Duelling obsessions
Baseball season is almost over!
I’m about to breathe a huge sigh of relief- baseball season is almost finished. I’m not a sports junkie in general- I have zero to little interest in professional hockey or football, although I do enjoy following basketball from time to time. I was a horrible athlete growing up. I was actually cut from Little League tryouts. The only team sport I approached mediocrity in was basketball. The only athletic activities I ever really enjoyed have been jogging and swimming. I suppose if I applied myself I could have been a passable medium-distance runner.
Yet I’ve been following baseball all of my life. There are horrendously wicked web sites out there, like baseball-reference.com that feed my addiction. I’ve been without television for long periods of time yet still need to follow the details of each team. It is a huge time-sucker- I could be writing new songs, going out to more live entertainment, watching local council meetings at city hall. I could be more productive! I promise myself it will all be over by November. My mind will be free of wondering who has made the most significant progress towards the hall of fame, which team has been flying under the radar and will surprise everyone next year.
Like a lot of number nerds of my generation, I was heavily influenced by Bill James. I was introduced to James’ annual Baseball Abstracts by an article written for MathNews by Dave Till in 1983. Mathnews, for those of you dying to know, was the official newspaper of the Faculty of Math and Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. James is legendary not only for influencing a generation of writers and baseball executives, but also because the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in over ninety years the year after hiring James as special consultant. And then they won another one three years later.
Bill James has influenced the way I think about business. Let me explain. His first publications of the Baseball Abstract were home made, crudely assembled collections of various studies about baseball. Over the first few years, James started writing longer essays and included some statistics that were generally ignored by mainstream publications. His audience started small, and grew by word of mouth and positive review over the next few years. Some of his fans were influential folk in baseball and media, and one fan in particular landed him a book deal with Ballantine Books. James’ book was published under Ballantine from 1982 through 1988- his books were self-published from 1977 through 1981. None of this is what influenced me.
In closing comments of his last Baseball Abstract, James recounts the origin and evolution of the Abstracts. His original motivation was to discuss issues that were conspicuously absent in most articles about baseball. James was interested in exploring questions- most articles handed you conclusions, ignoring the question or conflicting evidence altogether. An example James cites is the impact that individual catchers have on stolen base totals. The typical article will tell who is good and who isn’t. James would approach this by posing the question, hypothesizing about what the evidence would look like if this were true, and then presenting the evidence. A lot of James’ articles were rejected by mainstream publications because, or so he was told, there was no interest in exploring questions- people were only interested in seeing the results.
In other words, there was no mainstream audience that had an interest in some of the geekier aspects of baseball analysis. But James’ firm conviction was that there may not have been a mainstream audience, but there was an audience that was interested in this kind of stuff. He was proven right, and this was one of his greatest satisfactions. A host of imitators cropped up, imitating the form but not the unique style that made his work compelling reading.
I’ve kept this blueprint in the back of my mind with my music publication business. One of the things I’ve always been interested in is the geeky details about songs and music and production. There are a lot of articles about songwriting, and a lot of interviews where details about what influenced a particular song or writer are discussed. But I am interested in other details, some technical and some not, that informs a writer. And I am trying hard to incorporate these details into the songbook and sheet music publications that I am producing.
There may not be a mass audience for this kind of thing- a good number of folks just want to hear the music or learn biographical details about an artist. But I am hypothesizing that there is an audience for this kind of thing. People who want to know how and why certain sounds were created, what tunings are used and why, what other technical details inform the writing of a song.
Cheers,
Jack
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