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Reddit mentions of Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks

Sentiment score: 16
Reddit mentions: 30

We found 30 Reddit mentions of Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks. Here are the top ones.

Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks
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  • Vintage Books USA
Specs:
ColorBlack
Height8 Inches
Length5.11 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateMarch 2007
Weight0.42549216566 Pounds
Width0.6 Inches

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Found 30 comments on Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks:

u/ihaveacalculator · 374 pointsr/atheism

For those who don't know, OP wrote one of the most popular fanguides to baseball on Amazon (42nd highest selling in baseball books):



http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Baseball-Smarter-Professional-Semi-experts/dp/0307280322/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

u/barkevious2 · 30 pointsr/baseball

(1) Read, bruh. I can't vouch for it personally, but I've heard the book Watching Baseball Smarter recommended with high regard. And it's almost literally the exact thing you asked for. Here are some other good book recommendations:

  • Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Hard to believe that the book is sort of old hat at this point, but it still serves as a very readable introduction to advanced statistics.

  • The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James (mostly). This book is good toilet reading, if you have a massive toilet on which to perch it, and your bowel movements are glacially paced. James ranks the best players at each position, and goes on a witty, decade-by-decade jog through the history of the game.

  • The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom Tango. Are you a "math person"? Read this book, you'll like it. It's an introduction to sabermetrics that explains the important first principles of statistical analysis, builds an important statistic (wOBA) from the ground up, and then applies all of that knowledge to answer specific questions about baseball strategies and to debunk, verify, or qualify some of baseball's hoary "conventional wisdom."

  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. This book is not about baseball, but it's still great and you should read it.

    (2) You'll want to start watching the game more, if you can. Find a method (like MLB.tv or, you know, your television) to do so. Massive exposure does help you learn, and it's a fun, if inefficient, method. Osmosis. That's just science.

    (2b) Depending on the broadcast crew, it's sometimes addition-by-subtraction to mute the television.

    (2c) If you have MLB.tv Premium and intend to follow your favorite team, I recommend watching the other team's broadcast. You know enough about [TEAM X] already. Learn something new about [TEAM Y], instead. Unless, of course, (2b) applies, in which case maybe your best bet is MLB.tv's option to overlay the radio broadcast on the TV video. Barring that, the liberal application of the DOWN VOLUME button is always an option, and then, like, listen to Chopin's Preludes. Don't be That Guy and lean too heavily on No. 15, though. There are 23 others. Expand your horizons.

    (3) When you go to games, keep score. Sure, there's a guy a few seats over in a striped button-down and pre-faded jeans (Chad or something) who will mock you mercilessly for it. Sad for you, you've lost Chad's respect. But, oh, the things you'll gain. A free souvenir. A better grasp on the flow of the game. The priceless power to answer the "what did I miss" and "what the fuck just happened" questions that litter the air at ballgames, tragically disregarded and forgotten like the syllabi from Chad's last semester at Bromaha State. You can learn how to score ballgames here. Fuck Chad.

    (3b) Go to games alone now and then. Did I mention that, in some company, it's rightly considered rude to score a ballgame like a trainspotting anorak? Not in all company, mind you. But I like going to some games alone to avoid the messy politics of divided attention altogether.

    (4) Bookmark a few websites. Quick stat references include FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and Brooks Baseball. Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, and the Hardball Times are all good. FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference both have subscription options that allow you to access enhanced content for a small fee, which is worth it if only to support the yeoman's work that they do compiling and sorting our beloved numbers.

    (5) German chess great Emanuel Lasker is believed (incorrectly) to have said that "if you see a good move, look for a better one." Good advice. Too much of the history of baseball analysis is the history of people getting stuck in comfortable places and refusing to interrogate their own ideas about the game. Sabermetricians have made careers out of just pointing this out, and even some of them do it from time to time. Also, on the level of pure self-interest, baseball ignorance and bad teeth have this much in common: Keeping your mouth shut hides them both. If you have a good opinion about a baseball topic, look for a better one.

    (6) Watch a some decent movies about baseball. Sugar is excellent and disturbing. Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns is available on Netflix and worth watching. You drink his nostalgic Flavor-Aid at your own peril: At times, Baseball is about as edifying as having a good, 19-hour stare at a Norman Rockwell painting. It's still in a class all its own as a baseball documentary. You should also watch Ed, starring Matt LeBlanc, because it'll teach you not to take strangers on the internet seriously when they give you advice.

