A Guest Post by Editor Neil White

In the fall of 1970, I sat in my fourth-grade Sunday school class. Our teacher, Mrs. Hemphill, posed a question to the class of three girls and three boys.

“Who is your hero?” she asked.

The girls in the class mentioned Bobbie Gentry and Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Sinatra. The three of us boys agreed on the same hero — Archie Manning.

Mrs. Hemphill spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince us that only one man was worthy of hero worship. And at the end of the Sunday school period, Mrs. Hemphill polled us again. The three girls in the class had changed their answers to Mrs. Hemphill’s satisfaction.

“Boys?” Mrs. Hemphill asked, looking over her reading glasses.

I glanced at my two buddies and in unison we answered, “Archie Manning.”

In Mississippi, we love our football. And no state can compare to the kind of talent we breed here. Consider —

• Jerry Rice’s receiving records will stand for generations.

• Brett Favre’s toughness, durability and desire to win are unparalleled.

• Walter Payton’s name is synonymous with greatness.

• Lance Alworth proved that the pass game could be a team’s primary offensive weapon.

Wide receiver Lance Alworth #19 of the San Diego Chargers catches a touchdown pass from quarterback John Hadl during the first quarter of a game on November 6, 1966 at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs’ defender is Fred Williamson #24. (Photo by: John Vawter Collection/Diamond Images/Getty Images)

• Charlie Conerly actually “coached” Vince Lombardi on how to motivate professionals.

• Ray Guy redefined the role of a punter.

Left: Oakland Raiders Ray Guy (8) in action, punt vs San Diego Chargers at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Oakland, CA 11/17/1974

• Gene Hickerson proved that a tough, speedy guard could create freeways for the Jim Browns of the NFL.

• Lem Barney blazed the trail for cornerbacks like Deion Sanders and Charles Woodson.

• Deacon Jones (the man who coined the term “sacks”) redefined the defensive end position.

Right: Defensive Tackle Deacon Jones #75 of the Los Angeles Rams in action against the San Francisco 49ers (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

• Robert Brazile did the same for the outside linebacker position.

• The aforementioned players grew up admiring the tenacity of Mississippi’s Frank “Bruiser” Kinard.

A 2006 study conducted collaboratively between USA Football and Wharton Business Initiative ranked Mississippi the #1 state in the nation for football. We already knew this . . . but it’s nice to hear it from experts.

And, now, in the first edition of Mississippi’s 100 Greatest Football Players of All Time we have ranked the top players from the top state — #1 through #100.

The book is meant to be fun. Any attempt to quantify the greatest is, at best, subjective; at worst, flawed (watch for our Methodology post in a few days).

We welcome your thoughts, comments, opinions and criticisms. We’d even love to see your own rankings (top ten, top 25). Post here and compare to our list when it’s revealed to the public on November 15th at Lemuria Books.

Unlike Mrs. Hemphill, we believe there is more than one valid answer. After all, my childhood hero, Archie, came in at a mere #6.

Neil White, Editor

Neil White will be at Lemuria signing Mississippi’s 100 Greatest Footbal Palyers of All Time, on Tuesday at 5:00. Some football players should be on hand to sign as well. Stay tuned!

It’s been, oh, at least a few weeks since I last blogged about a baseball book…what can I say? Whenever I’m feeling a bit uninspired by the next book in my reading stack, I find myself gravitating toward the baseball section. I’m sure it’s possible to write a bad baseball book (I’ve seen them and know they exist), but I find the baseball section to be comparatively dense with great books.

This time I ended up with a book because of the author – Joe Posnanski. I remember seeing his book The Machine when it was released, and while I appreciated the fantastic cover photo of Pete Rose, neither the subject (the 1975 Cincinnati Reds) nor its author sparked any particular interest in me. I recognized Joe Posnanski’s name from Sports Illustrated, but otherwise was only tangentially familiar with his work.

Since then, I’ve become a fan of his writing through Posnanski’s online columns. Something about his writing resonated with me – his columns for the print edition of SI are a bit tighter, but in his online columns, he’s free to pursue the occasional digression or delve into the minutiae of a subject if there’s good reason to. Even in his ramblier moments, though, he is able to cut through the distractions and capture the most compelling angle (to me) on a subject. Now I’m subscribed to his RSS feed so I am sure never to miss one of his columns.

