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The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics
Most baseball fans, players and even team executives assume that the National Pastime's infatuation with statistics is simply a byproduct of the information age, a phenomenon that blossomed only after the arrival of Bill James and computers in the 1980s. They couldn't be more wrong.
In this unprecedented new book, Alan Schwarz - whom bestselling Moneyball author Michael Lewis calls "one of today's best baseball journalists" - provides the first-ever history of baseball statistics, showing how baseball and its numbers have been inseparable ever since the pastime's birth in 1845. He tells the history of this obsession through the lives of the people who felt it Henry Chadwick, the 19th-century writer who invented the first box score and harped endlessly about which statistics mattered and which did not; Allan Roth, Branch Rickey's right-hand numbers man with the late-1940s Brooklyn Dodgers; Earnshaw Cook, a scientist and Manhattan Project veteran who retired to pursue inventing the perfect baseball statistic; John Dewan, a former Strat-O-Matic maven who built STATS Inc. into a multimillion-dollar powerhouse for statistics over the Internet; and dozens more.
Almost every baseball fan for 150 years has been drawn to the game by its statistics, whether through newspaper box scores, the backs of Topps baseball cards, The Baseball Encyclopedia, or fantasy leagues. Today's most ardent stat scientists, known as "sabermetricians," spend hundreds of hours coming up with new ways to capture the game in numbers, and engage in holy wars over which statistics are best. Some of these men - and women -- are even being hired by major league teams to bring an understanding of statistics to a sport that for so long shunned it.
Taken together, Schwarz paints a history not just of baseball statistics, but of the soul of the sport itself. The Numbers Game will be an invaluable part of any fan's library and go down as one of the sport's classic books.
In this unprecedented new book, Alan Schwarz - whom bestselling Moneyball author Michael Lewis calls "one of today's best baseball journalists" - provides the first-ever history of baseball statistics, showing how baseball and its numbers have been inseparable ever since the pastime's birth in 1845. He tells the history of this obsession through the lives of the people who felt it Henry Chadwick, the 19th-century writer who invented the first box score and harped endlessly about which statistics mattered and which did not; Allan Roth, Branch Rickey's right-hand numbers man with the late-1940s Brooklyn Dodgers; Earnshaw Cook, a scientist and Manhattan Project veteran who retired to pursue inventing the perfect baseball statistic; John Dewan, a former Strat-O-Matic maven who built STATS Inc. into a multimillion-dollar powerhouse for statistics over the Internet; and dozens more.
Almost every baseball fan for 150 years has been drawn to the game by its statistics, whether through newspaper box scores, the backs of Topps baseball cards, The Baseball Encyclopedia, or fantasy leagues. Today's most ardent stat scientists, known as "sabermetricians," spend hundreds of hours coming up with new ways to capture the game in numbers, and engage in holy wars over which statistics are best. Some of these men - and women -- are even being hired by major league teams to bring an understanding of statistics to a sport that for so long shunned it.
Taken together, Schwarz paints a history not just of baseball statistics, but of the soul of the sport itself. The Numbers Game will be an invaluable part of any fan's library and go down as one of the sport's classic books.
292 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
April 15, 2024
This book is ok. Schwartz is nowhere near as good a writer as Michael Lewis—but who is?
Still, someone lifted whole sentences from the other. This book mentions “Moneyball” by name, suggesting “Numbers Game” was second. And this book is copyrighted 2005, while Lewis’s more famous work came out the year before.
But why would Schwartz paraphrase, changing a word here and there, a book he must have known to be two orders of magnitude more successful? In the abstract, the reverse seems more likely—except for the fact that it’s impossible to get Lewis to shut up (not in “Moneyball,” but some of his other works).
