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A Chart Of Numbers That Would Put An Actuary To Sleep Can Be Made To Dance If You Put It On One Side Of A Card And Bombo Rivera's Picture On The Other.

-Bill James

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A Chart Of Numbers

Bill James

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A Chart Of Numbers That Would Put An Actuary To Sleep Can Be Made To Dance If You Put It On One Side Of A Card And Bombo Rivera's Picture On The Other.

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Crime Stories Show Us The Part Of People's Lives They Try To Keep Hidden.

It Is A Very Long And Very Difficult Road From A Fact To A Conclusion. But It Is A Million Times Longer From A Theory To A Fact.

Television Is Full Of Fictional And Real Violence That's Turned Into Entertainment. It's An Interesting Phenomena And I Tried To Put It In Perspective And Tried To Think Through A Few Of The Real Questions That This Sometimes Unseemly Business Raises.

Because Crime Stories Reveal An Aspect Of Our Personality That Everybody Has, But Which We Normally Keep Very Deeply Hidden. We Like To Talk About The Good Sides Of Ourselves. We Don't Like To Talk About Our Hatreds, Our Distrusts Of One Another, Our Secrets, But Crime Stories Drag Those Things To The Surface And Consequently They Fascinate People And Always Have Throughout All History.

I Learned To Write Because I Am One Of Those People Who Somehow Cannot Manage The Common Communications Of Smiles And Gestures, But Must Use Words To Get Across Things That Other People Would Never Need To Say.

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Serial Murders Are Just The Worst Stories. It Can Take An Emotional Toll On You.

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Famous Crime Stories Almost Always Lead To The Passing Of New Laws.

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A Chart Of Numbers That Would Put An Actuary To Sleep Can Be Made To Dance If You Put It On One Side Of A Card And Bombo Rivera's Picture On The Other.

It's Extremely Damaging To A Fair Trial To Have People Reaching Judgment About The Case In The Newspapers And On The Radio Before The Facts Are Heard In A Case.

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It's Easy For People To Grow Up In Our Society Believing That Certain Lifestyles Are Risk Free When They Certainly Are Not.

How Easy It Is For A Fantasy To Grab Hold Of Your Foot Like A Rope, And Dangle Your Life Upside Down While Brigands Go Through Your Pockets. Deal With The Life You've Got. Solve The Problems You Have, Rather Than Fantasizing About A Life Without Them.

Let's Try To Find Ten Good Things To Say About Albert Belle: 10. So Far As We Know, He's Never Killed Anyone. 9. He Is Handsome, And Built Like A God. 8. He Played Every Game. 7. He Has Never Appeared On The Jerry Springer Show. 6. He Was An Underrated Base Runner Who Was Rarely Caught Stealing. 5. He Hasn't Been Arrested In Several Years. 4. He Is Very Bright. 3. He Works Hard. 2. He Has Never Spoken Favorably About Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Or Any Other Foreign Madman. 1. The Man Could Hit.

When People Disagree With You, What You Ultimately Have To Do Is Persuade People To Agree With You - Period.

Television Is Full Of Fictional And Real Violence That's Turned Into Entertainment.

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We Don't Genuinely Need More Literary Geniuses. One Can Only Read So Many Books In A Lifetime.

Men Feel Challenged When A Woman Is In Danger, So Those Types Of Stories Interest Women And They Interest Men On A Level That The Crimes Against Men Tend To Draw A Different Visceral Reaction. Again, Not Saying It's Right, But They Tend To Draw A Different Visceral Reaction, Which Is That The Man Was Out In The World Doing Men Stuff And Something Happened To Him.

All Societies Have These Cases. There Are Many, Many Crime Cases That Remain Famous From The Times Of The Romans. The Bible Is Full Of Crime Stories. You Can Almost Flip To A Page. Joseph Being Sold Into Slavery By His Brothers Is A Crime Story. The Bible Is Full Of Crime Stories.

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I Try To Take Large, General Questions That Are Difficult To Resolve And Break Them Down Into Small, Very Specific Questions That Have Clear Answers.

Famous Crime Stories Almost Always Lead To The Passing Of New Laws. There's A Great Many Intersections Between This Unseemly Tabloid Phenomena And Serious Social Issues And We Never Get To That Intersection Because Serious People Don't Like To Talk About That Unattractive Stuff.

I Tried Not To Write About The O.j. Simpson Case Too Much Because So Much Has Already Been Said About It, But There Are A Lot Of Questions Left Worth Asking. However, The Case Is Very Useful To Illustrate Other Points. The Case Is A Common Reference Point Because Everybody Knows The Ins And Outs Of It, More Than Any Other Case In This Generation, So It Becomes Useful To Reference Other Points. In Itself, There Aren't That Many Questions About It That Remain Unanswered.

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The Fact Is That Everybody Around A College Basketball Game - The Coaches, The Announcers, Even The Referees At A Lower Level - Calculates When The Game Is Really Over. They Calculate It With Intuition And Guesswork.

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I Would Never Encourage My Children To Be Athletes - First Because My Children Are Not Athletes And Second Because There Are So Many People Pushing To Get To The Top In Sports That 100 People Are Crushed For Each One Who Breaks Through. This Is Unfortunate.

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Visualizing The Movement Finally Got Me Over The Top After Months Of Practice.

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