I did mention The Machine in an earlier blog, but only in passing, and I felt it deserved to be revisited. What’s amazing to me is that there are at least four or five storylines that could be developed into separate books – Sparky Anderson’s unconventional relationship with his players (he openly categorized players into “superstars” and “turds”), Joe Morgan’s development from being a “good little hitter” into the most complete player in the game, Pete Rose’s intense need to demonstrate his greatness, Dave Concepcion’s desire to be considered a superstar and not a turd – but to treat each story separately would de-emphasize how they all interact. Sparky Anderson’s caste system fed Morgan’s arrogance and Concepcion’s insecurity. Rose’s need to validate his own greatness was encouraged by Morgan’s constant reminders that he (Morgan) was the better player. Concepion would tell anyone who would listen that he was a superstar and not, in fact, a turd, but if Morgan or Rose happened to overhear, they would shout him down.

I’ll try to find some non-baseball books to blog about soon, but I make no promises. If you have a nearly insatiable appetite for baseball books like I do, be sure to add The Machine to your reading pile.

I’ve been thinking about Moneyball again. Actually, it’s fair to say that I think about Moneyball a good bit. I’m an avid baseball fan, and I have a particular interest in sabermetrics, which is a term coined by Bill James that refers to the statistical, empirical analysis of baseball. Michael Lewis’s Moneyball brought sabermetrics into the public spotlight — and thus created a 3-way intersection of factions: (1) The sabermetricians (and those who find value in sabermetric analysis) like Bill James or Billy Beane (GM of Oakland, and subject of Moneyball), (2) the traditionalists like baseball writer Murray Chass, who felt that sabermetrics could not measure heart or desire or grit, and that emphasizing statistics interferes with fan enjoyment, and (3) the remaining undecided baseball fans, who were not sure what to make of all this.

As quickly as sabermetrics gained popularity, the backlash grew in lockstep. Most of the traditionalists weren’t so extreme as to abandon all statistics, but often claimed that the only statistics needed were the traditionally established categories like batting average, runs, wins, and so on. Every opportunity was taken to mock the sabermetric movement as a bunch of nerds with calculators. In one famous instance, Hall of Famer Joe Morgan claimed in a broadcast that Billy Beane wrote Moneyball and that he (Morgan) did not need to bother reading the book to know that it was wrong.

It’s not surprising, then, that the Oakland Athletics became the poster-child (poster-children?) for the sabermetric movement. Critics were happy to point out that, while the Athletics did win (or finish near the top) of the AL West division for several years, the Moneyball strategy didn’t “work” in the postseason. And when Oakland did finally slip out of contention over the last few years, it was hailed as the death-knell for Moneyball, final proof that the traditionalists were right.

The debate raged on, however, as the sabermetricians insisted that the “Moneyball plan” wasn’t tied to the particular strategies employed by Billy Beane (signing undervalued hitters who could get on base and hit for power, even if they didn’t have a gaudy batting average), but rather in trying to identify market inefficiencies in whatever form they currently take. In Oakland’s case, it involved finding those hitters who could get on base, but after a few years other teams began to realize the value of those hitters, and the advantage disappeared. As the rest of the league fought over the patient power hitters, a new market inefficiency emerged: defense. Fielding ability has always been one of the most difficult skills to capture in statistics, and so as sabermetricians began looking for the best way to evaluate defensive ability, they realized that too often the best defenders were undervalued by teams. The traditionalists were undeterred, however, as they took this new sabermetric shift in priorities as a tacit admission that the “pitching and defense/play the game the right way/bunt ’em over, hit ’em in” traditions were, after all, correct.

The war for the soul of baseball has continued and expanded — every aspect of game is subject to intense scrutiny by the sabermetric community for the stated purpose of greater understanding, while the traditionalists cry that their sport is being deconstructed and destroyed in the process, all the beauty and grace lost in the wash of numbers.

Why rehash all this recent history? Because it finally looks like the Moneyball movie may be on the way. If Moneyball on the big screen sounds odd to you, you’re not alone. Moneyball doesn’t seem to lend itself to film in the same way that, say, The Blind Side did. The story centers around a front office executive, and there’s no great triumph at the end, no World Series victory (or even appearance). Perhaps the difficulty of adaptation partially explains why the production went through three writers (Stan Chervin, Steven Zaillian, and finally Aaron Sorkin) and three directors (David Frankel, Steven Soderbergh, and now Bennett Miller). There is cause for optimism, though, with Sorkin, fresh off his Academy Award-winning screenplay for The Social Network, and Miller, who last directed the 2005 film Capote.

