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Swimming Against the Mainstream

An interview with Rob Neyer

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by Royce Webb

In his baseball column at ESPN.com, Rob Neyer punctures the conventional wisdom each day with indignation and wit. And in his book Baseball Dynasties (co-written with Eddie Epstein), he introduced an ingenious method for selecting the greatest team of all time, and came up with quite a surprising choice.

Recently Rob talked to SportsJones editor Royce Webb by phone and e-mail about his column, his book, and much more.

SportsJones: You are quite explicit about your desires to change the ways that baseball is played, run, and talked about. How would you summarize what you are trying to accomplish? What are a couple of ways that your column may have affected the game?

Neyer: On what you might call a "micro level," I'd like people to understand that many of the traditionally popular metrics – batting average and RBI, especially – aren't as important as many think. And since I've been blessed with a platform at the most popular sports-related web site, a number of readers have gotten the message in the five seasons I've been doing this.

But more broadly, I hope to instill some of that healthy skepticism in the readers' minds that Bill James instilled in me. Because an ability to see the world as it is, rather than how we're told it is, frees up one's mind for bigger and better things. And I'm not just talking about baseball.

SportsJones: You started out working for Bill James as he was playing Moses to a generation of young baseball fans. What is the most critical thing you learned from him? How do you and he differ?

Neyer: I would say that I learned two things from Bill that made me what I am today (whatever that might be). First, I learned to question things. In fact, I question almost everything, if not explicitly then certainly implicitly. But I didn't need to work for Bill to learn that; like many thousands of his readers, I learned skepticism from reading Bill's Baseball Abstracts.

What I learned from Bill, directly, was how to write. Specifically, two things: avoid the passive voice – yes, I know that's a basic thing, but Bill hammered it home – and write in your own voice. I'll never forget the night I asked Bill why my "professional writing" wasn't good, even though friends said I wrote great letters. He simply told me when I'm writing for publication, I should still imagine that I'm writing a letter to a friend. And that advice has stood me in good stead over the years, as it's my accessible style that people seem to enjoy.

How did we differ? Gosh, it's hard to remember now. I left Bill's employ nearly eight years ago. Working for him was a wonderful experience, easily the most important four years of my life.

SportsJones: During your short tenure at STATS, Inc., you generated the ideas for several of their best publications. Since moving to ESPN, you've been very critical of STATS, Inc., and at the same time you've lauded much of their work. What was your experience at the company like?

Neyer: I think that "very critical" is a bit strong. Sometimes I get frustrated with STATS, because the company originally was committed to making its information available, at a reasonable cost, for non-commercial research. But as STATS has grown and grown and grown, that goal has essentially been lost. Still, they're not quite as money-grubbing as their competitors, and they do publish a number of wonderful books.

As for my experience at the company, in all honesty I was overworked and underpaid, a bad combination and the main reason I left after two-and-a-half years. But that was four-and-a-half years ago, and my understanding is that things have changed for the better since then. And I still have a number of good friends there, so I wish the company well.

Next page: "Writers ask too many dumb questions"

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