What do you think?
Rate this book
The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball
The first book to chronicle the life and ideas of “the serious baseball fan’s high priest” ( New York Times ), the impact of his brilliant and entertaining writings, and how someone who never pitched a ball, held a bat, or managed a team fundamentally changed the way baseball is interpreted, analyzed, and even played.
Bill James has been called “baseball’s shrewdest analyst” ( Slate ) and “part of baseball legend” ( The New Yorker ), and his Baseball Abstract has been acclaimed as the “holy book of baseball” ( Chicago Tribune ). Thirty years ago, James introduced a new approach to evaluating players and strategies, and now his theories have become indispensable tools for agents, statistics analysts, maverick general managers, and anyone who is serious about understanding the game.
James began writing about baseball while working at a factory in his native Kansas. In lively, often acerbic prose, he used statistics to challenge entrenched beliefs and uncover surprising truths about the game. His annual Baseball Abstract captured the attention of fans and front offices and went on to become a bestselling staple of the baseball book category. In 2002, the Boston Red Sox hired James as an advisor. Two years later they achieved their long-awaited World Series triumph.
The Mind of Bill James tells the story of how a gifted outsider inspired a new understanding of baseball. It delves deeply into James’s essential wisdom–including his surprising beliefs about pitch counts and the importance of batting-order, thoughts on professionalism and psychology, and why teams tend to develop the characteristics that are least favored by their home parks. It also brings together his best writing, much of it long out of print, as well as insights from new interviews. Written with James’ full cooperation, it is at once an eye-opening portrait of baseball’s virtuoso analyst and a treasury of his idiosyncratic genius.
Bill James has been called “baseball’s shrewdest analyst” ( Slate ) and “part of baseball legend” ( The New Yorker ), and his Baseball Abstract has been acclaimed as the “holy book of baseball” ( Chicago Tribune ). Thirty years ago, James introduced a new approach to evaluating players and strategies, and now his theories have become indispensable tools for agents, statistics analysts, maverick general managers, and anyone who is serious about understanding the game.
James began writing about baseball while working at a factory in his native Kansas. In lively, often acerbic prose, he used statistics to challenge entrenched beliefs and uncover surprising truths about the game. His annual Baseball Abstract captured the attention of fans and front offices and went on to become a bestselling staple of the baseball book category. In 2002, the Boston Red Sox hired James as an advisor. Two years later they achieved their long-awaited World Series triumph.
The Mind of Bill James tells the story of how a gifted outsider inspired a new understanding of baseball. It delves deeply into James’s essential wisdom–including his surprising beliefs about pitch counts and the importance of batting-order, thoughts on professionalism and psychology, and why teams tend to develop the characteristics that are least favored by their home parks. It also brings together his best writing, much of it long out of print, as well as insights from new interviews. Written with James’ full cooperation, it is at once an eye-opening portrait of baseball’s virtuoso analyst and a treasury of his idiosyncratic genius.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 14, 2006
8 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 19, 2020
Let's start by saying I've been reading Bill James since 1984 and I consider him not only the seminal influence on my understanding of baseball, but a unique thinker who influenced me an a couple of generations of thinkers across many disciplines. The "Hidden Brain" folks and Malcolm Gladwell types would not have emerged when they did if they weren't weaned on Bill James. In my opinion, Bill James belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame in ALL CAPS. So that gives a sense of how positively I am attuned to a book about him.
With that said, this book is kind of a disappointment. It feels rushed and superficial, despite being very accurate and full of anecdotes and bite-sized explanations of his influence, as well as the negative reactions that his ground-breaking ideas generated. There's not a wrong note in this book--a feat to which James himself would probably nod in appreciation.
And yet, it's not personal enough to be a real biography, nor deep enough to explain how his ideas changed the game of baseball. "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis does the latter very well, though with some problems of oversimplification.