I will admit that I was worried about a film adaptation — not only because of the risk of turning a good book into a bad movie, but also because a film would introduce the general public to the sabermetric debate and possibly fan new and higher flames, as well as give the most reactionary traditionalists another opportunity to paint Moneyball, Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics, and anyone interested in understanding the game through statistical analysis as number-obsessed, joyless nerds who are happier studying a spreadsheet than actually watching a real baseball game. This bothers me because I have yet to come across anyone who actually believes that sabermetrics is the only way to experience baseball. Careful statistical study may reveal (or, at least, suggest) who the most valuable hitter or pitcher might be, but it cannot dictate who your favorite player is, or who you most enjoy watching, any more than the MVP award did in years past. We’ve always measured accomplishments in baseball; sabermetrics is nothing more than an attempt at measuring accomplishments in a more rigorous, logical way, and it does not (or should not) diminish the fans’ enjoyment of the game itself.

My hope is that the Moneyball movie will spark more widespread interest in sabermetrics, and that the story will retain the nuance and balance that the book had. The soul of baseball need not be fought over. There’s room for everyone.

Those Guys Have All the Fun has made quite the impact in the sports blogosphere. ESPN stands as the singular giant in the sports industry, so far-reaching that it has become virtually synonymous with sport itself. It has blurred the line between athlete, journalist, and fan. It has become the establishment, a massive multi-billion dollar company that is worth more than the NBA, MLB, and NHL combined. It has also at times been accused of taking itself a little too seriously.

It is for this last reason that Jim Miller and Tom Shales’ book was garnering press in the weeks prior to its release. The excerpts made available in advance revealed that the book wasn’t simply an outsider’s perspective on ESPN – it was an account pieced together from interviews with ESPN employees. This is a guess, but I’d say that something like 95% of the book’s text is actually direct quotes from employees, simply arranged and ordered into a narrative, with only occasional text from the authors to give context or summary.

I was concerned that the format would make the book a bit tedious – and since the book is over 700 pages long, tedium is no small worry. The trick, however, is in the editing. The authors have done a wonderful job placing and ordering the quotes to form a coherent and engaging story. It works well, and it makes for oddly funny moments – five or six quotes in a row from various ESPN employees, all complaining about the same person, followed immediately by a quote from the person in question, saying, “I think my time there was great. I think I was well-liked.” If the authors just described the scenario, it’d be a little painful, and not particularly funny, but to read the words of the people, to gauge for oneself how candid or honest each person is being, adds a fascinating element.

ESPN employees sniping at each other and complaining about the company played a large role in the advance publicity of the book. Little, Brown kept the contents of the book secret for weeks, finally lifting the embargo just days before the release date. Readers were not disappointed – the number and size of the egos meant for plenty of TMZ-ish celebrity gossip. Chris Berman, Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Mike Tirico, Rick Reilly, Bill Simmons, and virtually every big name in the ESPN universe is targeted at one time or another. Some of it is merely petty, and some of it is legitimately disturbing.

Fortunately, the gossip column is just a part of the book, and not its entirety. There’s plenty of material on the early days of ESPN, the expansion into the largest cable network, and the forays into radio, magazines, and the array of secondary channels. If anything, there’s so much information that it’s a little daunting, but the format makes it easy to read in chunks – I’ve had it sitting on my bedside table for a couple of weeks, and it’s perfect whether you want to pick it up and read 5 pages or 50 pages at a time. A must read for the sports fan, especially for those interested in the role of media and the evolution of journalism.

Last time I said I would be back with a post all about the new baseball books this year. I’ve decided to postpone that for another week or two – there are just so many new baseball titles that it’d be a shame to leave any out, and I want to read and check out as many of them as possible before revisiting the topic here.

In the meantime, I figured I would cover a book that I nearly included in the last post. I’m glad I didn’t, as it covers a broader spectrum of topics than just baseball and it’s worth devoting a separate post to it. The title is Scorecasting, and it’s squarely in the pop-economics genre popularized by “Freakonomics” a few years ago – this is confirmed by the cover blurb by Steven Levitt declaring it to be the “closest thing to Freakonomics I’ve seen since the original.”

