Why do autists prefer baseball stats?
And what drives big league attendance?
From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:
Steve Sailer
October 30, 2024I almost never bother to try to forecast the outcome of an election. After all, we shall all know soon enough. High-tech California, for instance, should be done counting its votes by early December.
So, rather than attempt to offer insights into the same thing everybody else is talking about, I’m going to indulge myself. The World Series has been on TV and that got me thinking about the history of major league baseball.
Baseball is a traditionalist sport. When Freddie Freeman of the Los Angeles Dodgers hit a last-out, come-from-behind, game-winning home run in the first game of the 2024 World Series to almost exactly match Kirk Gibson’s heroics in a near identical moment in the 1988 World Series, announcer Joe Davis consciously echoed the late, great announcer Vin Scully’s call of “She…is gone!” and then immediately explained the historical context: “Gibby, meet Freddie!”
Read the whole thing there.
In it, I take a crack at explaining the appeal of baseball statistics over other sports’ numbers to the more Aspergery intellects, plus the ups and downs of big league attendance:
I think baseball was just the first, but other sports have gotten pretty spergy. Football I think is actually catching up with baseball. Check out the website Pro Football Focus if you’re not familiar, you’ll see what I mean. They have advanced stats for every player in the NFL and D1 CFB, and rank them accordingly.
To be clear, every single team in the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL now has a fully staffed analytics department and I’m certain those jobs are highly competitive. I saw a tweet the other day from across the pond about how analytics is ruining premier league soccer. It’s really everywhere now.
I do think, with the exception of the nfl, this has made sports considerably more boring. As they all become strategically optimized there’s less variety in playing styles, both at the team and individual level. Ive found myself gravitating towards boxing in particular, which still has a variety of different fighting styles and will never be solved with analytics. The same things that made a great fighter in 1920 make a great fighter today.
Being neither autistic nor interested in baseball I have no ideas.