Editing Bill James (section)

===''The Bill James Baseball Abstract''s===
An aspiring writer and obsessive fan, James began writing baseball articles in his mid-twenties after leaving the [[United States Army]].  Many of his first baseball writings came while he was doing night shifts as a security guard at the [[Stokely-Van Camp's]] pork and beans cannery.  Unlike most writers, his pieces did not recount games in epic terms or offer insights gleaned from interviews with players.  A typical James piece posed a question (''e.g.,'' "Which pitchers and catchers allow runners to steal the most bases?"), and then presented data and analysis that offered an answer.<ref>{{cite book |last=James |first=Bill |date=2010 |title=The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3uSbqUm8hSAC |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=9781439106938 |access-date=July 23, 2014}}</ref>

Editors considered James's pieces so unusual that few believed them suitable for their readers. In an effort to reach a wider audience, James began self-publishing an annual book titled ''The Bill James Baseball Abstract'', beginning in 1977. The first edition, titled ''1977 Baseball Abstract: Featuring 18 categories of statistical information that you just can't find anywhere else'', presented 68 pages of in-depth statistics compiled from James's study of [[box score]]s from the preceding season and was offered for sale through a small advertisement in  ''[[The Sporting News]]''. Seventy-five people purchased the booklet.<ref name=michael>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oIYNBodW-ZEC|title=Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game|first=Michael|last=Lewis|author-link=Michael Lewis|year=2004|publisher=W. W. Norton|isbn=0393066231|pages=65–66}}</ref> The 1978 edition, subtitled ''The 2nd annual edition of baseball's most informative and imaginative review'', sold 250 copies.<ref>Lewis (2004), p. 73.</ref> Beginning in 1979, James wrote an annual preview of the baseball season for ''[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]]'', and continued to do so through 1984.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Belth |first1=Alex |title=How Esquire Discovered Bill James |url=http://classic.esquire.com/editors-notes/how-esquire-discovered-bill-james/ |website=[[Esquire (magazine)|Esquire]].com |access-date=2017-05-22 |date=2016-03-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161230182832/http://classic.esquire.com/editors-notes/how-esquire-discovered-bill-james/ |archive-date=December 30, 2016 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The first three editions of the ''Baseball Abstract'' garnered respect for James's work, including a very favorable review by [[Daniel Okrent]] in ''[[Sports Illustrated]]''.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1124493/index.htm |work=CNN |title=He Does It by the Numbers |date=May 25, 1981 |access-date=April 26, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090204030220/http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1124493/index.htm |archive-date=February 4, 2009 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> New annual editions added essays on teams and players.  By 1982 sales had increased tenfold, and a media conglomerate agreed to publish and distribute future editions.

While writers had published books about baseball statistics before (most notably [[Earnshaw Cook]]'s ''Percentage Baseball'', in the 1960s), few had ever reached a mass audience. Attempts to imitate James's work spawned a flood of books and articles that continues to this day.