I do like this book for what it does offer. First, it gives the facts and the flavor of the story of how George William James became "Bill James". He really did barely finish college, then do two dull years in the Army during the end of the Vietnam War, and then work as a night watchman in a pork-and-beans factory -- and all that time, he obsessed over baseball (as well as a few other things). He really did know that he was able to see the world differently than an older generation that lived on cliches and "eye tests" and misunderstood data. And, miraculously, he was able to build a cult following and then national recognition for his ideas over a period of 3-4 years. He was one of those guys who toiled for a decade and then became an overnight success.
And his ideas are remarkable. They change almost everything we know about baseball. His basic method was to take something that everyone thought they "knew" about baseball, and then to see if there is data to back it up or contradict it. And then he'd write about his findings with honesty, humor, and a true understanding of the meaning of the numbers and their limitations. Nobody had ever done this before, and certainly not with his wit, attention to detail and ability to reference history and politics and economics. Anybody smart who liked baseball saw it as a gem immediately; anybody who liked the antiquated ideas of "grit" and "clubhouse leadership" and spitting tobacco didn't care much for it.
There's no need for me to run through the litany of Jamesian ideas that are discussed in the book. The book does it well enough, including a neat appendix at the end that summarizes about 20 of his key findings about how to win baseball games.
But I will say that his ideas also influenced my life, and this book was a helpful reminder about it. For example, I'm a manager in a company. One of my principles is understanding that I don't have all of the answers, and that input from everyone on our team and from outsiders is critical to our success. That comes from Bill James. So does his idea that you can't squander talent -- that talent isn't free, and it isn't evenly distributed in society or in any economic context. And I live by his corollary that you should focus on what a ballplayer (a worker) can do, not what they can't do. I even have learned from one of Bill's mistakes, which he mentions several times in the book, of being too publicly critical of some ballplayers in his early writings. They are not just ballplayers, but also people, and they deserve respect and compassion, even if they can be criticized for their shortcomings as ballplayers, managers or announcers.
So, in conclusion, let's say that this book is a hit and miss. I'm glad it exists, and I zipped through it in a day (my 2nd or 3rd reading of it in a decade). But to really "get" Bill James, you've got to read him directly.
With that said, this book is kind of a disappointment. It feels rushed and superficial, despite being very accurate and full of anecdotes and bite-sized explanations of his influence, as well as the negative reactions that his ground-breaking ideas generated. There's not a wrong note in this book--a feat to which James himself would probably nod in appreciation.
And yet, it's not personal enough to be a real biography, nor deep enough to explain how his ideas changed the game of baseball. "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis does the latter very well, though with some problems of oversimplification.
I do like this book for what it does offer. First, it gives the facts and the flavor of the story of how George William James became "Bill James". He really did barely finish college, then do two dull years in the Army during the end of the Vietnam War, and then work as a night watchman in a pork-and-beans factory -- and all that time, he obsessed over baseball (as well as a few other things). He really did know that he was able to see the world differently than an older generation that lived on cliches and "eye tests" and misunderstood data. And, miraculously, he was able to build a cult following and then national recognition for his ideas over a period of 3-4 years. He was one of those guys who toiled for a decade and then became an overnight success.
And his ideas are remarkable. They change almost everything we know about baseball. His basic method was to take something that everyone thought they "knew" about baseball, and then to see if there is data to back it up or contradict it. And then he'd write about his findings with honesty, humor, and a true understanding of the meaning of the numbers and their limitations. Nobody had ever done this before, and certainly not with his wit, attention to detail and ability to reference history and politics and economics. Anybody smart who liked baseball saw it as a gem immediately; anybody who liked the antiquated ideas of "grit" and "clubhouse leadership" and spitting tobacco didn't care much for it.
There's no need for me to run through the litany of Jamesian ideas that are discussed in the book. The book does it well enough, including a neat appendix at the end that summarizes about 20 of his key findings about how to win baseball games.
But I will say that his ideas also influenced my life, and this book was a helpful reminder about it. For example, I'm a manager in a company. One of my principles is understanding that I don't have all of the answers, and that input from everyone on our team and from outsiders is critical to our success. That comes from Bill James. So does his idea that you can't squander talent -- that talent isn't free, and it isn't evenly distributed in society or in any economic context. And I live by his corollary that you should focus on what a ballplayer (a worker) can do, not what they can't do. I even have learned from one of Bill's mistakes, which he mentions several times in the book, of being too publicly critical of some ballplayers in his early writings. They are not just ballplayers, but also people, and they deserve respect and compassion, even if they can be criticized for their shortcomings as ballplayers, managers or announcers.
