Rating: 
Summary: An Elightening Look at the Hall of Fame
Review: For anyone who has ever been interested in baseball's Hall of Fame, from being a serious historian of the game to simply being a fan who wanted your favorite player to be honored, this book will teach you a great deal. Bill James, in a very entertaining style, will show you how some of the game's greatest players have been overlooked for the game's highest honor, while lesser men have been awarded. He will show you the passion of those who promote a certain player for election, while also demonstrating how illogical many can be as they argue for their favorites. He shows the inconsistency of the various voting bodies, the chronyism, the politics, and most other aspects of the long history of the Hall of Fame's process for determining the game's greatest players. It is a subject not often outlined in this depth, and James does a splendid job with it. There are some flaws. James, as he often does, contradicts his own previously stated views on some players, and does so without explanation, which can be maddening to anyone who has read most of his work. He also has the unnecessary habit of insulting people for no real reason. As a man who can write so well and express his views in such detail and with such clarity, it doesn't appear to be necessary, when citing an example of one fan's opinion about Mickey Lolich, to answer this question: "Am I the only baseball fan who feels that statistics provide, at best, a meager measure of a player's worth?" with this answer: "Well, no, Mr. Miedlar, actually, there are an amazing number of idiots in the world." Stooping to that level is entertaining at times, but it also serves to convince the reader that James is a bit full of himself, and a bit of a bully to boot. Still, those flaws are minor when compared to the overall quality of both the information presented and the manner in which James presents it. Anyone with an interest in baseball in general, or baseball history or the Hall of Fame in particular, will be pleased with what they find in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A fun baseball book
Review: Have you ever had a debate with a buddy about who and who should not be in baseball's Hall of Fame? If the answer is yes, you should read Bill James' fun book about who he beleives does belong, and why. Much of the arguments in the book are fairly dry, and based largely on statistics. If you are not a baseball fan, this book will probably read like a high school math book. However, any true baseball fan, expecially one who likes to argue with his/ her pals, lives and dies with statistics. This book will provide an enjoyable read for those baseball fans and also provide many hours of ammunition to win those arguments with your friends.
Rating:
Summary: The most informative of 200+ baseball books I own...
Review: I got more good material for settling arguements about players like Don Drys dale being elected with a sympathy vote than I needed. It's the only book I took to the hospital because Iknew it would never get boring during re-reading.
Rating:
Summary: Hard To Ignore, If Not Always Right
Review: I'll say for this Mr. James, he knows how to put his numbers together. And though I do not agree with some of his conclusions, this book is a success in that it will force one to think about the issue of HOF selection. Where James fails though, in particularly with regard to Phil Rizzuto is that he fails to take into account that a player who's numbers might be par to others not in the HOF merit induction if one also makes significant contributions to the game after his playing career. As a shortstop alone do Rizzuto's stats merit induction? You can argue about that and say maybe not. But when you factor in what Rizzuto added afterwards in 40 years as an institution in the Yankee broadcasting booth, you realize how much more he contributed to the game. Ditto Richie Ashburn. As a first baseman Gil Hodges might not have been HOF, but factor in managing the Mets to a championship *in addition* to his playing career and his induction should have been automatic long ago. That type of above average player who serves the game beyond his playing career deserves merit for reasons that go beyond James' comparative stats, and I think that represents the book's one true flaw. Also, he spends no time discussing the merits of HOF selection for managers, executives and umpires which I think also should have been addressed.
Rating:
Summary: Why this book belongs on the "Computer 50" list
Review: In addition to being a must read for baseball fans, this book also works as a guide to the practice of 'data mining' free of the technology buzzwords that usually overwhelm other books on this topic.
Mr. James' book is an effective demonstration of formulating objectives, marshalling data and evaluating results in support of a hypothesis.
