WHAT I HAVE IN COMMON WITH NORMAN MAILER.
WHAT I HAVE IN COMMON WITH NORMAN MAILER. My wife Mary Jane and I are on a list with Norman Mailer. Bill James had the graciousness to dedicate the 1983 edition of THE BILL JAMES BASEBALL ABSTRACT to about ninety early subscribers to his Baseball Abstracts, including Norman Mailer, Mary Jane Schaefer and Philip Schaefer. Other names on the list are Roger Angell, William Goldman and Ron Howard. For non-baseball fans, Bill James is a brilliant writer and analyst who changed forever the way people watch baseball. There are now a number of people (called sabermatricians) who make a living doing statistical analyses of baseball. Bill James did it best.
I was looking Baseball Prospectus and they blatantly site Bill James as the source of many of their statstics, although they modified them a fair amount.
I believe he introduced the concepts of Win Shares, and the Replacement Level player.