    (7) When you go to games, wear whatever the hell you want. This has nothing to do with understanding baseball, but it annoys me when people make a big deal out of policing the clothing that others wear to sporting events. Sitting front-row at a Yankees-Tigers game in your best Steelers jersey and a pink Houston Astros BP cap? Whatever. You be you. You be you. I once watched as a perfectly innocent college student was denied a free t-shirt from a Nats Park employee because he (the student) was wearing a Red Sox shirt with his Washington cap. That was pretty fucked.

    (8) Take the EdX Sabermetrics course. Others have recommended this, with good reason. It's a wonderful introduction to advanced analytics, and you get a taste of programming in R and MySQL as well. You don't need a CompSci background. I sure didn't.

    Hope this helped.

    Footnote: Chad-hating is actually too easy. Truth is, I've never really been mocked for scoring games. Once, I even bonded with a Chad-esque guy sitting next to me at a Braves-Nats game here in Washington. He was pretty drunk, but we talked Braves baseball while he drank and I drank and I scored the game and he drank more. He seemed utterly engaged by the scoring process in that guileless, doe-eyed way that only the drunk have mastered. That's the Chad I loved.
u/mortarnpistol · 13 pointsr/atheism

Someone above posted this, but just in case you missed it, this is OP's book. Apparently a very good work!

http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Baseball-Smarter-Professional-Semi-experts/dp/0307280322/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

u/fostermatt · 7 pointsr/Dodgers

/u/LeeroyJenkins- has a good start in his post.

I would add Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn and Pull up a Chair The Vin Scully Story.
Not Dodger specific but Watching Baseball Smarter is also very good. It will help you appreciate the game you watch that much more.

The Baseball documentary by Ken Burns (as mentioned by /u/LeeroyJenkins-) is a must watch. It is long, around 20 hours including the 10th inning follow up, but it is well worth it. Available streaming on Amazon and Netflix.

u/Weedwums · 6 pointsr/baseball

If books don't scare you off, I recommend Watching Baseball Smarter.

u/w0nderbrad · 6 pointsr/baseball

Zack Hample's Watching Baseball Smarter. Might be a little outdated and doesn't touch on the advanced statistics because it wasn't written when that stuff was in vogue, but still very very informative.

http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Baseball-Smarter-Professional-Semi-experts/dp/0307280322/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1417058807&sr=8-2&keywords=zack+hample

Also, feel free to ask us any questions.

u/NotWithThatAttitude · 5 pointsr/baseball

Of those two I'd personally go with the Mets. Since you're just coming into baseball it would seem a little bandwagoner-ish to start rooting for the Yankees. No doubt the Yankees are a good team, but when a good percentage of their fans are already bandwagoners, I feel like you'd get a skewed perspective of baseball going to those games.

Also check out the Brooklyn Cyclones. They're the minor league affiliate of the Mets. The games are super cheap and the stadium is pretty nice. Start chatting up people in the seats next to you. You'll usually find someone who loves talking ball.

There's also a book called Watching Baseball Smarter. It's a good intro into the game.

u/forensiceagle · 4 pointsr/Padres

I learned most of the game from a friend who played it his entire life. Regardless, this is a great book.

http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Baseball-Smarter-Professional-Semi-experts/dp/0307280322

u/slickhare · 3 pointsr/footballmanagergames

Well, I have barely any experience with football but Football Manager is helping me learn about the sport.

Baseball is pretty easy to pick up though. It has some pretty obscure rules that rarely come up, but the basics are easy enough to understand. I highly recommend this book, if you want a crash course. The author does a great job of mixing humor and the facts, it's certainly not an exhaustive read. After reading this you'll be pretty well acquainted. If you get into it I'd check out Men At Work by George Will after that for a an even deeper look and another great read.

The game (OOTP) itself is great because baseball lends itself to compiling heaps of stats. Almost everything a player does on the field can be recorded and analyzed and this is reflected in the game. While there is a randomness to it, the hard, statistic numbers give it some grounding. Don't let this intimidate you though, everyone has their own stats they pay attention to, you don't have to get into the really complicated stuff unless you want to.

The game can be kind of daunting if you look at all the options available. You can create your own leagues tweaking almost every aspect or just play the regular configuration.

OOTP usually has a sale during the off-season to help die-hards bide their time till the next season. You can usually pick up a copy for $20, I did it with last year's 2013 version.

u/Scoonz · 3 pointsr/buccos

Hi! And welcome!

If you're still serious and I'm not sure if works this way let me know come season time if you want to share my MLB.tv account. It's a service that lets you watch any out of market team. I'm not sure if it works in the UK though.

If you're serious about getting into baseball try this book http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Baseball-Smarter-Professional-Semi-experts/dp/0307280322

My very very very good friend Zack wrote this book. He lives in NYC and if you have any questions about his books he will get back to you via email. I'm in NYC right now and we just got lunch this week, how strange.