Rating: 
Summary: Bill James lies again
Review: It saddens me that this horrible book stimulated so many entusiastic reviews on this site. Bill James has been using cooked statistics to lie about baseball for well over a decade and now he uses hearsay, inuendo and pure fiction to trash the people who pick members to the baseball hall of fame. Did any of you BJ worshipers stop to ask how he knows the motivation of Frankie Frisch and Bill Terry when they were on the old timers committee? Only in sports could such unfounded accusations be praised without any demand to see documentation. The trick about history is to find out what really happened. Numbers on a page is only a fraction of that process. First hand accounts and the opinions of contemporaris are much more important. I'd take Frankie Frisch's opinion on who deserves to be in the Hall over BJ's any day. The sad trend in baseball to resolve who is the greatest this or that by numbers alone is taking us all away from the truth of what happens out there between the lines. I do thank God Bill James didn't become an accountant for movies studios. The way he cooks stats, I'd never see a dime of residuals. I wish some thinker (not a common item among baseball stat nerds) would question Bill James' motivations. THAT would be an interesting study.
Rating:
Summary: The history of the Hall is analyzed in detail.
Review: It saddens me to see that someone has "reviewed" this book as being the work of someone who "cooks numbers" to suit his own hypotheses. This really cannot be further from the truth, and anyone who actually understands the use and study of statistics in baseball will realize this. "Politics of Glory" is insightful in the way that it turns the light of context onto the history of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now we can better understand just how some members have been elected, and how many deserving candidates have been left out. What is important to realize is that James, while speaking out on a few poor choices, also takes great pains to say that membership requirements for the Hall are subjective at best, and that it is up to the reader to decide where that magical Mendoza line is for enshrinement. A 5-star review for anyone who is interested in the history of the game from both prosaic and statistical perspectives. If you don't like stats (really, there are very few - only a number of rankings by player "similarities"), then read it in pieces. The chapters are arranged so that one does not have to read it straight through, and non-statheads can skip the stuff they don't find appealing.
Rating:
Summary: A Hall of Fame Effort
Review: Like many baseball fans, I always believed that the Hall of Fame voters were something like the College of Cardinals. I believed that their choices of were based on earthly performance mixed with a healthy dose of divine inspiration. James' work shatters this faith and places the hard glare of reality on a process that is an all too human endeavor -- shortsighted, political and at times bordering on random. The book is lucid, fact-filled, fun to read and it answer one of baseball's great mysteries: what the heck is George Kelly doing in the Hall of Fame. That in itself is worth the cover price. One of the few "must have" baseball books.
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Summary: Bill James is THE MAN
Review: Mr James has written a serious treastise on entrance criteria for the Hall of Fame. This book is good in that it raises more discussion after one has read it. By the way, any way we can get Buck O'Neill the Hall?
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding, refreshingly logical
Review: Noted baseball analyst Bill James, author of the famous annual Baseball Abstracts of the 1980s and other baseball books, turns his considerable talents to Cooperstown. Here, James discusses the ultimate baseball question: Who belongs in the Hall of Fame?
If you liked the Abstracts, you'll probably like this too. If you want a calm, logical, insightful discussion of Hall of Fame history and candidates, this is the place.
James uses a number of methods, both quantitative and qualitative, to evaluate whether someone should or should not be in the Hall of Fame. Some of these appeared in his previous books, others are new. Perhaps his most important contribution is a discussion of common fallacies used in hyping Hall of Fame candidates.
James focuses on two candidates in particular: Don Drysdale (inducted 1983) and Phil Rizzuto (inducted 1994, just before this book was released in hardcover). Others who get a good deal of attention include Joe Gordon, Bobby Doerr, Joe Tinker, George Davis (since inducted), Jerry Priddy, Catfish Hunter, Luis Tiant, Orlando Cepeda (since inducted), Tony Oliva, Vern Stephens, Pete Rose, Joe Jackson, and Pee Wee Reese.
In addition, James traces the institutional history of the Hall of Fame: how it was founded, how it developed, how the selection process evolved, when the standards began to get lax (in 1946!), problems with cronyism (he harshly denounces the 1970s Veterans' Committee), the debate over inducting Negro Leaguers, the Pete Rose debate, and more.
James also includes a fascinating chapter in which he argues both sides of that eternal debate, Are today's players better than yesteryear's?
This is one of the best books on the Hall of Fame you will find!
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