Rating: 
Summary: He is the best...
Review: With all due respect to Peter Gammons, Bill James is THE MAN. I don't care if he thinks Craig Biggio is the games's best player. When Bill weaves his spell, he can really convince you it's so. But the best thing about this book are the anecdotes. No matter how much you think you know about baseball, I guarantee there will be stories in here that you never heard before. Fascinating stories. Humorous stories. You name it. It's all here. Close to 1000 pages and every bit of it filled with baseball lore and fodder for hot stove discussion. I can't imagine a baseball fan not enjoying this!
Rating: 
Summary: Statistics lie
Review: Not sure What Bill James was smoking, but his WinShares system is so biased it isn't funny.Get to the pitchers section. See his rankings? You'll find Seaver at #8 and Ryan at #24. Wait a minute...wasn't he saying he needed a system that didn't punish poor teams and over-reward good teams? Does run support (per pitcher, not team) matter? Does being effective over a longer period of time matter? So when I read the write-ups, they seemed like an NCAA basketball selection committee...basically he'll use one set of reasons for putting a guy higher, and not mention those same, applicable good reasons for putting another guy lower. Start by saying to yourself...if the job of a batter is to produce runs (not just HR, BB, bunt, SB), then the converse is true for pitchers...it's to NOT produce runs (not just limiting h, bb, HR, etc.). Read the first half of the book (about each decade) and that's good. His WinShares system is garbage.
Rating:
Summary: From A Household of Baseball Nuts!
Review: Bills James does a great job though not as great as the original. Baseball purest will get a big kick out of this James book on the greatest game ever. This, along with the "Backyard Baseball Drills" video, has enriched my baseball happy house, wife, kids & all. Ho Ho Ho, Christmas has come early! Play Ball!
Rating:
Summary: A Triple, if not a Home Run
Review: Bill James combines analysis, facts, and opinions, seamlessly into this informative and entertaining volume. It should be on the bookshelf of both the intense and casual baseball fan. It is a pleasure to read, but, with nearly 1000 pages, it takes some time. It can be read straight through, or can be picked up anywhere that seems interesting. Part 1 provides a historical perspective of the game, decade by decade. It includes the changes in the game, the uniforms, the players, the ball parks, and many thumbnail sketches of different events in each decade-and much more. You want to know about the game in the 1930s, just turn the book to that area, and you will find much of what you are looking for. The biggest part of the book, well more than half, is Part 2, however. It provides player ratings of the top 100 players at each position, and the top 100 players of all time. These selections are based on a system developed by James, which he calls "win-shares." While not fully explained (we have to wait until spring 2002 for the full explanation in a book to be published), it seems to me to be an excellent rating system. He gets win-shares for each player, than uses a different system to rank the players. The ranking system is heavily balanced toward peak performance (as opposed to entire careers) and is bound to cause controversy among fans. He also throws in (as he admits) his own personal opinion from time-to-time in these rankings. Otherwise, why would George Brett rank higher than Eddie Mathews at third base, when Mathews has higher win-share scores? The big problem I have with the rankings is that James does not usually explain why he chooses to rank some players higher than others, despite their lower win-share scores. Hey, Bill, why does John Olerud rank lower than about 20 players who have lower win-share scores? And why does Eddie Murray rank higher than Willie McCovey? Still, the book is well worth the price. James writes well, keeping the book interesting throughout. And a little controversy, or disagreement, does not diminish the book in any way.
Rating: 
Summary: Tell us more about the Win Shares.
Review: The New Historical Baseball Abstract isn't a perfect book. It has way too many typographical errors. Bill James's wonderfully cogent analysis sometimes gives way to moralistic railing about the state of the world today (his mini-essay on "professionalism" in the Steve Carlton entry veers into a critique of the Great Society), some of which has little to do with the topic at hand. The biggest flaw is the introduction of Win Shares, his new statistic that rates the overall worth of a player's contribution, counting it as a percentage of the team's overall victory total. It isn't straightforward enough to explain; in fact, it isn't explained in full at all. For that we have to wait for a book called Win Shares, to be published in the spring. Bill James has no peer as a logical writer, analyst or researcher, so I'm quite confident (...). The first section, The Game, is largely similar to previous editions of the book, with the welcome addition of a series of essays called The Greatest Team What Ever Was, which discusses different ways of evaluating which teams are the greatest in history. He reaches no final conclusions (though, oddly, he never mentions the 1939 Yankees as one of the best one or two teams ever, which the recent Baseball Dynasties unequivocally does), but it's plenty entertaining. James's writing remains uniquely satisfying. He can switch between withering sarcasm and groan-worthy punning, between thoughtful analysis and curt dismissal, like no other writer. The comments about Cecil Fielder's and George Scott's weight are alone worth the price of the book. Finally, James's book makes you want to read more good baseball writing. For some worthy titles to take on, just pay attention to the excerpts he cites. I know I'll be buying Whitey Herzog's You're Missing a Great Game and Mike Sowell's The Pitch That Killed, right away.
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as the original, but great nonetheless.
