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Sunday Bill James Blogging

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Via Mark Kleiman, an interesting interview with the great Bill James. He’s in fine form, even his baffling ranting about “professionalization” in the New Historical Abstract makes a modicum of sense in this context, and I enjoy his sniping at “couple of books published in the late 90s, one by Robert Bork and one by a prissy woman named Gertrude something.” A couple of things I’d like to highlight:

James T: Have you seen games in all the parks in MLB? Which parks are your favorites?

Bill James: I have not. I was fairly close to getting to all of the parks before 1990, but I have been losing ground for fifteen years. There are about ten parks now that I haven’t seen. I’ll catch up when the kids are out of the house.
Obviously, Fenway is the best, I think. At Wrigley, I have trouble concentrating on the game. . .it almost seems like the complete opposite of Fenway, where everybody is locked into the game. There is something about the construction of the park that makes it difficult to concentrate on the game there. Camden Yards is great. Pac Bell has stunning views of the Bay and of downtown San Francisco. Busch Stadium and Royals Stadium are good places to watch a game.

James T: HOK is known as the designer of new parks in recent times was there one firm primarily responsible for the spate of parks 35 years ago, Riverfront, Three Rivers et al?

Bill James: I think those were mostly designed by Albert Speer. . .

Heh. Indeed! I was reflecting when I went to my first game of the year Friday that–frighteningly enough–I think Shea is about the median park I’ve seen. Well, let’s rank, in descending order: Pac Bell, Safeco Field, Fenway Park [huge gap], Anaheim Stadium, Shea Stadium, Stade Olympique, the SkyDome, Exhibition Stadium, The Kingdome. Yep, about in the middle. As you can see, I don’t rank Frenway #1. It’s great, and I agree with James about how locked in the fans are. But Pac Bell and Safeco are also very aesthetically pleasing, and given that I do think the modern amenities (edible food, seats designed for the modern ass, more than one restroom per 10,000 fans, etc.) do have to be given some weight. Shea is pretty bad, but at least it’s outdoors.

Here is something I strongly agree with:

James T: Julio probably remembers a lot of different trends in umpiring, too. Do you agree with the new one, the use of the Questec system?

Bill James: Strongly. Vigorously. The umpiring now is vastly, vastly better than it was in the late 1990s, and significantly better than it was two years ago. If you could go back to 1997 and watch a game then, you would just be amazed at how bad the umpiring was.

I think this is exactly right. I really can’t abide the boo-hooing about Questec; if Tom Glavine can’t get a bonus edge off the plate, great–the sooner every vestige of NBA-style anti-rule-of-law officiating is gotten rid of, the better. Moreover, the quality of umpiring has drastically improved, I think. Strike zones are far more consistent, they’ve actually allowed the art of sliding and tagging to come back and stopped the drift toward calling every play as if it was a force play, and there’s much less arrogance and player-baiting. What happened in Game 6 of the ALCS last year–when they discussed two blown calls and got them both right–would not have happened 10 years ago, maybe not even 5 years ago. If 2004 had been 1997, we would had to endure another winter of jabber about how though Derek Jeter hit an empty .167 with atrocious defense, he just knows how to win.

What makes this difficult for me to admit, though, is that the key difference was not Questec, but the quasi-breaking of the Umpire’s Union. And, painful as it is, for once the owners were right. The umpires weren’t demanding higher pay, or better work conditions. They were asserting that they were not required to enforce the rules they were hired to enforce. And not because they had any principled arguments that general rules should be changed, but because they contended that each individual umpire should be able to enforce the rules however they felt like it, the league should have no authority to take action no matter how bad the quality of umpiring got. It’s tragic that it had to come to that ridiculous mass resignation strategery for things to finally change, but it was for the better. Unions, like any other institution, can be corrupted, and this was one case where, unfortunately, it happened.

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