So, in conclusion, let's say that this book is a hit and miss. I'm glad it exists, and I zipped through it in a day (my 2nd or 3rd reading of it in a decade). But to really "get" Bill James, you've got to read him directly.
January 9, 2019
Anyone who has followed baseball will have heard of Bill James, Sabermetrics, Moneyball, and the modern analysis of the game. Bill James may not have started everything (analysis of baseball began right after the first pitch was thrown, no doubt), but James gave the gift of his wit and intellect. First, it was through self-published works in the 1970’s that he sold from tiny advertisements in the back of The Sporting News. The first edition was a whopping $3.50. What buyers got was original thinking, proceeding from first principles, and discarding anything that could not be proven.
Gray’s book needs only to piece together James’ words into a readable narrative, and Gray does it brilliantly. I could see how tempting it would be to weigh in on the many topics covered, but Gray let’s Bill James supply the wit. Some bits made me laugh out loud (and attract unwanted attention in the food court).
“He sniped that ‘Dan Ford is arguably a hitter, but he plays outfield like a blind man staying overnight in a friend’s apartment.”
“What is Hack Wilson doing in the Hall of Fame? He has no more business being there than the Pope has at Caesars Palace.”
“James Thurber once wrote that he had discovered one fact in his lifetime, that ‘most people want to believe rather than to know, to take for granted rather than to find out.”
If you want to hold on to your precious assumptions about the game, whether it be about steals, momentum, or your judgement in the Mays vs. Mantle question, don’t pick up this book. Bill James, through Gray’s exposition, plows through fuzzy thinking like a bulldozer with facts, keen analysis, and historical evidence. And did I mention that this book is occasionally hilarious?
Gray’s book needs only to piece together James’ words into a readable narrative, and Gray does it brilliantly. I could see how tempting it would be to weigh in on the many topics covered, but Gray let’s Bill James supply the wit. Some bits made me laugh out loud (and attract unwanted attention in the food court).
“He sniped that ‘Dan Ford is arguably a hitter, but he plays outfield like a blind man staying overnight in a friend’s apartment.”
“What is Hack Wilson doing in the Hall of Fame? He has no more business being there than the Pope has at Caesars Palace.”
“James Thurber once wrote that he had discovered one fact in his lifetime, that ‘most people want to believe rather than to know, to take for granted rather than to find out.”
If you want to hold on to your precious assumptions about the game, whether it be about steals, momentum, or your judgement in the Mays vs. Mantle question, don’t pick up this book. Bill James, through Gray’s exposition, plows through fuzzy thinking like a bulldozer with facts, keen analysis, and historical evidence. And did I mention that this book is occasionally hilarious?
August 19, 2025
The man who accidentally launched a thousand pop econ books like Moneyball, Freakonomics, Black Swan, The Tipping Point, etc. He himself never sold copies of his books on that level, but they owe him a debt to be sure.
"The Mind of Bill James" was a nice primer on the subject, structured like a biography interwoven with passages from Bill's past works. There is also a useful glossary at the end that explains his essential ideas. If you've read a lot of his early work from the 80's and 90's, there's nothing new here, but as someone who wasn't alive in the 80's I found it interesting.
Sidenote: My favourite part of this book was finding out that Malcolm Gladwell emulates Bill James's tangential style, except he admits that never mastered the part where James actually proves his point:
"Bill James did something else, which I've never forgotten and which has influenced my writing ever since. He mastered the tangent. He would go off on some seemingly unrelated topic (usually about Amos Otis), which only much later would turn out to be totally on point. I try to do that as well, only I'm not nearly as good at making it all turn out later to be totally on point."
It's surprisingly self-aware of Gladwell, because basically he has all these interesting tangents in his work, and then he skips over the parts where Bill James would use statistics and logic to prove his point, and instead Gladwell comes to facile conclusions that seem smart but never hold up to scrutiny.
