The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract

by Bill James

Bill James was not employed by any baseball team or academic organisation. He just, on his own, decided he wanted to study baseball statistics. He wrote a series of books called The Baseball Abstracts that were widely published, starting in 1982, and became cult classics. In these books he mixes in stories about baseball and goofy statistics with in-depth analysis of questions such as, ‘At what age are baseball players most productive?’