I made a decision if I wrote about Rickey Henderson I’d not use a statistic. We’re assaulted with stats and metrics now, and whereas baseball is our most numbers-oriented sport, I do sense the analytics revolution has chilled too many followers and reporters from simply speaking about how sure gamers made you’re feeling whereas watching them.
It’s as if you need to apologize for what’s perceived because the illogic of emotion. However after I heard Henderson had died, I didn’t take into consideration a single quantity. I thought of how he made me really feel after I was within the ballpark.
Please forgive a slight detour down reminiscence lane that I hope illuminates this difficulty, no less than considerably:
In my early skilled profession, whereas working at United Press Worldwide, the sports activities division started doing a each day Baseball Almanac that included gadgets resembling recreation of the day, stat of the day, and so forth. It additionally famous which gamers had been born or died on that day. Usually it will learn alongside the traces of: John Doe, who led the Nationwide League in hits in 1913, died as we speak in 1961.