The best new tale here is about the stat company who started providing real-time baseball and basketball scores. After a few months, it was sued by the NBA for NY State law intellectual property violations (based on the turn of the Century International News Service case stating a cause of action for “misappropriation” of “hot news”). The 1976 Copyright Act became final when I still was in school, and we always were taught that Federal Copyright law preempts relates state laws, and overturned the INS case in particular. The NBA convinced a New York Federal District Judge otherwise, but the 2nd Circuit reversed unanimously. This meant all those services that would send scoring info to pagers or computers instantly were not violating the sport’s copyright—because although a broadcast a game broadcast is copyright, anyone can copy retransmit the FACT of the score.
So unless you’re a law geek, and maybe a sports law geek, or a stats geek, stick to “Moneyball.”
Still, someone lifted whole sentences from the other. This book mentions “Moneyball” by name, suggesting “Numbers Game” was second. And this book is copyrighted 2005, while Lewis’s more famous work came out the year before.
But why would Schwartz paraphrase, changing a word here and there, a book he must have known to be two orders of magnitude more successful? In the abstract, the reverse seems more likely—except for the fact that it’s impossible to get Lewis to shut up (not in “Moneyball,” but some of his other works).
The best new tale here is about the stat company who started providing real-time baseball and basketball scores. After a few months, it was sued by the NBA for NY State law intellectual property violations (based on the turn of the Century International News Service case stating a cause of action for “misappropriation” of “hot news”). The 1976 Copyright Act became final when I still was in school, and we always were taught that Federal Copyright law preempts relates state laws, and overturned the INS case in particular. The NBA convinced a New York Federal District Judge otherwise, but the 2nd Circuit reversed unanimously. This meant all those services that would send scoring info to pagers or computers instantly were not violating the sport’s copyright—because although a broadcast a game broadcast is copyright, anyone can copy retransmit the FACT of the score.
So unless you’re a law geek, and maybe a sports law geek, or a stats geek, stick to “Moneyball.”
October 25, 2016
A must for anyone interested in baseball!!
August 21, 2020
Reading this book proves that you think too much about baseball and have too much time on your hands.
Great read though - really enjoyed the evolution of measures throughout the game's history and how/why we even started recording the wacky things that happened during a game beyond who won and lost.
Great read though - really enjoyed the evolution of measures throughout the game's history and how/why we even started recording the wacky things that happened during a game beyond who won and lost.
May 14, 2020
Great insights into the numbers of baseball
June 27, 2023
It's the best book I've read in a long time. For a kid who grew up devouring stats on the back of baseball cards in the early 70s, this book was a revelation on the origin and evolution of what numbers get tracked in baseball and why.
August 3, 2011
Baseball and statistics go together like mustard and hot dogs, peanuts and Cracker Jack. From the games earliest beginnings, fans, spectators, coaches, and owners have been obsessed with gathering and analyzing runs, outs, hits, and innumerable other aspects of the game. Mr. Schwarz's book traces the development of this companionship with, well, relish.
Starting as far back as the mid-1800s, Mr. Schwarz begins by profiling “The Father of Baseball,” Henry Chadwick, and his half-century-long relationship with the game. Mr. Chadwick was the first of many to devote hours and eventually years to designing new scoring methods, box scores and statistics in order to advance his vision of the sport. In fact, the scoring grid he developed is essentially the same box score used today.
It was fascinating to learn how the game has changed over the past 150 years or so. Initially, for example, the pitcher was just a mechanism by which the ball was put into play rather than, arguably, the most important single player on the field today. The rules changed frequently as the professional leagues tried to find the right balance between offense and defense, as the pitcher became more vital, and as the size of the field standardized. All these changing rules wreaked havoc on the state of statistics. Depending on the year, batting averages could include walks as well as hits, stolen bases could include any extra bases a runner advanced, or sacrifice bunts could be excluded from a players' at-bat stats.
