Sheldon Hirsch: 2 books

In sports there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-six-game hitting streak was magical. The three-point shot is an essential part of NBA basketball. Babe Ruth shouldn’t have attempted to steal second base in the ninth inning of the 1926 World Series. Scientist and researcher...

Sabermetrics, the search for objective knowledge about baseball through statistical analysis, has taken over the national pastime. The authors argue that this approach began as a useful corrective but has come to harm baseball. The book demonstrates that the so-called moneyball approach, based on...