Bill James Quotes - 9quotes.com

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Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.
Written by Bill James
I do have a family, and obviously I spend as much time as I can with them. Though even when I'm with my family, my mind tends to drift toward baseball.
Written by Bill James
You know one little way in which baseball changes us? We don't even think twice about Japanese names anymore. You know what I mean?
Written by Bill James
Do people really believe there's something different about the eyes of murderers?
Written by Bill James
Professionalism in law has brought us the O.J. Simpson case in lieu of justice.
Written by Bill James
Professionalism in medicine has given us medial miracles for the affluent but hospitals that will charge $35 for aspirin.
Written by Bill James
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.
Written by Bill James
In a crime story, the details become tremendously important - where the staircase was in relation to the bed, for example.
Written by Bill James
Crime shapes how we think about the world; it shapes social decisions that we make; it shapes our base of knowledge. But we don't talk about it intelligently.
Written by Bill James
Serial murders are just the worst stories. It can take an emotional toll on you.
Written by Bill James
Television is full of fictional and real violence that's turned into entertainment.
Written by Bill James
Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses.
Written by Bill James
The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct.
Written by Bill James
Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws.
Written by Bill James
I think among the population at large, people are openly fascinated with crime and don't feel any shame over it. It's only the opinion-makers and the 'opinion elites' who turn up their noses.
Written by Bill James
Crime stories show us the part of people's lives they try to keep hidden.
Written by Bill James
Some people give themselves over to their most evil desires, and those people becomes evil. But in general, it's reductive to think of evil as something foreign and separate from the rest of us. Evil is part of everyone. We all have the capacity to commit evil acts.
Written by Bill James
The human race has been in a long struggle to eliminate murder. And we will succeed.
Written by Bill James
Baseball would be a quite remarkable activity if it was the one place in the world where your co-workers didn't have any impact on how productive you were. But in fact, baseball is a high-stress occupation, and those sort of stress-inducing activities... just have a huge impact on how the team functions, I think.
Written by Bill James
Well, stealing bases adds some runs but very few, and you lose most of the runs that you gain by having runners caught stealing.
Written by Bill James
Bunting is usually a waste of time. The - generally, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, bunt is the only play in baseball that both sides applaud. The - if the home team bunts, you get a base. The home team applauds because they get an out, and the other team applauds because they get a base. So what does that tell you?
Written by Bill James
There are many things that you can't measure. But the great fun of what I do for a living is figuring out ways to measure things that people previously considered intangible.
Written by Bill James
Baseball does become slow sometimes. It's totally unnecessary. The - you can play baseball fast. You can play it slow, and for some reason, we have chosen to play it slow, you know, which is unfortunate, but nothing you can do about.
Written by Bill James
If a candidate for office starts talking about thinning the deer population or investing in barriers to reduce the number of deer on the highways, the other side will probably just ignore him, because they're not going to know what to say about it. But there is a chance that the issue will resonate with voters in an unexpected way.
Written by Bill James
When people disagree with you, what you ultimately have to do is persuade people to agree with you - period.
Written by Bill James
You can't ultimately dodge defeat by winning close elections.
Written by Bill James
When I was a small kid, I grew up in the newspapers.
Written by Bill James
Crime cases tend to be fascinating until you figure out what happened.
Written by Bill James
It's easy for people to grow up in our society believing that certain lifestyles are risk free when they certainly are not.
Written by Bill James
I have always been much better at asking questions than knowing what the answers were.
Written by Bill James

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