from Amazon
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Numbers Guys and Murray Chass
People play baseball. Numbers don’t.
People play baseball. Writers don’t.
Given the choice between looking at a VORP report or reading a column by Murray Chass, I’ll pick the VORP. But, given the choice between either of those two, or watching the Royals play the D’Rays in spring training, I’ll watch the baseball game.
Chass must believe that he and his followers represent baseball, and if you are not with him, you are against baseball. We all love baseball. The only problem is when one person tells another person why he’s convinced he’s right or wrong, rather than offering a reason as to why he thinks he’s right or wrong. Chass is convinced that VORP is useless, but doesn’t tell us the reason. Others are convinced Chass is useless, but they don’t care enough to lay out their case. VORP is VORP, and Chass is Chass, and never the twain shall meet.
I’m a numbers guy, but first and foremost, I’m a baseball guy. I’m just a guy who loves baseball (and hockey and the CFL) like most other Canadian boys. I just also happen to have an aptitude for numbers. One doesn’t preclude the other. On the contrary, I find one supplements the other. If all electronics were to be destroyed, I’d be perfectly content watching a ball game. The pure numbers guys, those guys who treat baseball as a toy or something to study, they’d go away. Don’t lump me in with those guys. On that, I can meet Chass.
Why do we think that the purity that is the game of baseball must mean MLB? MLB is a business that uses the game of baseball as an entertainment vehicule by extracting from its fans all the money they can possibly willingly give, and then some.
Baseball, on the other hand, is a beautiful game.
Senator McCarthy’s ambition to establish the integrity of the game (as opposed to MLB) has no relationship whatsoever with a player signing over his right to privacy. And until Special Prosecutor Michael Fitzgerald Schmidt will grant McGwire immunity from prosecution, he shouldn’t expect McGwire to possibly incriminate himself.
And to answer the Senator: a person’s constitutional right is more important then the integrity of the game of baseball.