Arguments ensued, and frequently still continue, over which stats were the most meaningful, the most important, the most helpful in selecting lineup or choosing strategy, and over the best and most accurate way to calculate those numbers. There have even been occasional backlashes throughout the history of the sport against the emphasis on statistics. In 1880, critics charged that focusing on individual players' statistics encouraged them to “play for their records rather than for their side.” In 1958, a Sports Illustrated columnist complained that “the greatest menace to big-time sports today...is a nonsense of numbers [and] the stupefying emphasis on meaningless statistics which is draining the color from competition.” As recently as 2003, the Boston Red Sox hired a sabermetrician (a statistician who specializes in baseball) as a senior adviser to baseball operations and were accused of turning the team management into “a pack of number-mumbling zombies.”
Regardless of these recurring complaints, the fans' thirst for stats was, and still is, insatiable. However, as different people or organizations calculated those statistics, publications often went to press with conflicting information, coming to a head in the late 1980s and early 1990s. If The Baseball Encyclopedia and Total Baseball didn't agree, just who was the average fan supposed to trust? Did Ty Cobb have 4,190 hits or 4,191? Was Honus Wagner's batting average .327 or .329? Changes were sometimes made arbitrarily and explanations were hard to come by for the discrepancies. “Baseball's records, so important and so revered, were hopelessly screwed up, and the average fan now knew it.” Mr. Schwarz outlines the numerous efforts that have been made by dozens, if not hundreds of baseball fans and statisticians over the years to clean up the confusing mess of facts and ensure accuracy in the sports' historical records. Even famous career totals engraved on bronze plaques in the Baseball Hall of Fame were not exempt from mistakes as a sign in the gallery warns: “The data on all players was taken from reliable sources at the time the plaques were made.” While many fans, players, and managers protested changing these sacrosanct numbers after so many years, John Thorn, a noted baseball author, stated “There can be no statute of limitations on historical error.”
Despite resistance from many old-school traditionalists, by 2002, most major league organizations were working with sabermetrics either through hiring a consultant or actually having someone on staff. Statistical analysis is now standard practice when determining lineup order or when to put a relief pitchers in and is being embraced by newer generations of both managers and fans. Because of the efforts of so many to track, analyze, and calculate the stats, fans can obsess over and revel in the numbers and more thoroughly enjoy America's favorite pastime.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
Starting as far back as the mid-1800s, Mr. Schwarz begins by profiling “The Father of Baseball,” Henry Chadwick, and his half-century-long relationship with the game. Mr. Chadwick was the first of many to devote hours and eventually years to designing new scoring methods, box scores and statistics in order to advance his vision of the sport. In fact, the scoring grid he developed is essentially the same box score used today.
It was fascinating to learn how the game has changed over the past 150 years or so. Initially, for example, the pitcher was just a mechanism by which the ball was put into play rather than, arguably, the most important single player on the field today. The rules changed frequently as the professional leagues tried to find the right balance between offense and defense, as the pitcher became more vital, and as the size of the field standardized. All these changing rules wreaked havoc on the state of statistics. Depending on the year, batting averages could include walks as well as hits, stolen bases could include any extra bases a runner advanced, or sacrifice bunts could be excluded from a players' at-bat stats.
Arguments ensued, and frequently still continue, over which stats were the most meaningful, the most important, the most helpful in selecting lineup or choosing strategy, and over the best and most accurate way to calculate those numbers. There have even been occasional backlashes throughout the history of the sport against the emphasis on statistics. In 1880, critics charged that focusing on individual players' statistics encouraged them to “play for their records rather than for their side.” In 1958, a Sports Illustrated columnist complained that “the greatest menace to big-time sports today...is a nonsense of numbers [and] the stupefying emphasis on meaningless statistics which is draining the color from competition.” As recently as 2003, the Boston Red Sox hired a sabermetrician (a statistician who specializes in baseball) as a senior adviser to baseball operations and were accused of turning the team management into “a pack of number-mumbling zombies.”