That’s a pretty fair comparison – it’s a similar brand of behavioral economic analysis, but applied to a host of sports and sports-related issues. The first chapter, for example, is entitled “Whistle Swallowing,” and examines the phenomenon of referees and umpires preferring to err on the side of failing to make a call, than actively making an incorrect call. In terms of influence on a basketball game, there isn’t much difference between an actual foul that goes uncalled, and a phantom foul that is mistakenly called, but referees openly admit they’d rather not call an actual foul, than mistakenly call a foul where there isn’t one.

Likewise, it’s been determined (using Pitch f/x) that baseball umpires call a much smaller strike zone for an 0-2 pitch than they do for a 3-0 pitch – essentially, they are more comfortable making the passive mistake (failing to call the ball or strike that results in the at-bat continuing), than making the active mistake (mistakenly calling the ball or strike that results in a walk or strikeout). Examples abound across all sports – the officials, in their desire not to mistakenly affect the outcome, strongly prefer errors of omission to errors of comission.

What makes this revelation doubly interesting is that it seems fans as well as officials prefer this inherent bias. The loyal fan may complain when his favorite player is fouled and it goes uncalled, but not nearly so loudly as when he complains that the referee has changed the outcome by calling his favorite player for a non-existent foul. Fans know that referees will make mistakes, and it seems that they are more comfortable with the officials occasionally failing to make a call when they should, than if they change the outcome by actively making calls they shouldn’t.

I couldn’t help but think about Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game when I read this chapter, as it stands as possibly the most striking and tragic counter-example in recent memory. On June 2nd of 2010, Galarraga was one out away from completing the 21st perfect game in Major League history. The 27th batter, Jason Donald, hit a slow infield roller that first baseman Miguel Cabrera fielded and flipped to Galarraga for the (apparent) final out at first base. Umpire Jim Joyce signaled that Donald was safe, but replay confirmed that Donald was in fact out by half a step.

Perhaps Joyce really was convinced that Donald was safe. But somehow, I can’t help but think that somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was worried about falsely awarding a pitcher with an undeserved perfect game. Joyce, an umpire widely regarded for his professionalism and class, was inherently biased against creating an historic outcome with a mistaken call – one can imagine him steeling himself to make the unpopular “safe” call if the circumstances demanded it. He was so concerned over this possibility that when the seemingly inevitable split-second play occurred, he was more ready, more willing, to make the unpopular “safe” call, even in error.

The easiest thing in the world would have been to call the 27th and final out on any close play – even if replay proved him wrong, nobody would have complained too loudly. But in his desire to make the correct call, in any situation, he was willing to risk taking away a perfect game from a 28 year old journeyman pitcher, to take away the historic moment of glory from a pitcher who would be demoted and then traded away for two minor leaguers in the offseason. Jim Joyce bucked the inherent bias; he did not swallow his whistle.

My plan for this post was to cover as many of the new baseball books as possible, as I’ve done the last few Aprils. But this year, as I was reading and preparing, I realized that one book stood out and deserved to be discussed in greater detail. So the revised plan is cover that book here, and then in a week or two, I’ll write a seperate post covering the other new baseball books.

The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri

An over-zealous blurb or comparison is a dangerous thing. I’d read a lot of advance praise about Jonah Keri’s The Extra 2%, but when it arrived with not one but two Moneyball mentions on the back cover, I was worried. Michael Lewis’s book was so influential and so eclipsed the boundaries of the baseball book and business book genres that any comparison seems risky at best. On the other hand, it’s probably inevitable that any new baseball/business books will garner Moneyball comparisons, so at this point it’s probably best to just ignore them and evaluate the book on its own merits (if you’re interested, you can read my blog on Moneyball here).

The Extra 2% stands up just fine on its own, so its a bit of shame that, on the surface, it follows the Moneyball formula so closely – it is, after all, the story of how a small-market baseball franchise has challenged the status quo and competed with big market teams by applying unconventional strategies and creative solutions. The similarities really end there, however. Moneyball really centered around Billy Beane and his approach to player evaluation, and the rise of statistical analysis instead of traditional scouting. The Extra 2% is much broader – Keri covers the history of the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, the new ownership, the general manager, the players – really, every aspect of the organization. He looks at both the on-field turnaround as well as the business decisions by the new owners to build a fan base in Tampa/St. Petersburg. All these little decisions, the cumulative advantage built on doing just a bit more in every part of the business and the game – that’s the extra 2%.

