Can a reference book really be this entertaining?

books:


	• The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches Bill James, Rob Neyer Fireside, 2004 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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Can a reference book really be this entertaining?

I make no bones about being a loyal Bill James-ite, so when I found out he and his old running buddy Rob Neyer (now of ESPN) were working on a book about pitchers and pitches, I knew it would go immediately to the top of my "must buy" list.

Now, a word of warning: "The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers" IS A REFERENCE BOOK! If you're looking for a book with nothing but the interesting, thought-provoking, often caustic, always entertaining essays that are R.N.'s and B.J.'s bread and butter, there are a few (and they're very good). But at its heart, the book is a reference volume, listing the pitches and pitching styles of pretty much every significant pitcher in Major League and Negro League history (and many of the less significant ones too).

But be that as it may, the reference material is probably more entertaining than most prose by other writers. It's the sort of book that, if you like baseball history, you can open at random and find something you a) didn't know, and b) will find funny, intriguing or just plain enlightening. One example: if you've ever read "Ball Four", you know that one of the running jokes is about Seattle pitcher Steve Barber and his arm ("it's not sore, it's just a little stiff" -- notwithstanding that he probably spent more time with the diathermy machine than he did with his teammates). Wonder why he was so racked up? Turn to page 126 in Neyer/James -- Barber was a fastball/slider pitcher who threw ACROSS his body, absolutely the worst combination of pitch selection and pitching motion if you want to keep your arm healthy. I could cite 20 more examples easily.

So thank you, Rob and Bill, for filling a gap in the baseball research library, and making it fun to boot. I know when I'm drafting pitchers in my all-time fantasy league at Legends of Baseball, I'll be glad to have this book by my side.

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Maybe I Expected Too Much

In reading this book, you can see the differences between the two writers - in fact, gimme a sentence or two and I can probably tell you which one wrote what - but I think I expected a little too much from this book. Obviously, info on what pitches a pitcher used during his career is subject to availability and maybe I expected Neyer, and especially James, to come up with more info than they did - it is mainly newspaper quotes and maybe just a handful of direct quotes from the pitchers themselves, via e-mail. I thought the chapters on each type of pitch was interesting in how they ranked pitchers and how those pitches differed but I can't help but think they were just filler, done only to probably fill out the book - I was hoping there would be more pitchers listed than there were in the book but I guess only so much info was was available to them.

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An underrated and terrific book

I judge a book not by what it doesn't have, but what it DOES have. And this book has all the things you'd expect in another great book from Bill James or Rob Neyer.

It has information you can't find anywhere else and probably never thought you could. Where else could you find accounts of exactly HOW all these pitchers pitched, all in one volume? It's the result of a decade of research by the two authors and their assistants.

In additional to the basic information, there are the usual essays, plus the usual Bill James digressions and asides. It's all very well organized. There's no trouble knowing where to find what you want.

And, as usual, it makes you THINK, and it makes you realize things that are relevant not just to baseball but to everything. One of the opening chapters focuses on how much the subject depends on linguistics and vocabulary, and how we might think a source tells us something but it doesn't really, because we don't understand the meanings of the words and phrases that are being used. Usually this is because the language has evolved over time, but sometimes it's because the language is used arbitrarily or sloppily. This is true about "knuckleballs" and "sliders" and "curves." But we readily realize that it can apply to anything.

The introductory chapter includes some duelling between the authors about things, some of which would seem to be "facts" but which are hard to pin down. It's interesting to see how much remains debatable about such a seemingly straightforward subject, even after years of research, and how much it will forever be arguable.

Especially interesting is the material about how the mechanics and strategy of pitching have evolved over the years, and WHY. In most instances there were specific reasons and fairly clear dividing lines for the major changes.

My one criticism would be that the content is indeed a bit erratic. One of the book's purposes is to catalog any noteworthy idiosyncrasies of a pitcher's style. But I notice that on some of the guys with the very most famous idiosyncrasies, you find nothing or almost nothing. For example, there's nothing about what Al Hrabosky was famous for, and almost nothing about Luis Tiant's hilarious mannerisms.

Still.....highly recommended for Bill James/Rob Neyer fans, and for anybody who enjoys interesting baseball material that's unlike what you've ever seen.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Pitchers, the pitches they throw, and how they throw them -- these days it's the stuff of constant scrutiny, but there's never been anything like a comprehensive source for such information. That's what preeminent baseball analyst Bill James and ESPN.com baseball columnist Rob Neyer realized over lunch more than a dozen years ago. Since then, they've been compiling the centerpiece of this book, the "Pitcher Census," which lists specific information for nearly two thousand pitchers, ranging throughout the history of professional baseball. The Guide also offers:

A "dictionary" describing virtually every known pitch

The origins and development of baseball's most important pitches

Top ten lists: best fastballs, best spitballs, and everything in between

Biographies of some of the great pitchers who have been overlooked

More knuckleballers and submariners than you ever thought existed

An open debate concerning pitcher abuse and durability

A formula for predicting the Cy Young Award winner

Something fresh and new: Bill James' "Pitcher Codes"

The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers is about understanding pitchers, and baseball's action always starts with the pitchers. It's also about entertaining debates and having a great deal of fun with the history of a game that obsesses so many.

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