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===''The Bill James Baseball Abstract''===
Bill James attended the [[University of Kansas]] and lived in [[Stephenson Scholarship Hall]] before joining the Army. An aspiring writer and obsessive fan, James began writing baseball articles after leaving the [[United States Army]] in his mid-twenties. Unlike most writers, his pieces didn't re-enact games in epic terms, or offer insights gleaned from interviews with players. A typical James piece posed a question (e.g., "Which pitchers and catchers allow runners to steal the most bases?") and then presented data and statistics that answered the question in his understated prose style.
Editors considered James' pieces so unusual that few believed them suitable for their readers. In an effort to reach a wider audience, James self-published an annual he titled ''[[The Bill James Baseball Abstract]]'' in [[1977]]. The first edition presented 80 pages of in-depth statistics compiled from James' study of [[box score]]s from the preceding season.
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