Share <Embed>

Buy New

$10.99

List Price: $39.95
Save: $28.96 (72%)

$10.99 + $3.99 shipping

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

Ships from and sold by sweethomeliquid2.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Buy Used

$10.36

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Used: Good | Details

Sold by We Care About Books

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Other Sellers on Amazon

Add to Cart

$11.10
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: LegenGary Books

Add to Cart

$14.65
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: All Kinds Of Books

Add to Cart

$17.00
+ $1.99 shipping

Sold by: Diane Publishing

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters Hardcover – March 1, 1999

by Michael J. Schell (Author)

11 customer reviews

See all 8 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$23.14

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$10.99

$1.00

Paperback

"Please retry"

$19.85

$4.98

$3.49

Tony Gwynn is the greatest hitter in the history of baseball. That's the conclusion of this engaging and provocative analysis of baseball's all-time best hitters. Michael Schell challenges the traditional list of all-time hitters, which places Ty Cobb first, Gwynn 16th, and includes just 8 players whose prime came after 1960. Schell argues that the raw batting averages used as the list's basis should be adjusted to take into account that hitters played in different eras, with different rules, and in different ballparks. He makes those adjustments and produces a new list of the best 100 hitters that will spark debate among baseball fans and statisticians everywhere.

Schell combines the two qualifications essential for a book like this. He is a professional statistician--applying his skills to cancer research--and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball. He has wondered how to rank hitters since he was a boy growing up as a passionate Cincinnati Reds fan. Over the years, he has analyzed the most important factors, including the relative difficulty of hitting in different ballparks, the length of hitters' careers, the talent pool that players are drawn from, and changes in the game that raised or lowered major-league batting averages (the introduction of the designated hitter and changes in the height and location of the pitcher's mound, for example). Schell's study finally levels the playing field, giving new credit to hitters who played in adverse conditions and downgrading others who faced fewer obstacles. His final ranking of players differs dramatically from the traditional list. Gwynn, for example, bumps Cobb to 2nd place, Rod Carew rises from 28th to 3rd, Babe Ruth drops from 9th to 16th, and Willie Mays comes from off the list to rank 13th. Schell's list also gives relatively more credit to modern players, containing 39 whose best days were after 1960.

Using a fun, conversational style, the book presents a feast of stories and statistics about players, ballparks, and teams--all arranged so that calculations can be skipped by general readers but consulted by statisticians eager to follow Schell's methods or introduce their students to such basic concepts as mean, histogram, standard deviation, p-value, and regression. Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters will shake up how baseball fans view the greatest heroes of America's national pastime.

Frequently bought together

Total price: $20.95

These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers. Show details

Buy the selected items together

This item:Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters by Michael J. Schell Hardcover $10.99
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by sweethomeliquid2.
$3.99 shipping
Baseball's All-Time Best Sluggers: Adjusted Batting Performance from Strikeouts to Home Runs by Michael J. Schell Hardcover $9.96
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Ships from and sold by Anderpot books.
$3.99 shipping

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Michael J. Schell

5

Hardcover
$9.96

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Michael J. Schell

5

Hardcover
$9.96

Special offers and product promotions

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Baseball is a game of numbers, and if you look deeply enough into them, they begin to speak in truly mysterious ways. For Schell, a professor of biostatistics, the numbers sing in an enigmatic language that lets him rank and compare hitters from different eras with a self-concocted, time-tested mathematical certainty--albeit a certainty that is as subjective as the next in an arena filled with formulas and number crunching. Less a volume to read than one to muck around in and develop a dialogue--or argument--with, Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters is heavy on the stats, charts, and theories that explain why and how averages must be adjusted over different eras to accommodate different styles of play, rule changes, and ballparks. Using the various adjustments he's come up with, Schell works to make his baseball cabala understandable; then he sends out a lineup of rankings that are as surprising as they are, in fact, logical--if you buy the logic. So who is the best hitter of all time? Well, it's not Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Joe Jackson, or Ted Williams. He is alive at this writing, though, and the shock is that he's still playing in 1999, patrolling right field for the San Diego Padres and rapping line drives with astonishing consistency. --Jeff Silverman

From Library Journal

Schell (biostatistics, Univ. of North Carolina), a professional statistician, here turns his attention from his field of health science to a lighter but more contentious subject, baseball. The rating of players has been an unending argument among diehard fans and specialists, such as those dedicated aficionados of the Society for American Baseball Research, which has given statistical debate more credibility. Now this book from Princeton University Press is a signal that the academics have entered the fray, too. Schell's book, however, makes some strange claims. He ranks current player Tony Gwynn as the best all-time hitter, well ahead of the modern batting king, Ted Williams, and no doubt outraging the ghosts of Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth. Schell's statistics "level" the playing field because they downplay the importance of power, thus favoring Gwynn. Schell is on more solid ground when he proposes players who should be included in the Hall of Fame. All in all, this book is for the hardcore baseball fan, especially one comfortable with complex statistical analysis. For comprehensive baseball collections.APaul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product details

Hardcover: 328 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1 edition (March 1, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691004552
ISBN-13: 978-0691004556
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 11 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,539,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1988 in Books > Science & Math > Mathematics > History
- #6185 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Baseball

Would you like to tell us about a lower price?
If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Start reading Baseball's All-Time Best Hitters on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Customer Reviews

Write a customer review

See all 11 customer reviews

Rated by customers interested in

What's this?

Children's Books

4.1 out of 5 stars

Children's Literature

4.1 out of 5 stars

Medical Books

2.0 out of 5 stars

Is this feature helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

Read reviews that mention

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Robert A. Singer

Outstanding revised statistical analysis of the best baseball hitters

May 7, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Excellent historical background and sound baseball-based and mathematical basis for the evolution of the revolution in baseball batter statistics. The revised comparison of the best hitters in baseball history, and the reasons for this, grab the readers' attention in a dramatic (but statistical) way. I have made sections of this book the basis of some of the bedtime readings (with my explanations added) to my nine year old grandson who is really into baseball and the associated statistics, and he's fascinated with this and asks me to continue these readings when I fly to his house for visits.

CommentWas this review helpful to you?

Yes

Sidney Gendin

Disappointing book

July 11, 2010

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Mr. Schell's book on baseball will disappoint nearly all ordinary baseball fans. It is loaded with statistical analysis that is nonintuitive and produces very counterintuitive results. For Mr. Schell, it seems that the facts must be made to fit the theory rather than the other way round. To be sure, some of the ways that are used to judge hitting prowess are not merely innovative but highly illuminating. But we don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The idea that Tony Gwynn is the best hitter of all time and that Babe Ruth is far down in the standings is going a bit too far.

Mr. Schell has a more more recent book that will seem more sensible to most fans. It gives weight to slugging ability or so-called power hitting and restores Ruth to a high place in the pecking order and drops Gwynn to a spot we can believe in.

CommentWas this review helpful to you?

Yes

oldtimebaseball

Five Stars

June 24, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

As advertised

CommentWas this review helpful to you?

Yes

Flying Scot

The Opiate of the People

March 28, 2015

Format: Paperback

Tony Gwynn may well be the greatest hitter of all - if you're talking strictly batting average; but even then Cobb (12 batting crowns), Wagner (8 batting titles), Musial (7 crowns), Hornsby (7 crowns), Ted Williams (6 crowns, and that's with missing 5 peak years), Sisler, Joe Jackson, Dan Brouthers, and a few others must be dealt with. But since when is batting average the sole, or even the primary, criteria? As much as I like batting average, how about Home Runs, RBI, Slugging Percentage?

Tony hit 135 homers in his career. Three Gwynns wouldn't have equaled the number of HRs by one Mays, or one Aaron, or one Frank Robinson, or one Musial, one Mantle, one Williams, etc. Yet all of these guys did pretty well with batting average and batting titles, too. In fact, they are all far closer to (or, in some cases, equal to) Tony in batting average than Tony is to them in round trippers. And this doesn't even get into RBI, Slugging, etc.

I admire Tony, but Tony is no Ted or Willie or Hank or Stanley Frank or Robbie or Mick or Rajah. Just to name a few. Not even including Lou and
Foxx and Babe and Junior and Dimag and Ott. And, yes, Cobb and Shoeless, too. And, I've intentionally excluded all the steroid power boys of the 1990s and 21st century (Bonds and Pujols and ARod, etc.). Tony might make the top fifteen hitters, but I doubt even that, and certainly not the top ten. But these days anybody with the number-crunching power enabled by a computer can find thousands of ways of getting himself a little attention by lying with numbers.

In our benighted age, data is the opiate of the people.

CommentWas this review helpful to you?

Yes

Michael R. Chernick

a stats book on baseball

February 6, 2008

Format: Hardcover

Most baseball fans like statistics, so it should not be a disappointment to them to find out that this is an elementary statistics book where the statistical methods are taught to explain how to adjust batting averages in order to compare players in terms of their batting averages. The average baseball fan would be interested in comparisons of Ty Cobb, Tony Gwynn, Ted Williams and others who are acknowledged as the best hitters for average in the game. Schell considers factors that make direct comparisons unfair and he provides methods to adjust for these factors based on the vast amount of statistical data available to him that has been gathered throughout the history of major league baseball.
Key effects include the home ball park, stage of career and interventions such as the lowering of the pitcher's mound after 1968. To adjust for players whose abilities decline substantially in the latter years of their career Schell uses only the first 8000 at bats to gauge the players hitting ability. This helps players like Mickey Mantle whose performance declined appreciably at the end of his career due in part to injuries.

Schell provides a lot of interesting statistics and comparisons. Ty Cobb had the highest lifetime batting average but after all the adjustments finishes second to Tony Gwynn, a result that will surely create controversy.

Nevertheless Schell's approach makes sense and his results are not too surprising. As he notes his adjustments move many of the modern players whose numerical averages are lower than the players from the late 1800s and early 1900s, ahead on the list.

Schell relates how he showed up to meet and congratulate Gwynn on the date of his 8000th at bat when he clinched first place based on the Schell adjustment system.

Mike Schell is a sports enthusiast and a professor of biostatistics at the University of North Carolina. In 2002 he was one of the invited speakers at the Sport Statistics Section Session of the Joint Statistical Meetings.

This book was published just one month after his other book on home run hitters. The methodology is quite similar. This book got a lot more fan fare due to the publicity regarding Tony Gwynn.

Comment 26 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes