Scott Simkus has a fantastic new book out called Outsider Baseball. I recommend it to all people who like things that are good. Simkus has conducted a massive amount of research into baseball played outside the realm of "organized" ball, meaning anything that isn't MLB and their affiliated minor leagues. I asked Scott to do a Q&A, and here it be:
Congrats on finishing up a
great book, one that obviously took a huge amount of time to research. When did
you start doing the research, and when did you actually make it a goal to write
the book?
First off, thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate
it. The origins are difficult to pin down. I mean, I read Only The Ball Was
White by Robert Peterson back in 1982 or '83, and that was certainly part
of the research, although I never would have realized it at the time. I was
twelve years old. In the middle 1990s I began looking at microfilm, mostly
sports stuff and family history and that was certainly part of the research as
well. Learning how to navigate old newspapers.
In the early 2000s, the internet was maturing and I noticed
there were Strat-O-Matic baseball fans who were posting things online about
wanting a Negro league set and the company would always respond in the
negative. SOM, of course, is a baseball board game and computer simulation that
has been around since the early 1960s. I loved the game as a kid and I realized
with the new online portals, giving us access to thousands of historical
newspapers, that it would be possible to compile a small set with credible
statistical profiles and produce something in conjunction with the game company.
So I called them and told them about my idea and they said no. And then I
called them later with another pitch and they said maybe. And so I called them
later on, and sent them a bunch of my material (taking a leap of faith) and
they finally said yes. At that point, I'm not thinking about writing a book
yet. I wanted to put together a database for a game company.
After signing the contract with Strat, I had to collect
Negro league box scores and I had to weed out a lot of games---a lot of the
games published in the papers for the Homestead Grays, for instance, are NOT
Negro league games. They were non-league games against white semipros,
featuring stories about the Grays playing against the all-white Brooklyn
Bushwicks, and the Jewish All-Stars, and the House of David. I stumbled across
newspaper articles about these interesting teams from Japan and Hawaii touring
the U.S. In the 1930s. And I was like, whoa, who are all THESE teams and why
hasn't anybody written anything meaningful about them? And so it was during the
research for Strat that I became interested in writing a book about independent
professional baseball teams---of all colors. These teams and players are what I
started to think of as “outsiders,” they're not part of the historical record
but many of these teams were as good, or better than, Triple-A clubs.
One of my favorite
chapters revolves around trying to estimate how many homers Josh Gibson may
have hit. It's pretty clear he hit fewer than Ruth, but also in fewer games. Do
you have an estimate of how their HR/AB rates compare?
I love Josh Gibson. He was a beast, in the same way Babe
Ruth was a beast. The most credible data for Gibson is at the seamheads.com web
site, for his 1933-34 seasons. I did most of the 1933 research, Gary Ashwill
helped finish it and he also compiled the entire 1934 season. Josh hit 26 home
runs in 410 at bats, or one every 15.8 abs. On the other hand, in 1920/21, Babe
Ruth hit 109 home runs in 998 at bats, or one every 9.16 abs. But it's not
really apples-to-apples.
Ruth was a dead pull hitter playing in the Polo Grounds at
the time, which was incredibly cozy down the line. And then a couple years
later, Yankee Stadium would also have an inviting right field line. Gibson, a
right-handed batter, hit straight up the middle and towards the opposite field
gap. I've plotted over one-hundred and fifty of his home runs, based on game
accounts, and he rarely pulled the ball---he was mostly gap to gap, hitting
monster shots to the deepest parts of the field. And he did this playing in
mostly HUGE home parks during his entire career. He played in Forbes Field,
Greenlee Field and Griffith Stadium. As amazing as Gibson was, most people
don't realize he played most of his career in ballparks which were not friendly
to his style of hitting. And yet: when all is said and done---Josh will be near
the top of the Negro leagues in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base
percentage, OPS+. Everything.
In my opinion, if the big leagues had been integrated,
Gibson would have probably been moved to first base at some point and depending
on which team he played for he would have challenged the home run records of
Ruth, Foxx, Greenberg and Gehrig. He was just an outstanding overall hitter,
like a cross between Rogers Hornsby and Jimmie Foxx. Just amazing.
Was there a favorite
player, team, or story to research and write about?
Hopefully this won't seem like a cop out: but at one time
or another, every single chapter became my favorite and that's why its in the
book. From the House of David to Buck Lai to the stories about fast balls, my
adrenaline would rush when I realized I had something important to get down on
paper and share with people. I get physically excited during the writing phase,
pacing and laughing like a mad man in between tapping things on the keyboard,
or digging into the papers to find connections between my various ideas. If
you're not having fun writing, then you're probably not chasing the right muse.
