Great Bill James Interview

Great interview of Bill James over at SoSH. Possibly the best baseball related writing I've seen all pre-season. Some nuggets from the interview:

James T: HOK is known as the designer of new parks in recent times was there one firm primarily responsible for the spate of parks 35 years ago, Riverfront, Three Rivers et al?

Bill James: I think those were mostly designed by Albert Speer. . .

James T: Does your general approach to these issues come from your economics training in college?

Bill James: My economics training was very useful, yes. It had tremendous impact on me, but I have difficulty explaining how. Economics is fundamentally concerned with value—what is the value of a wingding, what is the value of a plate of chicken fingers, what is the value to society of clean air? And my work is fundamentally concerned with value—what is the value of defense as opposed to the value of offense, what is the value of a walk as opposed to a hit, what is the value of a 23-year-old star as opposed to the value of a 28-year player of the same caliber? So the ways of thinking about problems are often very much the same.

Bill James: Why do we allow the batters to wipe out the batter’s box? The batter’s box is in the rules, and it has a purpose. Would we allow the pitchers to dig up the pitcher’s rubber? The practice of deliberately obliterating the batter’s box began in the 1970s, and didn’t become standard until the late 1980s—the period in which the umpires were out to lunch. But it would be very, very easy to put a stop to it. All you have to do is, when a batter wipes out the batter’s box, you call time out, call out the grounds crew, and instruct them to re-draw the box. If the batter wipes it out again, you eject him. Three to five ejections, and you’d have the batters back in the batter’s box.