OK, so now it’s in my house. Right next to me, in fact, on my couch, alongside “The Simpsons and Philosophy.” Why do I mention that latter book? If you were to buy ONE book this year, possibly I would recommend the “Simpsons and Philosophy.” I say “possibly,” because if I had only $18 to spend on a book, I’d still choose Baseball Prospectus. Heck, I did choose BP: I bought the book, I renewed my BP Premium subscription. I’m down with the program. So I’ll save the platitudes. What follows is a mini-polemic.
While I’ve only glanced through a few teams and essays, the writing, editing, and copy-editing are all not what we’ve gotten in the past. Style is visceral and unconscious, both in how we produce it and in how we react to it. Previously at BP it has been smooth and deep, rich yet fluid. In this year’s book, what used to be crisp, humorous blurbs now seem to be vehicles for using gobs of semi-colons. Semi-colons are the Cristo of the writing world: either you get them or you don’t. I use them from time-to-time, but mainly out of boredom; a period would work just as well 99 percent of the time, including for the semi-colon I just used. Style quibbles aside, there are numerous typographical errors, which, while they do not affect the content, after a while they do become annoying and distracting, just as all those semi-colons distracted me from the analysis of, just to pick a player at random, Bartolo Colon. Random, I swear.
You’re probably saying, “That’s the best you can do? Some typos and an increased usage of semi-colons? Dude, you've got issues.” Fair enough, but there’s more. (And remember, this is a polemic. I'm keeping away from the good stuff.) In general, the tone of the book has an unpleasant feel to it, the opposite of, say, reading F. Scott Fitzgerald. Say what you want about the stories, but the feeling you get from reading him is suffusive, intoxicating, alluring. It’s knowing you’re a sweet nectarine surrounded by rotten prunes. Using non-fruit examples, if I could use one word to describe the tenor of the book, it would be “defensive.” I’ll focus on one example, but there are many. And the example I choose is, sadly, an old one—namely, Derek Jeter. Over the years, as the debate between “Moneyball” and “Traditionalism” has roared, both sides have become more strident. It’s galling to hear Joe Morgan babble on and on and on and on and on, but it’s no less galling to read BP excoriating Derek Jeter again and again and again and again. We get it already: He’s not great defensively and didn’t deserve the Gold Glove; he’s not a great hitter, at least not A-Rod great; he wouldn’t be as over-hyped if he was in Florida. Etc. Blah. Yadda.
I thought the issue had been mostly resolved—Jeter was somewhat overrated by “traditionalists” and somewhat underrated by “stat-heads.” That’s an imperfect resolution, but you get the drift. But under Jeter’s blurb, BP once again launches into the “How good is Jeter REALLY defensively?” saga. Fine. Prove your point. For the 204th time. Now we can move on. Then, as I was reading the comments on D-Backs SS prospect Sergio Santos, along comes Jeter. Why Jeter? Apparently Santos is not going to make it as a shortstop. The scouts think he can, but BP does not. Fair enough. Scouts have been wrong before, and, believe it or not, so has BP. But being opinionated makes for interesting writing, and I’m as opinionated as the next person. So they laconically wrap up their commentary on Santos with “He’s got a chance to be a good one if he can find somewhere else to play.” Only, they weren’t done. “It’s bad enough we have to watch Derek Jeter play shortstop. Lord, save us from Santos.” Simply put, that’s a cheap shot. It adds nothing to BP’s point. Saying that Santos is stretched for the position is fine, and saying that Jeter is stretched for the position is fine. But using Jeter as a straw-man was old four years ago, just as every inane “Pro-Jeter” diatribe (and I’m not defending Jeter here) is old by now. Why not use B.J. Upton as an example? He's not going to wind up at short, either. What’s worse is that “It’s bad enough we have to watch Derek Jeter play shortstop,” aside from being patently untrue—the “bad enough” dig should be applied to Tim McCarver’s orgasmic drooling over Jeter—is not even funny, and BP used to be very funny. Now the legitimate humour is increasingly juxtaposed with sanctimonious quarter-jokes and meaningless barbs at the Devil Rays or Tigers—to say nothing, naturally, of the sniping at Derek Jeter. It's not all sniping, though, as the end of Jeter's comments proves: "Jeter is a Hall-of-Famer to be, a key player on a great team, an inspirational leader, a fine hitter . . . and he gives up a lot of singles with his glove. In light of the rest, why is that last part so difficult to accept?" Well said.
On the other hand, the whole situation reminds me of the time my dad was “laid off” from a job he really and truly enjoyed, and claimed, from the start, that he wasn’t bitter about being down-sized. None of us believed him. My mom and brother and sister and I kept saying to him, in various ways, “Don’t be upset, dad, these things happen. You’ll bounce back.” True enough. He found a job that he liked, if not quite as much, and he said he was happy. But since he had really liked the old job so much, we didn’t believe him. Gradually, though, it became clear that he was, in fact, happy at his new job. And it occurred to us that he wasn’t keeping the past alive. We were.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050301024114547