Review: I think the main complaint in the reviews so far have been that this book is not the same and not as good as the original. I would say that both of those comments are correct. However, that does not dimenish the quality of this title. I don't know why so many people are upset that this book doesn't rehash everything James has said in the previous edition, except with profiles on 5-10 players from the '90s. I for one am glad I didn't pay [the current cost] for the same book I read in 1985 with 25 new pages. James attempts to give a feel for what the different eras were like, as well as the players in each era. Not just the Ted Williams' and Mike Schmidts, but the players who were valuable in their day, but have been largely forgotten. This book is succesful at meeting that objective. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract should not be viewed as a replacement to the first edition, but as a title that can placed next to it and add value to original work.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, not at all essential
Review: I know what to expect when I read a Bill James book--a good many nice anecdotes, lots of huffing and puffing about his view of how baseball has and should work, and some nifty new statistical formulae which are usually more miss than hit, but an honest try nonetheless. This book is no exception. The chapters on each decade are nice strolls down memory lane with some fun stories about some baseball characters. The details are often sketchy--he lists player names as winning the "O.J. Simpson Award" or "Best Curve Ball" or "Better Man than a Baseball Player," but usually doesn't tell us why the player(s) are bestowed these honors. Still, I found the "decades" section of the book to be interesting, even though the complete lack of proofreading mystifies me (in one paragraph, I'm referred to "page 000"). His self-exhaulted "Win Shares" formula, which he seems to have worked very hard to create, is a large part of the rest of the book. He goes over just why and how he doles out merits and demerits, ultimately computing a single Rotisserie dollar value for each player. There is a lot of arm waving and much hocus pocus and fudge factoring going on in this "statistic," and I'm not entirely sure I care all that much after all the adjustments he makes. But, like most of James' statistics, you can take home pieces of his analysis--like first basemen's unassisted putouts and assists to fielders other than the pitcher (though he misses the boat somewhat here, too)--and you get a good partial statistic or two. All in all, this is an interesting calculation, but not something I expect will sweep the baseball world. Finally, he uses these Win Shares and his own subjective thought processes to list the best 100 players at each position. The reading gets a bit tedious, but you'll often find a nugget within one of those vignettes, so if you're like me, you wind up reading all of them just trying to find where the "meat" of this book lies. I say it's a good one to check out in the library. If you're one who collects "statistical expository" books, go ahead and purchase it and you won't be too disappointed. This would have passed as a seminal work 20 years ago, but now we expect much more hard evidence and true statistics from sabermetricians. Bill is slipping a little.
Rating:
Summary: A BIG, BUT NOT A TOTAL, DISAPPOINTMENT
Review: This book is nowhere near as good as the original classic. There are too many players rated, and too few insights into those players. It is riddled with typos and the win shares system is not well explained. The author also appears to have become deluded or is just not too bright (several of his little non-baseball essays indicate the latter).
He tells us that the best active player in baseball at the turn of the decade was Craig Biggio. Getting hit by a lot of pitches and bunting well cancel out the home runs that Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. hit. His response to those with the temerity to question this nonsense: "Craig Biggio is better. The fact that nobody seems to realize this ... well, that's not my problem." But of course it is his problem. When a system names a player to be the best in baseball and every expert on the game disagrees, the fault is not with the whole world, but with the system. If a geopolitical formula named France the leading economic and military power in the world in 2000-- it would not make it so, it would mean that the formula was flawed.
Rating:
Summary: Better than the previous edition
Review: I don't agree with people that think that this edition doesn't make an improvement over the first one. Not only has Bill updated his 'The Game' section, where his comments on how the game was played decade by decade (with an added section for the Negro Leagues), but he expanded greatly on the player ratings so to include the 'best' 100 players at each position. His new rankings are based on a new methodology he has developed called 'win shares' (not explained in this book, but in an upcoming book to be published in march 2002). This methodology tries to include all aspects of a player (offense, defense, baserunning, etc), and their impact on his teams wins. I, for one, find it extremely interesting and valuable as a measuring tool, and can't wait for the 'win shares' book to come out. As for the comments on the players ratings section, I can understand why some may find them unnecessary and maybe even boring, but I do think that they are of great help in picturing what these players were about, and not just rely on statistics. This is truly a great work, worth every penny.
Rating:
Summary: What Happened?
Review: I waited with such excitement and enthusiasm for this book. At worst I thought okay, we now get a section on the 1990's. At best, we now get a section on the 1990's. What happened to the original books content? Most of it is gone! In it's place are meaningless and useless evaluations of players who simply only took up a position in the field and did nothing of note or glamour to differentiate themselves from the very ground they played on. In otherwords...So what! Is this what I waited the better half of a decade for? Don't get me wrong, the book is still good, but not as great as it's predecessor, not even close. I must rate this book a 3 for shock factor alone. In trying to make a great book even greater, Bill James messed with a winning formula and it exploded in his face. I was going to buy this book, expensive as it is. However, after sitting down for four hours and going over it...I'll take a pass. Mediocre effort of a re-write of a masterpiece. I'll settle for my old book. Much more fun and informative.
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