From Publishers Weekly
Sports journalist Schwarz brings to the fore this intelligent, smartly researched and often hilarious look at the use of statistics in baseball, which Schwarz definitively shows to "date back to the game's earliest days in the 19th century." It will delight any fan who memorizes the numbers on the back of trading cards or pores over newspaper box scores. The book's success is rooted in its focus on the people "obsessed with baseball's statistics ever since the box score started it all in 1845," rather than being about the statistics themselves. The reader is presented with enthusiastic but unvarnished looks at such key figures as Henry Chadwick, whose love for numbers led to his inventing the box score grid that remains, Schwarz shows, "virtually unchanged to this day"; Allan Roth, the numbers man hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers who was as important to the team's success as its famed GM Branch Rickey; and the all-but-forgotten work of George Lindsey, one of the first people to apply statistical analysis to weigh various baseball strategies. Delivered in a delightfully breezy and confident style, this volume also serves as an excellent alternate or parallel history of the sport, as we see how the statistics influenced the game itself—such as the banning of the spitball—as much as they were used to detail individual games.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Review
"The Numbers Game is a riveting history of the search for new baseball knowledge. The amazing thing about that search, as Schwarz ably demonstrates, is that it was conducted not by baseball insiders, but by the ordinary baseball fan."
- Michael Lewis, author of the best-selling Moneyball

"Alan Schwarz has written one of the most original and engrossing histories of baseball you could ever read."
- From the Foreword by Peter Gammons

"The language of baseball is statistics, and Alan Schwarz gives us an unprecedented look at one of the world's great romance languages. Schwarz deftly illuminates the history and relevance of baseball statistics and is at the top of his game introducing the people behind the numbers. The cast is an eclectic mix of baseball linguists, including an alcoholic pack rat, a military strategist and one of Albert Einstein's faculty colleagues. You don't need a slide rule or pocket protector to appreciate the tales Schwarz has unearthed -- gems such as Babe Ruth's long lost 715th home run abound -- but you will become more fluent in baseball."
- Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated



Book Description
Most baseball fans, players and even team executives assume that the National Pastime's infatuation with statistics is simply a byproduct of the information age, a phenomenon that blossomed only after the arrival of Bill James and computers in the 1980s. They couldn't be more wrong.

In this unprecedented new book, Alan Schwarz - whom bestselling Moneyball author Michael Lewis calls "one of today's best baseball journalists" - provides the first-ever history of baseball statistics, showing how baseball and its numbers have been inseparable ever since the pastime's birth in 1845. He tells the history of this obsession through the lives of the people who felt it most: Henry Chadwick, the 19th-century writer who invented the first box score and harped endlessly about which statistics mattered and which did not; Allan Roth, Branch Rickey's right-hand numbers man with the late-1940s Brooklyn Dodgers; Earnshaw Cook, a scientist and Manhattan Project veteran who retired to pursue inventing the perfect baseball statistic; John Dewan, a former Strat-O-Matic maven who built STATS Inc. into a multimillion-dollar powerhouse for statistics over the Internet; and dozens more.

Almost every baseball fan for 150 years has been drawn to the game by its statistics, whether through newspaper box scores, the backs of Topps baseball cards, The Baseball Encyclopedia, or fantasy leagues. Today's most ardent stat scientists, known as "sabermetricians," spend hundreds of hours coming up with new ways to capture the game in numbers, and engage in holy wars over which statistics are best. Some of these men - and women -- are even being hired by major league teams to bring an understanding of statistics to a sport that for so long shunned it.

Taken together, Schwarz paints a history not just of baseball statistics, but of the soul of the sport itself. The Numbers Game will be an invaluable part of any fan's library and go down as one of the sport's classic books.



About the Author
Alan Schwarz is the Senior Writer of Baseball America magazine, a weekly columnist for ESPN.com, and a frequent contributor to The New York Times. His work has appeared in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and more than a dozen other national publications. He lives in Manhattan.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this unprecedented new book, Alan Schwarz, provides the first-ever history of baseball statistics, showing how baseball and its numbers have been inseparable ever since the pastime's birth in 1845. He tells the history of this obsession through the lives of the people who felt it most: Henry Chadwick, the nineteenth-century writer who invented the first box score and harped on endlessly about which statistics mattered and which did not; Allan Roth, Branch Rickey's right-hand numbers man with the late-1940s Brooklyn Dodgers; Earnshaw Cook, a scientist and Manhattan Project veteran who retired to pursue inventing the perfect baseball statistic; John Dewan, a former Strat-O-Matic maven who built STATS Inc. into a multimillion-dollar power-house for statistics over the Internet; and dozens more.

FROM THE CRITICS

George F. Will - The New York Times

… if you do not even know who A-Rod is, you will still enjoy the story of baseball's progress to today's information abundance as it is told by Alan Schwarz, a senior writer for Baseball America, in The Numbers Game. Its lessons extend beyond baseball to politics and much else. It is an Information Age story about how new abilities to measure things beget new behaviors. The evolution of that cornucopia of information from its birth in 1845 to today's iterations is, in Schwarz's lively telling, a history of the game's path to the present.

Publishers Weekly

Sports journalist Schwarz brings to the fore this intelligent, smartly researched and often hilarious look at the use of statistics in baseball, which Schwarz definitively shows to "date back to the game's earliest days in the 19th century." It will delight any fan who memorizes the numbers on the back of trading cards or pores over newspaper box scores. The book's success is rooted in its focus on the people "obsessed with baseball's statistics ever since the box score started it all in 1845," rather than being about the statistics themselves. The reader is presented with enthusiastic but unvarnished looks at such key figures as Henry Chadwick, whose love for numbers led to his inventing the box score grid that remains, Schwarz shows, "virtually unchanged to this day"; Allan Roth, the numbers man hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers who was as important to the team's success as its famed GM Branch Rickey; and the all-but-forgotten work of George Lindsey, one of the first people to apply statistical analysis to weigh various baseball strategies. Delivered in a delightfully breezy and confident style, this volume also serves as an excellent alternate or parallel history of the sport, as we see how the statistics influenced the game itself-such as the banning of the spitball-as much as they were used to detail individual games. Agent, Esther Newberg. (July) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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