Baseball is a game of statistics, perhaps more than any other sport. Hockey players are not identified by their scoring percentages in the way that baseball players are permanently renowned for their batting averages. Major achievements in football – big rushing games, thousand-yard seasons – are mentioned in passing, but pitchers live and die by their ERAs. Parallel Hitters is a book for people who can recite strings of baseball numbers. People who are as conversant with abbreviations like RBI and HR% as they are with the players’ names themselves. The title derives from LeBuffe’s arduous task of matching up baseball hitters throughout history who are “related” through similarities in their tables of statistics. LeBuffe’s rules are, on the surface, simple: he matches up batters who played within fifteen years of each other (what he terms a “baseball generation”) and have comparable batting averages (BA), slugging averages (SA) and on base percentages (OBP). The author states in his introduction that his book is not a “heavy statistical tome,” (although every other page contains a table of numbers) and does not argue strongly in favor of the volume’s statistical significance. It’s all meant in fun, to inspire discussion and to elicit nostalgia about classic players and events in America’s national pastime. Through his analysis, LeBuffe assigns pairs of hitters as either hitting cousins, brothers, or twins, and nominates two players, Eddie Yost and Babe Ruth, as “only children.” Yost qualified because of his uncanny ability to get to base by virtue of a walk and Babe Ruth qualified on the strength of the number of records in his career and his “galactic” slugging average. Over half the book consists of hitting cousins, those players whose BAs and SAs are within 20 points of each other and the combined differences of BA, SA and OBP is less than 30. Famous cousins by LeBuffe’s definition are players like Barry Bonds and Mickey Mantle or Tim Raines and Craig Biggio. For each duo, LeBuffe provides a brief overview of the salient numbers in the player’s career and a discussion with interesting anecdotes and trivia. He cuts the threshold numbers in half to identify hitting brothers, pairs like Tony Oliva and Don Mattingly or Dave Winfield and Bobby Bonilla. Only two pairs of players are elevated to the lofty category of hitting twins. All four of these players’ careers consisted of only one game, but their statistics for these appearances are identical. This is clearly not a book for casual fans. LeBuffe does not define the fundamental statistical terms used to select his baseball relatives. While some of these are probably self-evident (RBI, runs batted in), others are more obscure to someone who isn’t a dedicated aficionado. Slugging average, for example, is computed by adding up the number of hits, assigning one point for each single base hit, two points for a double, three points for a triple and four for each home run. This total is then divided by the number of times at bat. It’s a sensible enough statistic, but its significance is not immediately obvious from its name alone. LeBuffe’s previous book, Baseball Fathers and Sons, looks briefly at the careers of over fifty fathers and sons who both had successful major league careers. Web site and all contents © Copyright Bev Vincent 2023. All rights reserved. |
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