John Updike: Early Sabermetrician?
Posted on March 31, 2008 by Tito
Joe Posnanski sez:
I’ve always thought that the patron saint of “clutch hitting is a myth†is not Bill James at all, but rather the author John Updiike. In his famous, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu†story about Ted Williams final game, he wrote:
“For me, Williams is the classic ballplayer of the game on a hot August weekday, before a small crowd, when the only thing at stake is the tissue-thin difference between a thing done well and a thing done ill. Baseball is a game of the long season, of relentless and gradual averaging-out. Irrelevance—since the reference point of most individual games is remote and statistical—always threatens its interest, which can be maintained not by the occasional heroics that sportswriters feed upon but by players who always care; who care, that is to say, about themselves and their art. Insofar as the clutch hitter is not a sportswriter’s myth, he is a vulgarity, like a writer who writes only for money.â€
» Filed Under Liberal Media Conspiracies, Sports, Statistics, Writers