I'm a little envious of
your ability to make baseball history come alive on the page, as opposed to a
stale recounting of research you've turned up. Any tips or insight on how to
write history in such a lively way?
Read lots and lots of fiction and steal liberally from the
fiction writer's tool box. Look at how they construct paragraphs and chapters
and entire books. Write a story or book that you'd be willing to pay your own
money to read.
My sense of what has occurred is baseball books have
changed tremendously over the past seventy or eighty years. You used to have
guys like Jimmy Powers and Russ Hodges publishing books intended for children.
They were filled with funny, silly stories and when we go back to check the
facts of these old dusty volumes, we discover 90% of the material is untrue or
unverifiable. And we don't care, because they made us smile and they were true
in that they captured the essence of players long gone, if not all the factual
details.
Instead of boozy journalists cranking out fun, folksy books
for children, today we have tweedy, academics writing much of the baseball
history. The books are written for adults, the scholarly techniques yield books
which are footnoted, with innovative source material, and they are 90%
accurate. And sadly, many of these book are nearly impossible to enjoy. The
writing is shitty. The footnotes and commitment to scholarly standards
sometimes sucks the soul out of the material. They become text books and nobody
buys text books unless they're required to. And all that being said, my library
is FILLED with academic style baseball books because they have much to offer,
if one can get past the snore-inspiring composition style.
With Outsider Baseball, I tried to combine the
tools---using scholarly techniques for the research and tools I've learned from
my favorite fiction writers. I didn't want to write a Jimmy Powers-style book,
which would never get published in this day and age, and I certainly didn't
want to put out a text book. I'm not sure how well I've pulled it off, but it's
my first effort and I hope to write more books down the road.
You introduce your STARS
system, a cool way for rating the relative talent level of any given teams and
leagues. Have you gone through and done STARS rating for most leagues
throughout history? (Personally, I'd especially love to see the full ratings
for the Negro leagues and how they compare to the various levels of
"organized" ball each year.)
I've processed a number of seasons which do NOT appear in
the book, but certainly not all of them. I have a long way to go. It's
time-consuming. I want to dig deeper into the Negro leagues, of course, but one
of the more interesting things STARS has already unraveled is the “truth” about
the famous Baltimore Orioles of the early 1920s. This did not appear in the
book. The Orioles were one of the greatest minor league teams of all-time. Led
by Lefty Grove, they won multiple International League championships. Part of
their domination was because they had an incredibly talented roster, yes, but
STARS shows us part of their success was due to the fact that the International
League was actually less-talented than the other two Double-A leagues at that
time (American Association and Pacific Coast League). Significantly so.
Double-A was the highest classification in the minors at the time and STARS
suggests the International League was probably the least talented of the three.
The Orioles won three of six minor league World Series. They were great, but we
now know things about the context in which they performed.
The book proposes that historians
and statisticians build a new Ultimate Baseball Database. (I'll leave it to the
readers to find out what that would be.) Is this something you intend to
spearhead yourself, or just an idea to throw out there?
It's already happening and there's nothing you or I can do
to stop it! Sean Forman has added blackball data and Japanese data at
baseball-reference.com and I imagine his wonderful site will continue to grow,
becoming more and more eclectic. If the idea gets legs, I'd like to serve in an
advisory role, participating in discussions about how and why certain levels of
baseball should be classified a certain way. I hope it takes off. I've spent
thousands of hours in front of newspapers and would like for some of the
younger SABR-types take a crack at their own tour of duty in front of papers. I
could point people in the right direction and tell them what to look for. I
know where the gold is hidden.
Am I crazy for thinking
Bullet Rogan is one of the top 20 players of all time?
No, you're not! Rogan was fantastic. It's funny, but over
the past year or so, I've been collecting Bullet Rogan's games from Hawaii,
from his time with the 25th Infantry ballclub. He was famous, a real
hero, on the island, years before the Negro National League existed. I'm hungry
to learn more about Rogan, try to pin down his place in history.
You can pick a concert
lineup of three bands to see, past or present. Who ya got?
Three bands is unfair. Off the top of my head, I'd have the
Dave Matthews Band, the Beatles and NWA. The next week I'd want David Bowie,
the Smiths, and Duke Ellington. After that: the Rolling Stones, Hank Williams
Sr., George Gershwin.
I mean, c'mon. I can't pick just three. I have a hugely
eclectic musical taste, from Jazz to rap to rock and roll. I like a lot of the
new stuff, too. Adele, Fitz and the Tantrums, Pink. I appreciate all these
people for the talents they have. Listening to them makes my life better.
When I was writing the book, I listened to popular music of
the 1930s, when I was working on database type stuff.