Regardless of these recurring complaints, the fans' thirst for stats was, and still is, insatiable. However, as different people or organizations calculated those statistics, publications often went to press with conflicting information, coming to a head in the late 1980s and early 1990s. If The Baseball Encyclopedia and Total Baseball didn't agree, just who was the average fan supposed to trust? Did Ty Cobb have 4,190 hits or 4,191? Was Honus Wagner's batting average .327 or .329? Changes were sometimes made arbitrarily and explanations were hard to come by for the discrepancies. “Baseball's records, so important and so revered, were hopelessly screwed up, and the average fan now knew it.” Mr. Schwarz outlines the numerous efforts that have been made by dozens, if not hundreds of baseball fans and statisticians over the years to clean up the confusing mess of facts and ensure accuracy in the sports' historical records. Even famous career totals engraved on bronze plaques in the Baseball Hall of Fame were not exempt from mistakes as a sign in the gallery warns: “The data on all players was taken from reliable sources at the time the plaques were made.” While many fans, players, and managers protested changing these sacrosanct numbers after so many years, John Thorn, a noted baseball author, stated “There can be no statute of limitations on historical error.”
Despite resistance from many old-school traditionalists, by 2002, most major league organizations were working with sabermetrics either through hiring a consultant or actually having someone on staff. Statistical analysis is now standard practice when determining lineup order or when to put a relief pitchers in and is being embraced by newer generations of both managers and fans. Because of the efforts of so many to track, analyze, and calculate the stats, fans can obsess over and revel in the numbers and more thoroughly enjoy America's favorite pastime.
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
April 26, 2014
Baseball has often been considered the most individual of team sports, and because of its tightly formulated format and rules can be easily captured by summary statistics. From the very start of the game in the mid-nineteenth century fans and the media have charted player and team performances through various batting, pitching and fielding measures. Since the 1970s some of these statistics have influenced management decisions on trades, contract negotiations, and on-field plays, with their authority growing in the last two decades to the extent that every professional baseball team now employs a stats unit and uses a plethora of computer packages to help augment all kinds of decisions in the club and dugout. Alan Schwarz’s The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics charts the evolution of measuring games through box scores, basic summary statistics, more complex measures and algorithms, companies that compile and sell stats, the development of dice and card games utilising baseball stats, statistic societies and initiatives, books and chewing gum cards, the media’s use of stats to help fans follow games via newspapers, radio and TV, and their seepage into decisions by coaches and general managers. The book has both historical depth and width of coverage and provides an engaging account by focusing on key personalities and the innovations they added to baseball’s statistical landscape. For the most part the structure works well, but starts to struggle in its account of developments from the early 1970s up to the present. In part, this is because there are a number of parallel developments that fracture the timeline. The final chapter on academic attempts to make sense of baseball statistics is perhaps the weakest chapter, and the book suffers at its end because there is no concluding chapter that summarises the main thread of the argument or postulates as to what developments might or should emerge in the future. Overall, however, an interesting read.
July 8, 2014
It's hard to say exactly what I think of The Numbers Game: Baseball's Lifelong Fascination with Statistics—I'd assumed it would be more engaging, since statistics have played such a large part in baseball for so long. But I think this might be a case where the book was researched very well, but executed poorly.
No disrespect to Alan Schwarz, but I felt The Numbers Game was lacking in that the concept was unique and interesting, but the writing was hackneyed and wooden. Like Schwarz was really excited by the concept, but that excitement got lost when he put pen to paper. As a result, it's hard for me as a reader to get excited about it.
Another issue I found with this was the style Schwarz adopted: describing a person who's important to the topic, but an unknown to everyone else. Then he sets off their name with a colon and ends a section or a chapter. I like to call this the Ken Burns method. It goes something like this. "Then in 2004, a book finally did come out, and the author would go down as one of the foremost compilers of nonsensical statistical errata: his name was Alan Schwarz." Used prudently, this can be an effective tool in a writer's toolbox. But when you use it as much as Schwarz does, it grows tired very quickly.
