George William James was born on October 5,1949 and is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential.
28 Facts About Bill James
2.
Since 1977, Bill James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics.
3.
In 2003, Bill James was hired as senior advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox and worked for the team for 17 years during which they won four World Series championships.
4.
Bill James was born in Holton, Kansas; his mother died in 1954 when he was five.
5.
Bill James was the last person in Kansas to be sent to fight in the Vietnam War, although he never saw action there.
6.
Bill James was told he actually had met all his graduation requirements, so he returned to Lawrence in 1973 with degrees in English and economics.
7.
Bill James finished an education degree in 1975, from the University of Kansas.
8.
An aspiring writer and obsessive fan, Bill James began writing baseball articles after leaving the United States Army in his mid-twenties.
9.
The first three editions of the Baseball Abstract garnered respect for Bill James's work, including a very favorable review by Daniel Okrent in Sports Illustrated.
10.
Attempts to imitate Bill James's work spawned a flood of books and articles that continues to this day.
11.
In 1988, Bill James ceased writing the Abstract, citing workload-related burnout and concern about the volume of statistics on the market.
12.
Bill James has continued to publish hardcover books about baseball history, which have sold well and received admiring reviews.
13.
Bill James proposed the creation of Project Scoresheet, a network of fans that would work together to collect and distribute this information.
14.
In 2003, Bill James was hired by a former reader, John Henry, the new owner of the Boston Red Sox.
15.
Bill James had previously published analysis of the use of the closer in baseball, and had concluded that the traditional use of the closer both overrated the abilities of that individual and used him in suboptimal circumstances.
16.
Indeed, although Bill James was typically tight-lipped about his activities on behalf of the Red Sox, he is credited with advocating some of the moves that led to the team's first World Series championship in 86 years, including the signing of non-tendered free agent David Ortiz, the trade for Mark Bellhorn, and the team's increased emphasis on on-base percentage.
17.
On October 24,2019, Bill James announced his retirement from the Red Sox, saying that he had "fallen out of step with the organization" and added that he hadn't earned his paycheck with the Red Sox for the last couple of years.
18.
Bill James was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary's Shrine of the Eternals in 2007.
19.
Bill James was profiled on 60 Minutes on March 30,2008, in his role as a sabermetric pioneer and Red Sox advisor.
20.
Bill James made a guest appearance on The Simpsons 2010 episode "MoneyBART".
21.
Bill James's bio is briefly recapped, and Billy Beane is depicted telling John Henry that Henry's hiring of James is the reason Beane is interested in the Red Sox general manager job.
22.
Bill James reproached commissioner Giamatti and his successor, Fay Vincent, for their acceptance of the Dowd Report as the final word on Rose's gambling.
23.
Bill James expanded his defense of Rose in his 2001 book The New Historical Baseball Abstract, with a detailed explanation of why he found the case against Rose flimsy.
24.
Bill James remained steadfast, continuing to insist that the evidence available to Dowd at the time was insufficient to reach the conclusion that it did.
25.
Bill James was isolated and he was not nearly as powerful as people imagine him to have been.
26.
Bill James is a fan of the University of Kansas men's basketball team and has written about basketball.
27.
Bill James has created a formula for what he calls a "safe lead" in the sport.
28.
Bill James has written two true crime books, Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence and - together with his daughter Rachel McCarthy Bill James - The Man from the Train.