Top Bill James Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Bill James Biography

George William James (born October 5, 1949) is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose.

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Bill James Quotes

(Mantle) was clearly a greater player in his peak years.

Baseball, Clearly, Greater, Player, Years

The fact is that everybody around a college basketball game - the coaches, the announcers, even the referees at a lower level - calculates when the game is really over. They calculate it with intuition and guesswork.

Basketball, Calculate, College, Inspirational, Lower

Men feel challenged when a woman is in danger, so those types of stories interest women and they interest men on a level that the crimes against men tend to draw a different visceral reaction. Again, not saying it's right, but they tend to draw a different visceral reaction, which is that the man was out in the world doing men stuff and something happened to him.

Different, Man, Men, Stuff, Tend

Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses. Anyone can become a drug addict if you let yourself do it and, once you become a drug addict, you'll do whatever you have to to get the drugs. Absolutely, anybody can do it.

Addict, Drug, Kind, Proud, Stress, Wrong

In a crime story, the details become tremendously important - where the staircase was in relation to the bed, for example.

Bed, Crime, Details, Example, Important, Tremendously

Visualizing the movement finally got me over the top after months of practice.

Months, Movement, Practice, Top

You can't ultimately dodge defeat by winning close elections.

Dodge, Election, Elections, Ultimately, Winning

Because crime stories reveal an aspect of our personality that everybody has, but which we normally keep very deeply hidden. We like to talk about the good sides of ourselves. We don't like to talk about our hatreds, our distrusts of one another, our secrets, but crime stories drag those things to the surface and consequently they fascinate people and always have throughout all history.

Consequently, Fascinate, Hatred, People, Personality, Sides

Professionalism in medicine has given us medial miracles for the affluent but hospitals that will charge $35 for aspirin.

Aspirin, Charge, Medicine, Miracle, Miracles, Professionalism

I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate.

Athlete, Athletes, Children, Sports, Top, Unfortunate

Television is full of fictional and real violence that's turned into entertainment.

Fictional, Full, Real, Television, Violence

I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.

Communication, Writing, People, Things, Smiles

It's extremely damaging to a fair trial to have people reaching judgment about the case in the newspapers and on the radio before the facts are heard in a case.

Damaging, Facts, People, Radio, Reaching, Trials

I try to take large, general questions that are difficult to resolve and break them down into small, very specific questions that have clear answers.

Answers, Break, Down, Small, Take, Trying

There are, I believe, many more false confessions to murders than true confessions.

Believe, Confessions, I Believe, Murder, Murders

When I was a small kid, I grew up in the newspapers.

Grew, Grew Up, Kids, Newspapers, Small

Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws.

Crime, Law, Lead, Passing, Stories

Even if Mays is given every conceivable break on every unknown - defense, base running, clutch hitting - his performance still would not match Mantle's.

Baseball, Conceivable, Defense, Performance, Running, Unknown

Television is full of fictional and real violence that's turned into entertainment. It's an interesting phenomena and I tried to put it in perspective and tried to think through a few of the real questions that this sometimes unseemly business raises.

Full, Interesting, Real, Thinking, Unseemly, Violence

Well, stealing bases adds some runs but very few, and you lose most of the runs that you gain by having runners caught stealing.

Add, Caught, Gains, Lose, Running, Runs

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