Hi, this is Mark from Los Angeles. The Sound of Young America is an independent production

supported by listeners like you and me. If you'd like to donate to support the show,

visit maximumfund.org and click on donate. Live on tape from my house in Los Angeles,

I'm Jesse Thorn and this is the Sound of Young America from maximumfund.org.

It's a special podcast exclusive edition of the Sound of Young America. I'm Jesse Thorn.

My guest Bill James started writing his annual baseball abstracts in the late 1970s.

He mimicked the annual books by hand and sold them through a tiny ad in the back of the sporting

news. Within a few years the books were appearing on the New York Times bestseller list

and James had created a new kind of baseball analysis which he called saber metrics.

James method is to ask simple questions like say at what age do baseball players peak

and then subject them to objective analysis. His math skills were and are unremarkable,

nothing to write home about, but his tenacity and his writing skill and wit made him the leader

of a new generation of baseball analysts. Over the past ten years or so, James accolades

of crept into the front offices of baseball teams around the country. Michael Lewis wrote about

the career of one of the followers, Oakland A's GM Billy Bean, in his bestselling book Money Ball.

Five years ago James himself came in from the cold, accepting an employment offer from the new

Boston Red Sox owner John Henry, who himself had made hundreds of millions of dollars through

commodities and currency market analysis and investment. Today James works as a special advisor

to the Red Sox under the saber metricly inclined young GM Theo Epstein. He's also returned to the

world of baseball annuals with a new entry, the Bill James baseball gold mine. I spoke with James

by phone from his home. I want to talk a little bit about your background. When did you become

really passionate baseball fan? A lot of people find the things that they're passionate about

...