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It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

Bill James

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Bill James
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: October 5
Statistician
Writer
Holton
Kansas
George William James
Millions
Fact
Times
Difficult
Conclusion
Facts
Million
Long
Road
Theory
Longer

More quotes by Bill James

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The human race has been in a long struggle to eliminate murder. And we will succeed.
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When I was a small kid, I grew up in the newspapers.
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I try to take large, general questions that are difficult to resolve and break them down into small, very specific questions that have clear answers.
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Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses.
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Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.
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Television is full of fictional and real violence that's turned into entertainment. It's an interesting phenomena and I tried to put it in perspective and tried to think through a few of the real questions that this sometimes unseemly business raises.
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A chart of numbers that would put an actuary to sleep can be made to dance if you put it on one side of a card and Bombo Rivera's picture on the other.
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Crime cases tend to be fascinating until you figure out what happened.
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Any of us are capable of doing things we're not proud of under the wrong kind of stresses. Anyone can become a drug addict if you let yourself do it and, once you become a drug addict, you'll do whatever you have to to get the drugs. Absolutely, anybody can do it.
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(Mantle) was clearly a greater player in his peak years.
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Do people really believe there's something different about the eyes of murderers?
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We don't genuinely need more literary geniuses. One can only read so many books in a lifetime.
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Standardization leads to rigidity, and rigidity causes things to break.
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I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.
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It's extremely damaging to a fair trial to have people reaching judgment about the case in the newspapers and on the radio before the facts are heard in a case.
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There comes a moment during a job interview when you're still talking, but you might as well take off your shoes.
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Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws. There's a great many intersections between this unseemly tabloid phenomena and serious social issues and we never get to that intersection because serious people don't like to talk about that unattractive stuff.
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I like to feel that I understand little things about sports.
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Even if Mays is given every conceivable break on every unknown - defense, base running, clutch hitting - his performance still would not match Mantle's.
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Letting him manage in the major leagues is like sending Bo Derek through cellblock A without a bodyguard.
Bill James