It's not TERRIBLY different from cricket. I think if I had to find a comparable sport, it would be cricket for sure.

u/leemarshallsmustache · 3 pointsr/baseball

I found that the book Watching Baseball Smarter was very helpful for me when I got back into the sport. I watched baseball a lot when I was a kid but the book helped me understand the intricacies of the game when I got back into it in my 20s.

u/__Gish · 2 pointsr/NewYorkMets

This is a good place to start which covers the basics:

Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307280322?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

u/jayzer · 2 pointsr/baseball

I haven't read it yet, but maybe read this?

edit: The author is a redditor and holds the world record for baseballs snagged at games (during batting practice and in the games).

u/Billy_Fish · 2 pointsr/baseball

Watch Ken Burns' Baseball, then read the book The Illustrated Rules of Baseball by David Nemec. After that read Watching Baseball Smarter by Zack Hample. I've seen it work for Swedes who had never seen a baseball game before, should work for everybody in that case...

u/gbeaudette · 2 pointsr/baseball

Here's a few I found looking through my shelves:

Watching Baseball by Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy.


Watching Baseball Smarter which seems like a sequel, but is actually by a totally different guy.

Why Is the Foul Pole Fair? looks at more of the minutia of going to the ballpark than the game itself.

u/sarcasmsiempre · 2 pointsr/Dodgers

I want to become more informed about the advanced aspects of modern baseball over my college's winter break. Statistics and WAR and shit. I'm already going to read Moneyball and Watching Baseball Smarter. Anyone got any more recommendations?

u/bjilly · 2 pointsr/baseball

I bought this book for my girlfriend and would recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the basics of the game.

u/Frommyiphone2 · 2 pointsr/phillies

You may like Watching Baseball Smarter
by Zack Hample. It explains some things about the game that a new fan might not recognize.

u/ExpendableGuy · 1 pointr/NYYankees

This book is an easy read and is very informative despite the author being a prick.

u/killyouintheface · 1 pointr/baseball
u/n3rdXcore · 1 pointr/mlb

I was in the same boat as you a few years ago, then I read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Baseball-Smarter-Professional-Semi-experts/dp/0307280322

Read it!!

u/contextplz · 1 pointr/baseball

He catches some flak here for his ball-hawking antics, but Zack Hample's Watching Baseball Smarter is a pretty good read.

Plenty of history trivia and stories, lots of the little things that's easily consumable, maaaaaaybe for a 10 year old as well.

u/SlipStreamWork · 1 pointr/baseball

I think Watching Baseball Smarter might be a good read

u/NoBrakes58 · 1 pointr/baseball

Depending on how deep or not your knowledge is, Watching Baseball Smarter by Zack Hample (paging /u/zackhample) actually includes some insights that non-players might never get, and is a pretty reasonable introduction to the game. Talks a fair bit about individual positions and strategies for various situations.

For a more statistically-oriented look, I recommend The Book: Playing Percentages in Baseball by Tango, Lichtman, and Dolphin. There's a lot of neat insights in there, and they actually show their work fairly well.

If you want something a bit more involved, get a membership to the Society for American Baseball Research and go raid the journal archives and the digital library. A lot of people think of SABR as being all about stats, but they do a lot of historical work, as well.

u/offstage4 · 1 pointr/CHICubs

I believe the more you know about a sport the more you can enjoy it. Once you understand the very basics I want to suggest the book Watching baseball Smarter.

It's a real easy read, but will inform you of some of the more nuanced aspects of the game.

Also the Cubs should be a good follow for the next 5-10 years. Our front office has done a good job of finding future talent.

u/MrSkimMilk · 1 pointr/baseball

There are some books on getting into baseball. But, really, the best way is to just start watching games in their entirety. Don't just skip to the highlights. There's plenty of down time to look up rules and terminology online if you're feeling lost.

u/skagbhoy · 1 pointr/baseball

I'd suggest reading Watching baseball smarter by Zack Hample. It helped me tremendously when I first got into the game. Zack's even on here somewhere.

As for a team, I'd suggest watching a few games first. ESPN America will usually have one or two games a day, and there's the free game of the day on MLB.com if you're not ready to make the commitment to MLB.tv (which is actually great value, by the way).

As mentioned, Ken Burns' Baseball is great, and it's shown a few times per year on PBS if you've got Sky. You should be able to find it easy enough online, however.

And if you want to chat to other fans in the UK & Ireland, head over to www.baseballfan.co.uk

u/irck · 1 pointr/Braves

I would recommend that you read this book to start out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307280322/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_FwL0AbSQ8X45G