from Amazon
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Book an example of good story telling? I won’t dispute the Roosevelt University Writing Center
As they explain:
What do I mean? Well, statistics, documented research, and analysis must be the core of the paper; however, stories can help to explain these. In Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman, and Andrew Dolphin’s book, The Book, they examine baseball theories through advanced statistics. Throughout the course of their book, they wisely provide examples, real life stories, to compliment their statistical findings. The authors begin The Book, in its preface, by telling a true story to legitimize their purpose:
The biggest player on the field makes the slow walk from the on-deck circle to the batter’s box. The left fielder shouts out something, and the pitcher turns around. Four fingers. The left fielder, who also happens to be the coach of the team, is holding out four fingers. Half of the players on the fielding team have their mouths agape, and the other half nod approvingly. There’s a man on second base and one out, after all. The inning ends with three runs scoring, including the batter who was intentionally walked...
With this opening, they present not only a memorable story, but the inherent flaws of the previously accepted norm—that walking excellent batters intentionally is the best move. Later in The Book, they certainly refrain from such ambitious story-telling, but stay true to the need for historical or hypothetical stories—a tactic we can all learn to love to mimic.
Indeed, this was EXACTLY the effect we were going for. The Book is an exceptionally dry read. It’s tough, and downright impossible in the case of the sac bunt, to read a chapter in one sitting. There are two things that we made a conscious decision to do, to make it more palatable: one was to use as many examples as possible to create some sort of storyline. And the second was to put a summary box every few pages, so that the reader can feel he can jump past the really mathy parts to the summary boxes and move on to the next page, without missing a beat.
Anyway, thank you Bradley Woodrum for being so kind with your analysis.
I love a good mixture of narration/storytelling with analysis, it greatly improves the readability of any book, as well as the enjoyment from reading it. Moneyball is a great read because of the story. If it was merely an analysis that said ‘OBP, especially walks and bat control/pitch selection are being undervalued. Batting average, RBIs, and nice body types are being overvalued by scouts’, then it wouldnt be nearly as fun to read.
I think the narration actually makes the presentation of the analysis more effective as well! Because you enjoy the reading of a book, you like it more, and are more inclined to accept its analysis as true.
I also greatly appreciated the summaries in The Book. Sometimes just for the recap of what I had learned, and easy access to the finidngs. A couple times, because I had become bogged down in some section, and they allowed me to skip ahead into something else, without missing out on the conclusion.