitball—as much as they were used to detail individual games.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
All rights reserved.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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About the Author

Alan Schwarz is the Senior Writer of Baseball America magazine, a weekly columnist for ESPN.com, and a frequent contributor to The New York Times.

His work has appeared in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and more than a dozen other national publications.

He lives in Manhattan.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Editorials

Sample 2 of 2

The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics
Alan Schwarz
 From Publishers Weekly
Sports journalist Schwarz brings to the fore this intelligent, smartly researched and often hilarious look at the use of statistics in baseball, which Schwarz definitively shows to "date back to the game's earliest days... read full editorial
 Book Description
Most baseball fans, players and even team executives assume that the National Pastime's infatuation with statistics is simply a byproduct of the information age, a phenomenon that blossomed only after the arrival of Bill... read full editorial



Customer Reviews

Sample 3 of 15

The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics
Alan Schwarz
 The Numbers Game: An Extra-Base Hit
July 28, 2004 - 5.0/5 stars
Baseball has always been known as a game of statistics, which provide the foundation for appreciating the sport's rich history. In The Numbers Game, author Alan Schwarz brings the numbers alive, attaching faces... read full review
 STATS don't lie
(Red Sox Nation) February 16, 2005 - 5.0/5 stars
This book is simply, hands-down, amazing. It gives a spectaular history of America's game and tells how all of today's STATS have changed over time. I suggest reading this book if you are a fan of baseball and/or statistics.
 Statistics Not Quo
(Vernon, CT United States) June 30, 2005 - 4.0/5 stars
This was an unexpectedly good read about a relatively dry subject. I never imagined that a book about the evolution of baseball's statistics would be so entertaining, but it was. The blurbs on the cover can... read full review



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