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State of Play:
The Old School Guide to New School Baseball
by Bill Ripken
c.2020, Diversion Books
$24.99 / higher in Canada
240 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
Grip the bat lightly.
Elbows loose, feet
comfortably apart, shoulders and hips perpendicular to the
mound, hands by your shoulder, eyes on the pitcher. It's a
basic recipe for batting that every good player knows and
knows how to change to fit a situation. And what else about
baseball has changed? Find out in State of Play by
Bill Ripken.
There are two ways of
looking at baseball: old school, and "new school." |
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So says Ripken, and he
thinks that while new school "things are different... they
may not be as good as they once were." We talk about
baseball differently, for one, and we look at statistics
that never used to exist.
When Ripken's father, Cal
Sr., worked as a player-manager for the Orioles
organization, he didn't have a computer or stop-motion
recall on a screen. He filled out nightly reports from
memory, wrote his thoughts by hand, lived the game, played
the game, even drove the bus when needed, and he knew that a
win wasn't a do-or-die goal, particularly when the season
was young. He had four tenets that he called "The Ripken
Way," and the first one mandated simplicity.
That, as Ripken suggests,
doesn't apply to baseball anymore.
Take, for example, pitch
framing: Ripken says those stats are not important.
Improving a launch angle is something he doesn't completely
understand. He imagines tunnelling in a way that makes it
make sense (and he wishes he'd cashed in by naming it years
ago). WAR (Wins Above Replacement) doesn't, as he sees it,
have one cohesive definition; and automated strike zones
change, depending on the hitter, thus being not calibratable.
Line ups, at least for the first five players, aren't
created like they used to be. RBIs are not even the same,
and Ripken says there are other terms that he can't quite
clarify.
And the big question is
this: are the players even using these stats?
So let's say you're the
kind of baseball fan who casually likes to listen to the
game while grilling, washing the car, gardening, cleaning
house, as background noise. This is not really a book for
you, just so you know.
Instead, author Bill
Ripken speaks to those rabid fans who think that more stats
equals more science to the game of baseball even though, as
he believes, these additional game bullet-points don't
enhance the way the game's always been played, and they
might even leave a fan baffled. More bafflement: when Ripken
seems to sometimes contradict himself, often in the same
paragraph, leaving readers to wonder if they've actually
caught what's been pitched or if something is out in left
field.
Readers who are dedicated
fillers-out of statistic booklets won't call that a strike,
however, nor will those who've welcomed the changes that
have been made to the game itself. If that's you, this book
by a "qualified, crusty baseball man" is perfect for
argument-enders or debates. If you're not so into all that,
though, State of Play is likely a book you'll just
bat away.
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