Why Bill James is not an economist
Bill James, the godfather of baseball sabermetrics, is now working as a consultant for the Boston Red Sox. Of course, it’s only recently that James’ pioneering idea of using statistical analysis to determine what causes a baseball team to win games has been accepted. Before that, he had an interesting set of careers, as he ...
Bill James, the godfather of baseball sabermetrics, is now working as a consultant for the Boston Red Sox. Of course, it's only recently that James' pioneering idea of using statistical analysis to determine what causes a baseball team to win games has been accepted. Before that, he had an interesting set of careers, as he told mlb.com:
Bill James, the godfather of baseball sabermetrics, is now working as a consultant for the Boston Red Sox. Of course, it’s only recently that James’ pioneering idea of using statistical analysis to determine what causes a baseball team to win games has been accepted. Before that, he had an interesting set of careers, as he told mlb.com:
Before he started making his living analyzing baseball, James worked in several unglamorous odd jobs, including fast food restaurants, night watchman, convenience store clerk and forklift driver. One of his first career goals was to be an economics teacher. But his obsession for baseball drained the ambition he had for any other kind of work. “I was never a particularly good student,” said James. “I suppose I was capable of being a good student — most everybody is — but when I studied Micro Economics, for example, I would take what I learned there and figure out how to apply it to baseball. I would spend five minutes mastering the concept, 50 hours figuring out how it might apply to baseball. This was a drain on my potential to become an Economics professor. Even when I was in high school, teachers would tell me to put away those box scores and do my homework. Once I focused on writing about baseball, all of that energy was working for me, rather than working against me.”
As someone who also started out in economics, but found politics more interesting, I can certainly understand. UPDATE: On a loosely related topic, David Pinto has an interesting guest essay by Glenn Berggoetz and Jeff McBride arguing that contra conventional wisdom, ex-catchers make lousy managers.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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