Customer Reviews

Percentage Baseball

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Nowadays folk who talk of baseball analysis call it "sabremetrics" and speak of Bill James as if he invented it all. James was a great force in presenting and advocating ideas, many original. But the grand-daddy of meaningful analysis was Earnshaw Cook, and this book should be the very first thing anyone interested in how the game really works should read. After this, try Cook's next and only other baseball book, Percentage Baseball and the Computer, to see how he reviewed his early thoughts in the light of more powerful data access. Then you can go on to the moderns, starting with James.

Cook was a minor sensation in his time, after Franklin DeFord of Sports Illustrated gave him some publicity. Indeed, Cook was very close to a consulting deal with the then-Kansas City Athletics, but it fell through; too bad, as baseball history might have been very different otherwise. (Ironically, it was the Athletics, only now removed to Oakland and under new ownership and management, that first showed the practical uses of Cook's kind of analytic tools, much later to be called "Moneyball".)

Regrettably, Cook was his own worst enemy, being somewhat abrasive and testy when anyone didn't agree with him. Moreover, his writing style, as he himself readily concedes in the book, is not exactly pellucid, which kept his work from easy access by the everyday fan. But it's by no means particularly difficult material, and is eminently rewarding reading.