"The Mind of Bill James" was a nice primer on the subject, structured like a biography interwoven with passages from Bill's past works. There is also a useful glossary at the end that explains his essential ideas. If you've read a lot of his early work from the 80's and 90's, there's nothing new here, but as someone who wasn't alive in the 80's I found it interesting.
Sidenote: My favourite part of this book was finding out that Malcolm Gladwell emulates Bill James's tangential style, except he admits that never mastered the part where James actually proves his point:
"Bill James did something else, which I've never forgotten and which has influenced my writing ever since. He mastered the tangent. He would go off on some seemingly unrelated topic (usually about Amos Otis), which only much later would turn out to be totally on point. I try to do that as well, only I'm not nearly as good at making it all turn out later to be totally on point."
It's surprisingly self-aware of Gladwell, because basically he has all these interesting tangents in his work, and then he skips over the parts where Bill James would use statistics and logic to prove his point, and instead Gladwell comes to facile conclusions that seem smart but never hold up to scrutiny.
March 9, 2017
This book was great in that it had tons of excerpts from Bill James' own writings throughout the course of his career. There's certainly been no better writer and thinker from this generation.
But then again, the author didn't really add much and it wasn't even clear who was doing the talking at some points because of the confusing formatting.
It does inspire me to go back and pick up the early Historical Abstracts. That's certainly worth something.
But then again, the author didn't really add much and it wasn't even clear who was doing the talking at some points because of the confusing formatting.
It does inspire me to go back and pick up the early Historical Abstracts. That's certainly worth something.
December 4, 2019
This book was partly a biography of James and partly a defense of James from critics oversimplifying his arguments, with ample quotes from James. You have to know some baseball to read this book, since not everyone knows who Dave Kingman is. After reading this book I look forward to reading some of James's books.
July 6, 2021
I think this was a cliff notes version of Bill James works. The best parts where the quotes directly from James himself. All this book did was make me want to go back to his orginal abstracts and read them again.
December 2, 2022
this book really changed the way I look at baseball and play baseball when im on the feild and I learned a lot.
December 10, 2023
Only four stars bc it is not written by Bill with all his insights. Though it does contain a fair share. I want to read all his books!
January 28, 2026
Pretty interesting. You will NOT learn about sabermetrics, this is a biography of Bill James.
April 22, 2011
I’ve been a Red Sox fan since I was 6 years old. My heart is held together by superglue, bailing wire, and duct tape it’s been broken so many times. Sometime in the 1980 it got so bad I found I was no longer able to bear watching the games.* I could hardly stand to read the box scores the next morning.
When the players went on strike in 1994 Bill and I more or less abandoned baseball. Bill did watch the World Series and he insisted I see the end of That Game in 2004 when the Sox finally won the series. But I was pretty sure my romance with baseball, which started back when I was watching Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski play left field was over.
Until this season when Bill bought season tickets to the Spokane Indians. They are an A- short season team, but they sparked the old flame and I’ve been following the Red Sox this year (as they proceeded to a 3 and 10 record early in the season, routinely leaving 11 or 15 men on and in one game leaving the bases loaded in three innings. Heartbreaking, just like old times.)
Since I’m one of those people who if they smell smoke immediately look for a book on firefighting (calling 911 can come later,) I needed to do some quality reading to catch up quickly on what has been going on for the last 17 years. And in that regard I was fortunate to have found a friend of a friend on Goodreads, Victor, who is a sports fan and avid reader of books on the subject. He gave me a short list of baseball books and I got started.
The Mind of Bill James was the first one on the list, and it’s delightful reading as well as bringing me up to date on the new statistical revolution in baseball, a revolution that is more interested in the number of walks a player gets than in how many runs he bats in and that counts the plays made by outfielders instead of the number of errors. It’s complicated but it makes sense and it may have something to do with the Red Sox and that miraculous 2004 season.
I have another three or four baseball books in the pipeline and I’m watching games again. However much baseball has changed, and it has changed dramatically since the late 40s, it’s really still the same baseball it was when in my youth I used to lie in the hammock on summer afternoons and listen to Kurt Gowdy on the radio and score the games.
