Rob Neyer, Power Ball

Rob Neyer, Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game
HarperCollins 2018
© 2018 Rob Neyer
978-0-06-285361-5

Years ago, Dan Okrent wrote a book titled Nine Inning: even longer ago, Arnold Hano wrote a book called A Day In the Bleachers.[1]  Okrent used the events in a rather ordinary game between the Milwaukee Brewers (7^th—and last—in the AL East) and the Baltimore Orioles (5^th, but with a winning record, also in the AL East) to reflect on baseball.  Hano’s book is focused on the first game of the 1954 World Series and the two teams [the New York Giants (97-57, and winners of the WS 4-0) and the Cleveland Indians (111-53)].  These are two of the most fascinating baseball books ever written, and books that can be re-read—I always find something else in them.

Rob Neyer, who has spent the last 30+ years doing research on and writing about baseball, generally within a niche referred to as sabermetrics, has done something very much the same for a late-season (September 8, 2017) between the Houston Astros (winners of the AL West Division, with a 101-61 record—and the World Series) and the Oakland As (last in the AL West, 75-87).  (You can find the box score here:
 https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK201709080.shtml)

And while Neyer takes us through the game, batter-by-batter-by pitcher, that’s not the point, just as that was not the point of Okrent’s book, or Hano’s.  The point is to have a reason tp think about baseball, to muse on how it has changed and is changing, on how the game was and is played.  And Neyer succeeds splendidly at this task.  He ranges over the growing height and strength of baseball players (and the excellence of small, but mighty ones), the increasing specialization of pitchers, defensive shifts, whether baseball needs to do something about the pace of play (he thinks so, and so do I), the growing importance of strikeouts and home runs (another thing he thinks MLB needs to deal with), and much more.

I read this book one half-inning at a time, which meant a leisurely pace, and time to consider and reflect on Neyer’s reflections on the game and on baseball. 

If you are a baseball fan, this is, I think, one of the most important baseball books you can read this, or any other year.

[1] Okrent’s book is available in a (2000) reprint edition; Hano’s is also available in a 1995 edition.  It was in Game 1 of the 1954 WS that Willie Mays made “the catch” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catch_(baseball)).