Bill James Quotes

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Bill James

Profession : Writer

Birth : October 5, 1949

Computers, like automobiles and airplanes, do only what people tell them to do.

Bill James

It's extremely damaging to a fair trial to have people reaching judgment about the case in the newspapers and on the radio before the facts are heard in a case.

Bill James

You know one little way in which baseball changes us? We don't even think twice about Japanese names anymore. You know what I mean?

Bill James

Well, stealing bases adds some runs but very few, and you lose most of the runs that you gain by having runners caught stealing.

Bill James

Bunting is usually a waste of time. The - generally, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, bunt is the only play in baseball that both sides applaud. The - if the home team bunts, you get a base. The home team applauds because they get an out, and the other team applauds because they get a base. So what does that tell you?

Bill James

Baseball would be a quite remarkable activity if it was the one place in the world where your co-workers didn't have any impact on how productive you were. But in fact, baseball is a high-stress occupation, and those sort of stress-inducing activities... just have a huge impact on how the team functions, I think.

Bill James

Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.

Bill James

I do have a family, and obviously I spend as much time as I can with them. Though even when I'm with my family, my mind tends to drift toward baseball.

Bill James

Do people really believe there's something different about the eyes of murderers?

Bill James

Professionalism in law has brought us the O.J. Simpson case in lieu of justice.

Bill James

Professionalism in medicine has given us medial miracles for the affluent but hospitals that will charge $35 for aspirin.

Bill James

I try to take large, general questions that are difficult to resolve and break them down into small, very specific questions that have clear answers.

Bill James

In a crime story, the details become tremendously important - where the staircase was in relation to the bed, for example.

Bill James

Crime shapes how we think about the world; it shapes social decisions that we make; it shapes our base of knowledge. But we don't talk about it intelligently.

Bill James

Serial murders are just the worst stories. It can take an emotional toll on you.

Bill James

Television is full of fictional and real violence that's turned into entertainment.

Bill James

Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses.

Bill James

The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct.

Bill James

Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws.

Bill James

I think among the population at large, people are openly fascinated with crime and don't feel any shame over it. It's only the opinion-makers and the 'opinion elites' who turn up their noses.

Bill James