Murray Chass is back

Thanks Elliot as usuaul you add nothing to discussion. Why not stay in form and lock up the thread and ruin another good one.

 

It may have been a smart choice, nobody's quibbling with that. Different columnists have different roles, and if he feels he isn't comfortable with that territory, then it is fine if he doesn't work toward it.

But to put together an entire column bashing it, for no reason? To create a website with a description that goes out of its way to slam that entire community, for no reason?

There are hundreds of baseball scribes out there who have no idea what these stats mean, what they're used for, and why people want to learn more. These incurious sorts stay in their little tent, though, and don't make much noise.

Chass, proudly incurious and ignorant, revels in his lack of education about a subject that shouldn't take a whole lot of time to learn about. He brought this on himself. He filed that column. He started that website, and put together that "About" page. Nobody put a gun to his head.

 

Look, if the stat freaks kept within their "community" (oh for crissakes), you'd have a point. But they infringe on other people's enjoyment with their incessant yammering about their stats. They have some haughty notion that they enjoy the game on a higher level than the rest of us. They ought to change the rules at the stadium: Along with being kicked out if you throw anything on the field, you ought to be ejected for spoiling other fans' nights out by yapping endlessly about obscure stats or your fantasty team in public. I paid to see a baseball game, not a math class.

 

On the subject of his Spink Award, I remember reading this a while ago:

Anybody know anything more about this?

 

I think it's a fitting tribute that Frank is getting cranky in honor of Murray!

 

Here is one example of many Cranberry where Murray is in the tank for the players union - A column during '94 baseball strike which Murray cites report from Stamford economist Roger Noll.

What Murray fails to tell readers was that report was commisioned by the players union.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C06E4DE1038F935A3575AC0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

 

God, I hope my blue font is broken.

 

Frank your discription of statheads seems to match your haughty discription of the typical Times reader. I am surprised that you are not more of an advocate for new age stats.

 

Are you serious, or was that a joke?

I can't recall overhearing a single stat beyond the odd, "what's he hitting? .270?" in decades of going to baseball games.

And thousands of keen baseball fans have disabused themselves of reading Chass because, as Boom noted, he hasn't offered them anything new recently. The only time this guy has even crossed their minds is because he went out of his way to yap endlessly about THEM.

 

Frank,

If you don't like stats, that's fine. There is no law of journalism that mandates that you have to like newfangled stats or that you have to write about them or cite them as authority to back up any points you made. But if you are going to write about a sport and highly successful franchises are using sophisticated statistics to make decisions about their lineup and their roster, willful ignorance is negligence for the sake of negligence.

 

you know i love ya, vac, but this geezer had no problem with anything murray said during his induction speech. it was his time and he earned the right to say what he did about the turn the industry had taken during his later years as a seamhead reporter at the times. he didn't name names, just noted a trend.

you're still da best, though, my brother. the best read in n.y., bar none.