He developed and refined the box score.
He invented the concept of judging a hitter by total bases.
He established the batting average.
Okay, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
Of all the early pioneers of baseball, Henry Chadwick is my favorite. For me, his claim to fame is that he was the first to realize how mathematics could be used to objectively qualify players. He was actually the first sabermetrician in baseball history, a century before the term was coined, and he helped give shape to a game that was forming as it went.
A member of the first rules committee for the National League, Chadwick was instrumental in explaining the game to the reading public with his Beadle Baseball Player annual books.
He wasn’t 20 years ahead of his time, he was 100 years ahead of his time when he said in 1875 that the goal of the hitter is to “not make an out” (as opposed to "getting a hit"). This pre-Cambrian nod to on-base percentage was truly revolutionary, and of course no one understood it at the time. It would take Bill James, Eric Walker, a host of others, and the internet to make OBP a household acronym.
Nowadays, you can walk up to any elderly woman at Dunkin’ Donuts and ask her if she’s seen the new PECOTA predictions and she’ll belt out that Johnny Damon may suffer a drop-off this year but Wang’s low K rate is nothing to worry about. You can ask her about Eric Milton’s DIPS and she’s likely to come back with:
“Listen buddy...it’s his -49 lifetime RSAA that’s getting to me. Bug off.”
A few years ago she wouldn’t know her WHIPs from her DIPS, but thanks to websites like Baseball Prospectus, The Hardball Times, and Baseball Think Factory, these stats are as readily available as the morning bagel at Dunkin’ Donuts.
The father of all these neophyte saber heads is old Henry Chadwick.
Like most stat heads, Chadwick got a bit touchy when someone didn’t immediately grasp the profundity of his scribbles. In fact, after failing to convince a Washington D.C. newspaper editor of the value of "total bases,” he was overheard shouting at the man:
“For God’s sake…I am surrounded by idiots, and jackals.”
He was addressing his boss at the time.
Chadwick was cantankerous, he was precise, and he knew he was right. What’s not to love?
So why I am I writing about him? He has begun to appear in my dreams.
First, let me say that my wife presented me with the new Lee Sinins Sabermetric Encyclopedia for my birthday, as well as the new book from Tom Tango, Mitchell Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin, The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.
This means that I am swimming in the sweet poetry of numbers. (Did you know, for example, that Nap Lajoie lead the American League in Runs Created Above Average in 1901, the league’s inaugural season? With 122, he was twice as much ahead of his runner-up Buck Freeman, who had 55.
I have not left my computer or its adjacent reading table for a week. I am missing important deadlines for freelance work and I missed a doctor’s appointment—all because of this fascination with numbers.
I can hear my Uncle Ernie now: “Numbers, numbers, you kids with all your numbers these days. Back in my day, if a pitcher was no good, you just said so without all these numbers.”
Or perhaps he'd say: "Bill James. Bill James. Why don’t you marry this Bill James that you love him so much? Then you two could talk all day long already about the Nap Lajoie, the OPS, the On Base Percentage, the whole thing."
But the point of all this jabbering is that I may need to put the books and CD away for a few days—for mental health's sake. I am dreaming about having statistical arguments with phantom saber heads in my sleep…and I dreamt that Henry Chadwick was there to determine the winner.
Full whiskered, fatherly, and regal…Chadwick was in my mind’s eye. He was telling me that I could rest easy: A-Rod truly deserved the MVP in 2005 over David Ortiz.
I cheered Chadwick, of course, and in so doing I woke myself and my wife up.
Since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I made some coffee, went into the den, and fired up the Sabermetric CD to compare the defensive range numbers for National League shortstops in 1937. For dessert, I looked at Eric Milton’s lifetime HR ratio per batter faced.
Chadwick would have loved this gizmo.
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