*One night shortly after I married Bill the Sox were ahead 6-2 in the 8th and I went to bed crying (and mystifying Bill.) I couldn’t bear to watch the rest of the game. I knew what was going to happen. And of course it did.
2011 No 67 Coming soon: Invisible Man
When the players went on strike in 1994 Bill and I more or less abandoned baseball. Bill did watch the World Series and he insisted I see the end of That Game in 2004 when the Sox finally won the series. But I was pretty sure my romance with baseball, which started back when I was watching Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski play left field was over.
Until this season when Bill bought season tickets to the Spokane Indians. They are an A- short season team, but they sparked the old flame and I’ve been following the Red Sox this year (as they proceeded to a 3 and 10 record early in the season, routinely leaving 11 or 15 men on and in one game leaving the bases loaded in three innings. Heartbreaking, just like old times.)
Since I’m one of those people who if they smell smoke immediately look for a book on firefighting (calling 911 can come later,) I needed to do some quality reading to catch up quickly on what has been going on for the last 17 years. And in that regard I was fortunate to have found a friend of a friend on Goodreads, Victor, who is a sports fan and avid reader of books on the subject. He gave me a short list of baseball books and I got started.
The Mind of Bill James was the first one on the list, and it’s delightful reading as well as bringing me up to date on the new statistical revolution in baseball, a revolution that is more interested in the number of walks a player gets than in how many runs he bats in and that counts the plays made by outfielders instead of the number of errors. It’s complicated but it makes sense and it may have something to do with the Red Sox and that miraculous 2004 season.
I have another three or four baseball books in the pipeline and I’m watching games again. However much baseball has changed, and it has changed dramatically since the late 40s, it’s really still the same baseball it was when in my youth I used to lie in the hammock on summer afternoons and listen to Kurt Gowdy on the radio and score the games.
*One night shortly after I married Bill the Sox were ahead 6-2 in the 8th and I went to bed crying (and mystifying Bill.) I couldn’t bear to watch the rest of the game. I knew what was going to happen. And of course it did.
2011 No 67 Coming soon: Invisible Man
May 15, 2010
In the 1980s I read every baseball book by Bill James the instant it hit the bookstore shelves. James questioned the common knowledge of baseball, challenging (or confirming) conventional beliefs through statistical analysis. Best of all, James wrote in a witty style that was at times brutally honest, and crafted superb essays that made excellent use of analogies and reminiscences. You could easily develop a college course in analytical thinking based on James' work. It's a tossup who I enjoyed reading more in the 1980s, Bill James or Stephen Jay Gould. In this book Scott Gray does a good job profiling James, discussing James' writings, analyzing James' effect on the baseball community, and provides excerpts from James' work.
August 2, 2010
Continuing my tradition of reading a baseball book at the start of each baseball season, this is a poorly written, disorganized biography about the guy about whom the book Moneyball pivots. James started sabermetrics, the study of baseball via disinterested analysis of its statistics. He was crucial in the acceptance of on-base and slugging percentages as important measures of a hitter. He is currently an employee of the Boston Red Sox organization.
September 17, 2008
Really great read--the highlights by far are the excerpts of James' own writing. Even if you're not a baseball fan, reading about the way James approaches problems--creating questions, and then figuring out how to answer them--is an approach that can be extended and applied to any discipline.
Currently reading
February 26, 2009Its a heavy baseball book. It deals with players from mostly the 70's and 80's. It would be more interesting if it dealt with todays players. Maybe you have to buy his Baseball Abstract books to get current player evaluations.
December 1, 2007
Review is too long for goodreads, you can see my review of this book here: http://trebro.livejournal.com/302892....
June 15, 2008
Much better served to just read Bill James. Not a biography, more of highlight of some of his work.
March 12, 2009
Somewhat dissapointing.
August 22, 2015
Great book about my favorite baseball writer, Bill James.
July 31, 2010
Scary how much I relate to Bill James..
November 30, 2014
Well written, led me to order a Bill James authored book.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews