SABERMETRICIANS AND MONEYBALLERS MORE OF A THREAT TO GAME THAN STEROIDS

Baseball is immortal, isn't it?

The intrinsic beauty and balance of the game--played in a 90 ft, 9 inning, 9 man, 27 out perfect world--has always sustained it in tough times.

Seemingly undaunted by the ills of real life, including the constant waves of gambling and booze and performance enhancers that the diamond has witnessed since the origin of Organized Baseball in the nineteenth century, the game has steadfastly continued marching ahead.

In spite of its many ups and downs, it has provided us with unbroken memories and endless comparisons of its greats from era to era. And it was able to do so by speaking to us in a timeless and language of sound and picture--the crack of the bat, a cap flying off in the outfield, a crowd's voice soaring in unison as the runner rounds third--backed by a universal dictionary of revered definitions: W-L (won-lost), HRs (home runs), RBIs (runs batted in), BA (batting average), and ERA (earned run average).

It was always about what was happening between the foul lines. We didn't really care about anything else.

Even McGwire and Sosa couldn't spoil the main event, in spite of their apparently drug-induced side show in 1998.

Neither could Canseco, Giambi, Bonds, Palmiero, Caminiti, Bagwell, Clemens, Pettitte, or Vaughn. Nor Rose or Ford, Koufax or Grove, Cobb or Speaker, for that matter. We looked at their legendary performances and statistics, their excesses and frailties, which were nearly universal. We tried to understand them in terms of their eras. And, ultimately, we can accept and embrace them.

We could question its stars, but nothing could permanently undermine the game itself. Nothing could stop it from bouncing back. Not racism, drugs, wars, depressions, or earthquakes, not even the designated hitter.

Now it faces a challenge once again.

I'm not sure when it started. But we started looking at the game differently. Attention began shifting away from the field, away from the distinctive way a guy would routinely dive head first into second with dirt and spikes flying.

Instead, we started looking at his SB% (stolen base %), and then, before we knew it, his VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) or TPR (Total Player Rating).

One day we were out in the bleachers arguing with our friends about how many people were in the park, or how many home runs Boog Powell hit in 1967, and eagerly waiting for the scoreboard to announce the actual figures. How did that blundering simplicity change into a smug fluency with win shares, radar guns, ACL injuries, payrolls, contracts, and territorial rights?

Something dark and distracting now seemed to be underway, beneath the giddiness of new attendance records, the promise of a building boom of glossy stadiums, and a bevy of talented young players today that very well may exceed the skills of any previous era.

Even with all this to look forward to, something was wrong.

Rather than simply watch the game, the new fans now wanted to be at the center of attention. Selling them a new identity as baseball "experts," and pumping them up with myriad new stats and "insider" knowledge, could make them feel important and superior to those who didn't "get it," and, most importantly, create new markets and mallparks that would be designed to satisfy this need for self-importance, trendiness, and exclusivity.

Give them their own little electronic world in which to feel special, their own language, their own statistics, their own products, their own personal interactive device--and leave the clunky, grimey, low-tech fans back in Oakland.

Thus, the gentrification of baseball and the birth of Crisco Field.  

Could Bill James, a friendly enough sort, and the father of sabermetrics, be the unwitting Dr. Frankenstein of an electronic plague of redundant calculus-like statistics descending over baseball. Could the sabermetricians and the Moneyballers, SABR's more sinister intellectual beneficiaries, do what even the 1919 Black Sox could not?

Could they ruin baseball?

Maybe. The Moneyballers seem to have hijacked the SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) ship with the help of an affluent, internet-based, business model-saavy fan base that identifies more with money and management than with our communities or the game itself.

An army of stat geeks and closet accountants is turning the Grand Old Game into a world of dubious numbers and formulas for greed-posing-as-sensible baseball management. We are now seeing the merging of this pseudo way to evaluate on-the-field performance--sabermetrics--with the quality control and profits-over-everything mentality of modern corps., banks, and baseball execs.

It's called Moneyball. But do these new stats work? What kind of bargain-hunting arithmetic results in hiring a decidedly declining Mike Piazza for $8M to replace a near MVP Frank Thomas, who is getting $9M from the Jays?

No wonder the real fans are scratching their heads about Ex-A Jermaine Dye--one of the game's best all-around players--getting $7M in 2007, after $5M in 2005 and 2006 from the White Sox, while the Pirates and A's team up to give Jason Kendall $13M in 2007. And, does Jason Kendall's OPS tell you something you don't already know--that he is wildly over-priced--after watching him strand two runners again in the late innings?

Does Bill James' personal favorite, "little stats," really make Craig Biggio the best player in the game--as James claims--or just the best bargain at moving runners from first to second? And do SABR icons like VORPs and "range factors" really enhance watching the game, or will they just send the fans to their nearest Cisco kiosk in 2011, or keep them glued to their pop-up-laden personal interactive device?

The epidemic of saber-stats contrivances--like fielding runs and ERA+ and home park adjustments--has resulted in a fantasy league parallel universe where the fantasy manager's salary cap and budgetary considerations, and all manner of showy calculations and pretentious formulas, are more valued than simply watching--and understanding--the game itself.

It's moneyball vs. baseball. It's Rotisserie League vs. Hot Stove League. It's trendy fans of the trendy ballpark and the esoteric stat vs. fans of the timeless hook slide and the basic hit-and-run.

We may have already seen the beginning of the end of our beloved game as we know it. Even the most traditional fans helplessly find themselves discussing OPS (the sum of on base % and slugging %). And the most popular baseball blogs are dominated by shrewdly calculated actuarial presentations on player payrolls and contracts that more resemble financial analysis in the Wall Street Journal than a baseball story.

Now the fan--the new, smug baseball business-saavy fan who identifies with the owners, not the traditional fan of teams and the ooh-and-ah watching of baseball--can discuss the merits of a three year contract for a middle reliever with the competence and dispassion of a general manager.

But the same fan doesn't know when a throw should be cut off or allowed to go through to the plate on a bang-bang play.

This may be fine with Wall Street, which cares about only its money and investments, and which is comfortable with the way these new age fans identify with wealth and management.

But on Main Street, which has traditionally cared less about profits and more about its hits-and-runs-and-errors, its hot dogs, and a lazy day at the ballpark, embracing the bottom line hasn't taken hold among the fans to the extent giants like Citicard and Safeco would prefer.

We're not rooting hard enough yet for their profit margin. We need to get on board with Cisco's happy vision of a perpetual profit machine in Silicon Valley. This identity with corporate interests would make us more compliant and consumptive.

Is this writer paranoid? Then, tell me, whoever heard of fans rooting for baseball executives, rather than outfielders, the way we do today. Some of us depend on Billy Beane's "shrewdness" to win the pennant and pay more attention to his Macha-vellian madness than we do to the box score.

Just wait, there's more to come. This is where we can see how promotion of the bland Moneyball efficiency model--which sees players as interchangeable parts--is blazing the way for this new kind of fan, one that identifies with annual reports more than scouting reports, and salary caps more than hometeam caps.

The natural result of this shift of loyalty from the game to the bottom line is our acceptance and even approval of the heartlessness and "inevitablity" of moving to Fremont and the creation of the marketing mosh pit called Cisco Field.

Not far behind will be hors d'ouevres like $169 jerseys with "CISCO" proudly emblazoned across the chest. To be followed by a sumptuous menu of Cisco networking devices for our corporate client-fans.

We are immersed in a new world of endless stat-infused chatter over nothing, a constant marketing/Rotisserie League culture in which the fan, no longer just an observer, becomes a player.  Surrounded by extraneous gadgets like ever-present radar guns and personal interactive monitors and endless statistics and commercials "at every seat," ala Cisco Field, we will be ready to buy.

We are now seeing the advent of mallparks, which are designed more for shopping than for watching the game. In fact, the idea is for the customers to NOT watch the game. Get 'em in the gate, then get 'em on line. Forces are at work here which are making modern baseball stadiums begin to feel like your local Best Buy, and these same pressures are encouraging the front offices to operate with all the passion of Goldman Sachs.  

Jason Marquis, a really dreadful pitcher, has  signed with the Cubs for more than $20M for three seasons of ineptitude and three run homers. All the Cubs needed to know about his numbers are a 6.02 ERA in 2006. Instead, whatever fixation with innings and adjusted ERA led the A's to give the same deal to Esteban Loaiza last winter has just made another obvious mediocrity a rich man.

Ironically, today's ever-more frantic emphasis on profits and the bottom line--combined with a lot of silly stat-talk from MBA General Managers, offered in place of the lost ability to know who is good and who is not good--has actually ended up raising the price of these kinds of players.

So, who is more of a threat to the "integrity" and quality of the game--the players who, since time immemorial, have tried to cut corners in any way they could in the course of giving us our greatest memories, or the moneyballers, MBAs (Masters of Baseball Analysis), and accountants, who would rather have us calculate over a spreadsheet than let us settle back and watch the mastery of a two-hitter?