Alan Schwarz is a good writer—you can see that from the myriad pieces he's written and the wide readership his articles enjoy. But I don't think the transition from short-form to long-form writing agreed with him all that well. The writing is lackluster and full of cliche. Although each chapter taken in a vacuum might read well, the book taken as a whole is left wanting.
No disrespect to Alan Schwarz, but I felt The Numbers Game was lacking in that the concept was unique and interesting, but the writing was hackneyed and wooden. Like Schwarz was really excited by the concept, but that excitement got lost when he put pen to paper. As a result, it's hard for me as a reader to get excited about it.
Another issue I found with this was the style Schwarz adopted: describing a person who's important to the topic, but an unknown to everyone else. Then he sets off their name with a colon and ends a section or a chapter. I like to call this the Ken Burns method. It goes something like this. "Then in 2004, a book finally did come out, and the author would go down as one of the foremost compilers of nonsensical statistical errata: his name was Alan Schwarz." Used prudently, this can be an effective tool in a writer's toolbox. But when you use it as much as Schwarz does, it grows tired very quickly.
Alan Schwarz is a good writer—you can see that from the myriad pieces he's written and the wide readership his articles enjoy. But I don't think the transition from short-form to long-form writing agreed with him all that well. The writing is lackluster and full of cliche. Although each chapter taken in a vacuum might read well, the book taken as a whole is left wanting.
July 9, 2014
My this game has changed, and the numbers have driven most of the changes. Schwarz may be writing primarily for the fan who digs deep, but he tells and engaging story about the relationship between what we measure and how the game is played.
There is plenty of space given to the "moneyball" period, Sabremetrics, and Bill James' influence. However, I was most impressed with Schwarz coverage of the first fifty years of baseball. The details were fascinating.
There is plenty of space given to the "moneyball" period, Sabremetrics, and Bill James' influence. However, I was most impressed with Schwarz coverage of the first fifty years of baseball. The details were fascinating.
October 28, 2008
A well written book about the history and evolution of baseball statistics. This is not a book on numbers, rather a book about the people who developed statistics for baseball starting with the first box scores in the 1880s and winding up with current GMs and how they utilize information.
September 9, 2009
A great history of baseball and statistics. I was impressed with how well it flowed when presenting such a potentially dry subject. I wouldn't recommend it to those who aren't baseball fans or statistics fans, but I found it very enjoyable.
August 30, 2010
This is a great read. For anybody who is interested in the history of baseball, the book encapsulates this rich history through the study of statistics. Whether you are a stat-head, baseball fan, or both, this is the read for you.
May 31, 2009
It's sort of a history of baseball statistics nerds. Really a book for a very niche audience; but I'm in that niche.
December 26, 2019
I picked up the e-version of this book upon hearing Ben Lindbergh refer to it during an episode of "Effectively Wild", commemorating the death of longtime stats accumulator Seymour Siwoff. The book was described something to the effect of "the battle between forces with respect to what to present to the public, and for what cost".
There is a chapter that is exactly that, specifically the backstory as to why Bill James created Project Scoresheet - the plan to collect detailed information on every game in Major League Baseball history, which as of now pretty much has every game back to 1904 (with some annoying exceptions, primarily an Astros/Braves game in 1973). But the rest of the story deals with how certain stats came in and out of favor, and concludes with the idea that this development will hopefully never end.
All in all it's a good read, if not a spectacular one - certainly there's a lot of repetition, and Schwarz's humor didn't always hit the target for me. A good way of indoctrinating oneself into the world of baseball statistics.
There is a chapter that is exactly that, specifically the backstory as to why Bill James created Project Scoresheet - the plan to collect detailed information on every game in Major League Baseball history, which as of now pretty much has every game back to 1904 (with some annoying exceptions, primarily an Astros/Braves game in 1973). But the rest of the story deals with how certain stats came in and out of favor, and concludes with the idea that this development will hopefully never end.
All in all it's a good read, if not a spectacular one - certainly there's a lot of repetition, and Schwarz's humor didn't always hit the target for me. A good way of indoctrinating oneself into the world of baseball statistics.
