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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
Hot Stove League Commissioner?, May 2, 2002
After reading "Politics of Glory" I would like to nominate Bill James for Hot Stove League Commissioner. The Hot Stove League is where baseball hungry fans spend their winter days arguing that "My favorite player is better than yours!" James approaches baseball arguments the way a Philadelphia lawyer evaluates lucrative contracts, by examining every point with microscopic clarity.A book about the Hall of Fame, with its unending controversies over just who is truly deserving of entry and who is not, is ideal grist for the analytical mind of James. He covers many controversies, two of which surround Dodger pitcher Don Drysdale and Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto. Drysdale had been voted into the Hall by the time James wrote his book while Rizzuto was elected just as James was completing his final chapter. The evaluations of both players were so thorough that James concluded his analysis of Drysdale by covering the tall right-hander's performance in pennant stretch drives of the Dodgers as well as in the twelve games James deemed the most crucial of his career excluding World Series performances. Rizzuto's Hall of Fame worthiness was ultimately evaluated by a statistically microscopic comparison of the Yankee star with his counterpart New York contemporary at shortstop, Pee Wee Reese of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In addition to comparing and contrasting players both in and out of the Hall, James also delves into the politics of Cooperstown. He decries the period of the fifties and sixties for what he deems less than deserving choices made by the Veterans Committee. James pinpoints the reason as the leadership influence of Frankie Frisch, the great infielder of the Cardinals and Giants, whose love affair with the game of his playing days continued even when he was managing teams years later. James notes that the "Fordham Flash" was less than a hit with his players for constantly proclaiming that "The players of my days were much better than the players now." Frisch's period on the Veterans Committee resulted in numerous former teammates being selected, including choices James statistically debunks as inadequate, including three former St. Louis Cardinals, pitcher Jess Haines, first baseman Jim Bottomly, and outfielder Chick Hafey. Reading James improves a baseball fan's instincts for looking beyond the sheer numbers, such as park advantages, i.e.: Did a pitcher perform in a home park favorable to pitchers or hitters or did a hitter play half his games in a stadium with short or long fences? James comes up with some convincing arguments by searching in places where most fans have never treaded.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
What Sabermetrics is all about, November 29, 1999
Back in the 70s, when Tony Kubek was considered a baseball savant, Bill James began popularizing a rigorous statistical analysis of baseball. In the 80s, when the pedantry of the Elias Baseball Analyst team threatened to remove the ideas from the study of the game, James kept chugging along with his yearlies, and the Historical Abstract (another must read). Later he produced this, probably his best work. For anyone who shakes his head at a player or manager dismissing another's opinion by saying "He never played the game;" for anyone who is not cowed by the received truth of an inside "authority" or eyewitness, for anyone who loves baseball and thinks we can do better by using the tools at our disposal, Bill James is a godsend. If you're a big baseball fan and you don't know who he is, get this for yourself. It will open up your appreciation of the game, its history, and the numbers and debates that keep its history alive.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
One of the best, December 7, 2000
By A Customer
Quite simply one of the best baseball books ever. Written with the serious fan in mind this book puts to rest many of the debates about who should and shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. It is hard to argue to James' logic in every one of the cases he sites.The idea that James has some sort of hidden agenda, as one reviewer states, is absurd. What could James possibly have against Freddie Lindstrom or Travis Jackson? Besides regular statistics, James does use first hand accounts in helping to determine whether or not someone should be in the Hall of Fame. However, he does not put much credence in something an old teammate says 40 years later. The fact is that James points out obvious discrepancies between the number of HOFers from the 20s and 30s and other decades, and in particular in the number of teammates of Veterans Committee members in the Hall of Fame. This is just one of the many issues detailed here. All in all this book is a must read for anyone interested in the Hall of Fame.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
Outstanding, refreshingly logical, February 2, 2005
Noted baseball analyst Bill James, author of the famous annual Baseball Abstracts of the 1980s and other baseball books, turns his considerable talents to Cooperstown. Here, James discusses the ultimate baseball question: Who belongs in the Hall of Fame?
If you liked the Abstracts, you'll probably like this too. If you want a calm, logical, insightful discussion of Hall of Fame history and candidates, this is the place.
James uses a number of methods, both quantitative and qualitative, to evaluate whether someone should or should not be in the Hall of Fame. Some of these appeared in his previous books, others are new. Perhaps his most important contribution is a discussion of common fallacies used in hyping Hall of Fame candidates.
James focuses on two candidates in particular: Don Drysdale (inducted 1983) and Phil Rizzuto (inducted 1994, just before this book was released in hardcover). Others who get a good deal of attention include Hall of Famers Bobby Doerr, Joe Tinker, Catfish Hunter, and Pee Wee Reese along with Joe Gordon, George Davis, Jerry Priddy, Luis Tiant, Orlando Cepeda, Tony Oliva, Vern Stephens, Pete Rose, and Joe Jackson. Davis and Cepeda have since been inducted.
James also traces the institutional history of the Hall of Fame: how it was founded, how it developed, how the selection process evolved, when the standards began to get lax (in 1946!), problems with cronyism (he harshly denounces the 1970s Veterans' Committee), the debate over inducting Negro Leaguers, the Pete Rose debate, and more.
A fascinating chapter addresses both sides of that eternal debate: "Are today's players better than yesteryear's?"
This is one of the best books on the Hall of Fame you will find!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Great book, don't always agree with him, but a must-read., July 26, 2001
Despite what the one reviewer said, James backs up all his opinions in the book with facts. The so-called Frankie Frisch selections are extremely weak, and no one who reads the book objectively would say otherwise. But this is more than a book about who should or should not be in the Hall of Fame; it also gives a detailed history of the institution and how it operates, and he does a wonderful job of weaving in his analysis of the players both and and out of Cooperstown into the story.I bought the first edition of the book, titled The Politics of Glory, and it's interesting to read some of it after six years have passed. For example, he never thought George Davis (a great player at the turn of the century who got overlooked) would make the Hall of Fame, but he has. I don't agree with him that Don Drysdale doesn't belong, but I can see his argument. I do wish the voters would listen to him about Ron Santo, though.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
A Hall of Fame Effort, January 30, 1999
By A Customer
Like many baseball fans, I always believed that the Hall of Fame voters were something like the College of Cardinals. I believed that their choices of were based on earthly performance mixed with a healthy dose of divine inspiration. James' work shatters this faith and places the hard glare of reality on a process that is an all too human endeavor -- shortsighted, political and at times bordering on random. The book is lucid, fact-filled, fun to read and it answer one of baseball's great mysteries: what the heck is George Kelly doing in the Hall of Fame. That in itself is worth the cover price. One of the few "must have" baseball books.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
An Elightening Look at the Hall of Fame, February 1, 2004
For anyone who has ever been interested in baseball's Hall of Fame, from being a serious historian of the game to simply being a fan who wanted your favorite player to be honored, this book will teach you a great deal. Bill James, in a very entertaining style, will show you how some of the game's greatest players have been overlooked for the game's highest honor, while lesser men have been awarded. He will show you the passion of those who promote a certain player for election, while also demonstrating how illogical many can be as they argue for their favorites. He shows the inconsistency of the various voting bodies, the chronyism, the politics, and most other aspects of the long history of the Hall of Fame's process for determining the game's greatest players. It is a subject not often outlined in this depth, and James does a splendid job with it. There are some flaws. James, as he often does, contradicts his own previously stated views on some players, and does so without explanation, which can be maddening to anyone who has read most of his work. He also has the unnecessary habit of insulting people for no real reason. As a man who can write so well and express his views in such detail and with such clarity, it doesn't appear to be necessary, when citing an example of one fan's opinion about Mickey Lolich, to answer this question: "Am I the only baseball fan who feels that statistics provide, at best, a meager measure of a player's worth?" with this answer: "Well, no, Mr. Miedlar, actually, there are an amazing number of idiots in the world." Stooping to that level is entertaining at times, but it also serves to convince the reader that James is a bit full of himself, and a bit of a bully to boot. Still, those flaws are minor when compared to the overall quality of both the information presented and the manner in which James presents it. Anyone with an interest in baseball in general, or baseball history or the Hall of Fame in particular, will be pleased with what they find in this book.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
The history of the Hall is analyzed in detail., October 14, 1999
By A Customer
It saddens me to see that someone has "reviewed" this book as being the work of someone who "cooks numbers" to suit his own hypotheses. This really cannot be further from the truth, and anyone who actually understands the use and study of statistics in baseball will realize this."Politics of Glory" is insightful in the way that it turns the light of context onto the history of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now we can better understand just how some members have been elected, and how many deserving candidates have been left out. What is important to realize is that James, while speaking out on a few poor choices, also takes great pains to say that membership requirements for the Hall are subjective at best, and that it is up to the reader to decide where that magical Mendoza line is for enshrinement. A 5-star review for anyone who is interested in the history of the game from both prosaic and statistical perspectives. If you don't like stats (really, there are very few - only a number of rankings by player "similarities"), then read it in pieces. The chapters are arranged so that one does not have to read it straight through, and non-statheads can skip the stuff they don't find appealing.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Once Again, a Brilliant Curveball of Perspective, January 9, 2005
You know, I always wondered why Babe Ruth was elected to the Hall with only 95% of the vote. How does he get in with anything less than 100? I think that it's questions like this one that inspired James to write this book.
James, again, scientifically explains why players like Sandy Koufax are in the Hall while others like Don Drysdale just miss the boat. He argues for Vern Stepens (you'll find out who he is) in comparison to Phil Rizzuto. He illuminates us about the Veterans Committee of the 70s, led by HOFer Frankie Frisch, and the several potentially biased selections that were made. Why IS Ross Youngs in the Hall of Fame? Must be his 1491 career hits. Or it could be that he was a teammate of Frisch's.
I always thought that the Baseball Writers Association (BBWAA) didn't know their head from their exit-hole, but I should have been saying it about the Veterans Committee. On the other hand, I can't understand why the BBWAA elects Nolan Ryan with 99% of the vote, yet can't agree on Bert Blyleven.
James may not answer some of my beefs directly, but he gives us a magnificent historical HOF perspective as to why they probably happened.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Outstanding research and thought-provoking prose, June 20, 2006
Baseball's "uber-statistician" Bill James has put together a painstakenly detailed look at Baseball's Hall of Fame process for determining membership. James, with some degree of overkill, goes over the rationale for who's "in" and who's not. Many pages, (this reviewer would believe too many, as a matter of fact) are spent reviewing the vitaes of players like Phil Rizzuto, Don Drysdale, and Pee Wee Reese. Hundreds of other players are covered, however, in this extensively researched work. James certainly is unafraid to let the reader know (early and often) whom he believes is worthy of the honor of being in the HOF.
Baseball historians and fans alike, however, will find plenty of things to like about this book. The head-to-head comparisons of players are outstanding, as is the information that James has included about the history of the HOF. James does an outstanding job tying all of the baseball eras together while trying to show some method of comparing modern player to those from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If the reader can allow for some of James' pontificating to rear its ugly head periodically throughout the book, then he or she will certainly want to add this work to their baseball collection.
RECOMMENDED FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS, BUT ESPECIALLY THOSE INTERESTED IN BASEBALL HISTORY
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