More importantly, though, Keri is careful to distinguish between the current success of the Rays and the possibility of future continued success – when unconventional strategies work, they remain unconventional for only so long, and pretty soon the rest of the league (or most of it, anyway) has caught up. The Rays will have to be one step ahead of the Red Sox and Yankees off the field just to keep pace with them on the field. The MLB revenue-sharing policies help small-market teams to some degree, but unfortunately they also disincentivize growth and competitive effort on the part of small-market teams. How (and if) the Rays will continue to compete with the big market teams remains to be seen.

I also appreciated the balanced examination of the decisions made by the previous management compared to the current management of the (Devil) Rays. Not every decision made by the previous group was terrible – some of the players acquired and developed during that period made major contributions to the AL East-title winning Rays teams. Nor has the new ownership batted 1.000 on their strategies. But the difference isn’t simply in degrees of success – it’s the difference between a management group that vacillated between conflicting goals, and a management group that is committed to a plan, committed to follow the steps to rebuilding the franchise (and taking their lumps in the meantime).

If there’s a flaw in The Extra 2%, it’s that it lacks a central character that ties the story together. With the possible exception of manager Joe Maddon, none of the figures in the book are particularly intriguing or charismatic – they seem like guys you might want managing your retirement fund, but not someone you’d invite to your barbecue. It’s hard to blame the writer for this, however – people are who they are, and the story of the Rays’ success really is the story of a team, not a single charismatic figure.

In the end, The Extra 2% rightly deserves its own place in the library of baseball books, and it is my favorite new baseball book this year. I’ll cover some of the other new baseball books in a week or two — there are some excellent runner-ups this year.

Football hasn’t enjoyed the same literary tradition that baseball has. Classics like The Natural, Bang the Drum Slowly, Eight Men Out, Ball Four, and Moneyball are just the peaks of the vast range of baseball literature. But I’ve noticed several new books this year that I think will start to fill the gaps in the football library — something more compelling and serious than the ubiquitous player autobiographies and coach-speak management/leadership/inspirational/motivational titles.

The first one that made it home with me, though, was Peter Richmond’s Badasses, about the 1970’s era Oakland Raiders. It struck me that for football fans of my age (I’m 28), the Raiders have really only existed as a joke of a team: perennially terrible, with an elderly owner nobody wants to play for and a string of failed draft picks and free agent signings. Casual mentions on Monday Night Football about John Madden’s coaching success with the Raiders almost seemed apocryphal, and any modern success was precarious and short-lived (exemplified by Rich Gannon leading the Raiders to the 2002 Super Bowl only to throw 5 interceptions in a brutal loss).

Additionally, it can be difficult to gain the context of an era you didn’t experience first-hand. One hears about the 1970’s Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Miami teams and wonders how many “dynasties” a single decade is allowed to host. But sometimes what gets lost in a bare factual summary of an era is that a team can transcend the statistical comparison in the way that it captured and held the public’s attention, the way that it dominated the thoughts and plans of other players and coaches. John Madden’s Raiders were just such a team. It wasn’t just that they won — it was the way that they played, and the way that they celebrated, and the way that every other team was just afraid of them — that’s what Peter Richmond set out to capture and record in Badasses.

I haven’t finished it yet. This is a book that I’ve enjoyed just picking away at occasionally, relishing the chance to experience John Madden as something other than the BOOM-TOUGH-ACTIN’-TINACTIN spokesman, and to understand why the Raiders’ lack of recent success isn’t so much laughable as it is pitiable.

What?  Are you saying that you don’t know anything about football?  Well, I have the perfect book for you!!  Talk Football by Alice Nicholas is what you need to understand and enjoy football season!!  I mean going to the ballgame or watching the game with friends can be so much more than just cheering when your team scores a touchdown.

Think about how impressed everyone will be be if you all of  a sudden yell out “ILLEGAL MOTION“!

(An Illegal Motion is when a player in the offensive backfield moves toward the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped, resulting in a 5-yard penalty and the down must be repeated.)

Or if you started a conversation about how the quarterback needs better protection from the “BLITZ” (when the defensive linemen and defensive backs “rush the quarterback” at one time to “sack the quarterback” or force him to make a bad throw).

Did I mention that the book is illustrated by wonderful paintings by Janie Davis so never again will you confuse a hand signal for ‘loss of down’ with ‘illegal receiver downfield’.

Ladies…come on let’s talk some football!!!  It’s no longer cool to walk in the party and ask…’Now what color are we?”