Baseball Book Report - Watching Baseball Smarter

For the inaugural Baseball Book Report of 2012, I decided to read Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks by Zach Hemple. 

Last week I posted a countdown of my favourite baseball books that I read all year long. Since the summer, I've mostly read fiction, so it got me craving a bit of baseball non-fiction. When I was browsing through different baseball books online, this one caught my eye. I've always been interested in the strategies of baseball, so judging by its cover, this was the perfect book for me.


Boy was I wrong. You know that saying about not judging a book by its cover? It totally applies in this situation, for me at least... First of all, the title is rather misleading. If you're a semi-expert/baseball geek, 100% of the content in this book is common knowledge. It took me about 5 hours total to read this book over the past two days - not because I skimmed through the whole thing - but because it was a light, easy read (not in a good way...). This book merely skims the surface of rules, strategy, "fun" facts and stats. Heck, they only devote one (that's right, one!) paragraph to Bill James and don't even mention Sabermetrics in any of its "appendices". Throughout the book, Hemple clumsily throws in "colourful" baseball phrases like "ace" and "All Star Game" and "Curse of the Bambino" and "Farm Team". Not only do they feel forced, but they're also italicized so all us semi-experts and baseball geeks get to feel talked down to.


This book only appeals to new fans who are just beginning to grasp the rules of baseball. Which is fine, but in my humble opinion people who are only starting to learn baseball generally don't go and read books about it. They can just as easily learn about it by watching a few games on TV and in person. 


I've added a new ratings system to my Baseball Book Reports for the new year. I'm implementing an uber-scientific-non-sabermetric rating system:

I give this book 2 out of 5 baseballs only because it explains the rules in basic terms to new fans and will hopefully serve as a gateway drug to lead them to read better books that delve deeper into the rules, strategy and history of the great game of baseball.