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Joe Pos: The Ballad of Bill James

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The movie did not suck, not at all, that's the wrong word and that's a story for tomorrow. The story for today is how we even got here. It is about a man who is not really in the movie. No actor plays him. He's mentioned in the movie here and there, but only for a a few seconds. Still, without him, there is no Moneyball. There is no Sabermetrics, at least not under that name. Certainly people would still be looking for objective knowledge in baseball -- people were looking long before Bill James and they will look long after. But without the life's work of Bill James, they sure as heck would not have made a movie out of it.