Bill James famous quotes

It's extremely damaging to a fair trial to have people reaching judgment about the case in the newspapers and on the radio before the facts are heard in a case.
-- Bill James

#People #Trials #Radio

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.
-- Bill James

#Trying #Answers #Break

In a crime story, the details become tremendously important - where the staircase was in relation to the bed, for example.
-- Bill James

#Important #Bed #Example

It's easy for people to grow up in our society believing that certain lifestyles are risk free when they certainly are not.
-- Bill James

#Growing Up #Believe #People

Professionalism in medicine has given us medial miracles for the affluent but hospitals that will charge $35 for aspirin.
-- Bill James

#Medicine #Miracle #Aspirin

Serial murders are just the worst stories. It can take an emotional toll on you.
-- Bill James

#Emotional #Stories #Tolls

The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct.
-- Bill James

#Justice #Police #Faults

The human race has been in a long struggle to eliminate murder. And we will succeed.
-- Bill James

#Struggle #Race #Long

There are, I believe, many more false confessions to murders than true confessions.
-- Bill James

#Believe #I Believe #Murder

There comes a moment during a job interview when you're still talking, but you might as well take off your shoes.
-- Bill James

#Jobs #Talking #Shoes

We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime.
-- Bill James

#Book #Needs #Genius

When I was a small kid, I grew up in the newspapers.
-- Bill James

#Kids #Grew Up #Newspapers

When people disagree with you, what you ultimately have to do is persuade people to agree with you - period.
-- Bill James

#People #Periods #Agree

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?
-- Bill James

#Baseball #Mean #Thinking

I would never encourage my children to be athletes - first because my children are not athletes and second because there are so many people pushing to get to the top in sports that 100 people are crushed for each one who breaks through. This is unfortunate.
-- Bill James

#Sports #Children #Athlete

There will always be people who are ahead of the curve, and people who are behind the curve. But knowledge moves the curve.
-- Bill James

#Moving #Curves #People

Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.
-- Bill James

#Causes #Break #Rigidity

Even if Mays is given every conceivable break on every unknown - defense, base running, clutch hitting - his performance still would not match Mantle's.
-- Bill James

#Baseball #Running #Defense

I like to feel that I understand little things about sports.
-- Bill James

#Sports #Littles #Little Things

I have always been much better at asking questions than knowing what the answers were.
-- Bill James

#Asking Questions #Knowing #Asking

Television is full of fictional and real violence that's turned into entertainment.
-- Bill James

#Real #Television #Violence

Well, stealing bases adds some runs but very few, and you lose most of the runs that you gain by having runners caught stealing.
-- Bill James

#Running #Gains #Add

The fact is that everybody around a college basketball game - the coaches, the announcers, even the referees at a lower level - calculates when the game is really over. They calculate it with intuition and guesswork.
-- Bill James

#Basketball #College #Games

Letting him manage in the major leagues is like sending Bo Derek through cellblock A without a bodyguard.
-- Bill James

#Sports #League #Psychology

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.
-- Bill James

#Baseball #Cereal #People

I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.
-- Bill James

#Communication #Writing #People

Let's try to find ten good things to say about Albert Belle: 10. So far as we know, he's never killed anyone. 9. He is handsome, and built like a God. 8. He played every game. 7. He has never appeared on the Jerry Springer Show. 6. He was an underrated base runner who was rarely caught stealing. 5. He hasn't been arrested in several years. 4. He is very bright. 3. He works hard. 2. He has never spoken favorably about Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, or any other foreign madman. 1. The man could hit.
-- Bill James

#Hard Work #Men #Years

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.
-- Bill James

#Baseball #Mind #My Family

Visualizing the movement finally got me over the top after months of practice.
-- Bill James

#Practice #Movement #Months

You can't ultimately dodge defeat by winning close elections.
-- Bill James

#Winning #Dodge #Election

I made baseball as much fun as doing your taxes!
-- Bill James

#Baseball #Fun #Made

Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses.
-- Bill James

#Stress #Proud #Kind

Computers, like automobiles and airplanes, do only what people tell them to do.
-- Bill James

#Airplane #People #Computer

Crime cases tend to be fascinating until you figure out what happened.
-- Bill James

#Crime #Figures #Cases

Crime stories show us the part of people's lives they try to keep hidden.
-- Bill James

#People #Trying #Stories

Do people really believe there's something different about the eyes of murderers?
-- Bill James

#Believe #Eye #People

Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws.
-- Bill James

#Law #Stories #Crime

(Mantle) was clearly a greater player in his peak years.
-- Bill James

#Baseball #Player #Years