August 25, 2021
I took a break from reading for a few weeks, and this was a tough one to get back into. (That isn't reflected in my rating, because that would be unfair, I just wanted to note it.) I picked up this book looking for a character-driven nonfiction book about math and statistics, having little to no understanding of the fundamentals of baseball. I've also read "Moneyball" for the same reason - I just like numbers, and I'm not opposed to them being used in the service of sports. The first hundred or so pages were tough for me to get into, but by the middle the story of baseball's statistical mishaps and the fans' obsession and ownership of statistics was really fascinating and endearing, even to a newbie like me. Initially I wasn't sure I'd stick with this one, but I'm ultimately glad I finished it, as a way to broaden my horizons and give me a strange entry point into baseball.
January 21, 2018
I love statistics, particularly baseball statistics - so it isn't a surprise that I loved this book. The book, however, is about more than the statistics themselves, but rather the men that developed them, tracked them and made them possible. The book proceeds from the earliest days of baseball and all of the early rule changes through the current "sabermetric" period. There's also sections on how research have upended some of the most well-known "numbers" in baseball and created controversies in the baseball community. There's some "math" and esoteric language, but it is relatively small compared to same James' Baseball Abstract or Thorn/Palmer's Hidden Game of Baseball.
February 25, 2024
Fascinating read that truly covers baseball statistics from the very beginning to today’s modern game of sabermetrics. It was cool to be able to hear the stories of how different statistics went in and out of popularity and use and learn who were the founders of such statistics (or at least the first to say they discovered them). This book showed me a window into the game that I knew I would love by showing the marriage of baseball and the statistics that are tracked and recited throughout time.
October 20, 2017
Interesting and well-written
Very much enjoyed this history of baseball statistics. Only disappointment was that it was published in 2004, leaving me hoping a newer edition will eventually be written. Highly recommended.
Very much enjoyed this history of baseball statistics. Only disappointment was that it was published in 2004, leaving me hoping a newer edition will eventually be written. Highly recommended.
July 16, 2019
A little outdated since it came out in 2004. Baseball’s statistical focus has changed greatly in the last decade and a half. Overall, there was lots of good historical information, but tit got hard to read at times
May 7, 2020
As Peter Gammons says on the back cover, "One of the most engrossing histories of baseball ever." While one expects a bit of hyperbole in book jacket endorsements, I think Gammons is spot on. Schwarz is a skilled storyteller who makes the history of baseball statistics incredibly interesting.
July 5, 2025
"...If you wait long enough in baseball, if you roll the Strat-O-Matic dice or spin the All-Star Baseball spinner enough times, they will create for us our legends."
3.5... very repetitive format-wise but I love baseball I love numbers and I love history :)
3.5... very repetitive format-wise but I love baseball I love numbers and I love history :)
October 22, 2025
Really enjoyed this book! The chapter on Babe Ruth comparing just how good he was to all the players of his time was really interesting. Baseball has always been closely intertwined with statistics, and it was really neat to learn about how the game developed and the stats along with it.
January 25, 2018
Probably the best baseball book I've read so far! This game really is built off of a deep statistical history!
May 14, 2018
Don’t know how you give it less than 5 stars. It’s definitive.
April 14, 2019
A funny, engaging, personality-driven rundown of how statistics became an essential part of baseball.
Read
July 17, 2019History of statistics-keeping, from 19th century Harry Chadwick, to 21st century sabermetrics
August 13, 2020
Fun for baseball/math nerds. Very thorough history of the keeping of statistics in baseball and how stats have shaped the game and the players that play it.
February 25, 2021
I love baseball.
December 13, 2022
It was an interesting book, tracing the history of statistics in baseball. Yet, since it is now over 15 years old, it is an incomplete history.
January 12, 2024
yearly read for me. anyone interested in math and statistics would do well to read this
Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews