Sean Kates, obviously not trusting me to introduce him,

has provided his own introduction.   I will yield the floor.   This article

will run under “Bill James articles”, but it is essentially not. 

So sue me.

                I figured it probably behooves us all for me to introduce myself properly before you jump right into an article I wrote. I do not have any professional writing experience, save a few hundred legal documents, briefs and papers on late Kievan Rus or tourism’s share of Gross Domestic Product in Slovenia. Perhaps due to this, you will probably, on occasion, remark to yourself: “Self, where is he going with this? I mean, what exactly is his…point?” Trust me when I say that this question is somewhat meaningless, for a variety of reasons.

                First and foremost, it is highly likely that there is no “point,” in the existential meaning of the word, no greater lesson to be drawn or intriguing insight into life. I write about what interests me at the time, and what I believe you will find interesting. I believe that there can and should always be more frivolity in the world. There is enough seriousness without me adding to it, and we generally trivialize fun things like sports when we take them too seriously. That is the “point,” if you are so inclined to look for one.

                Second, I am a process junkie. How one gets somewhere is much more important to me than the where itself. Telling a story is a lot more open-ended and interesting to me than is making it into a heavy-handed fable with a proffered essential truth. The former allows the audience to become involved and find their own meaning, while the latter closes the system and becomes a form of literary slavery.* So if you are asking for the point, you might have…well…missed it.

                Third, I really am occasionally a terrible writer. Everyone is. At these times, there is no deeper intention behind being pointless, just sheer ineptitude. I will try to avoid this as often as possible, but I will consider it a success if you are simply able to tell the difference between the first two scenarios and the third. Please feel free to call me out when I write terribly.

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                Mr. James has given us a pretty wide range of freedom over our topics, and I will probably be the most likely to see where the boundaries are marked. I have a very broad knowledge of sports, with wildly varying depth to that knowledge. If my knowledge was a body of water, there would be areas suited for deep sea fishing, and others where the water evaporates once or twice daily, leaving only rocks and floundering fish behind (we’ll call this section “The Rules of Cricket”). And just like on ancient maps, the deeper areas are marked with the inscription/warning “Here live monsters.”** Sure, I am in tune with most of the cutting edge baseball work being done, and have read most of the canon. Still, I have my pet antirational beliefs. For instance, I have not entirely given up on the idea of “clutch” hitting, though my beliefs are largely in the existence of “unclutchiness.”

                 So there will be articles about soccer, basketball, football and the oft-rumored, but never fully evidenced, WNBA. Worry not, most of these will relate in some fashion to baseball, with very little talk of ancient maps or depth charts for waterways. Some will be long and others quite short. In the end, I write to entertain and I hope that you enjoy. Please feel free to email me at demedici@gmail.com, with comments, suggestions, praise and/or denigration.  

* I also frequently write in convoluted metaphors, analogies, allegories and all other such nonsense. Sometimes these work and sometimes….

** they do not.