Bill James Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.

Bill James

There will always be people who are ahead of the curve, and people who are behind the curve. But knowledge moves the curve.

Bill James

I didn't care about the statistics in anything else. I didn't, and don't pay any attention to the statistics of the stock market, the weather, the crime rate, the gross national product, the circulation of magazines, the ebb and flow of literacy among football fans and how many people are going to starve to death before the year 2050 if I don't start adopting them for $3.69 a month; just baseball. Now why is that? It is because baseball statistics, unlike the statistics in any other area, have acquired the powers of language.

Bill James

Even if Mays is given every conceivable break on every unknown - defense, base running, clutch hitting - his performance still would not match Mantle's.

Bill James

We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime.

Bill James

I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate.

Bill James

Bill James

Bill James

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Born: October 5, 1949 (age 77)

Bio: George William "Bill" James is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics.

Known for:

The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (1985)
Win Shares (2002)
Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame? (1995)

Bill James on Wikipedia

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