THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Interesting how Rather invited Silver to join him for analysis of election night. He seems to have bought into objective analysis quickly compared to traditional baseball media.

Great point!

News journalism doesn’t have a long-standing anti-intellectual tradition to overcome.

I don’t think that Rather sees Silver as competition in the same way that baseball writers saw the early sabermetricians as competition. To Rather, Silver is just another talking head in need of a guy like him to ask him questions and impart gravitas. He’s just one in a parade of subject-matter experts.

But bheck out any of the blatherfests on ESPN or the RSNs and you’ll see that the operating paradigm right now is that the sports beatwriters ARE the subject-matter experts, at least in the current paradigm. That’s why the dynamic is different.

(And, a funny little story. I was introduced to Dan Rather once - it was something like three in the morning in Kuwait and he was going to be anchoring the CBS Evening News from our encampment. When you put together an encampment in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert you often don’t install street lights, so you need a ground guide at night, and I was nominated for this auspicious task.

So Rather - from all I could tell a very nice man, I should add - decided he’d walk in front of the vehicle with me. And stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Dan Rather.” I replied, “I thought you looked familiar, sir.”

He chuckled.

I didn’t say it was THAT funny.)

Did Nate give Rather a forged George Bush memo?