Sublime

Baseball people believed they knew the answers to those questions, and all the others. But those assumptions hadn’t been tested in decades, if ever, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many of them turned out to be wrong. From that gap between the assumed and the actual, Beane and his assistants were able to use their limited budget to construct

Those first few weeks, they made no real money, but then they had only a few people and Sam’s bonus money. By the end of December, they’d hired a bunch of people and raised $25 million in capital. Gary, basically all by himself, had written the code for an entire quantitative system. That month they generated several million dollars in profits. In

In 1995, when Gwynn led the league with a .368 average, he struck out 15 times all season. The next year, he struck out 17 times. In 1999, he played in 111 games and struck out 14 times. Gwynn struck out three times in a game once. In 1992, he did not strike out in back-to-back games all season.

A young reporter for the Post named Tom Wolfe followed up after my talk with an interview. The Post ran his story, “You Can So Beat the Gambling House at Blackjack, Math Expert Insists.” He was curious rather than skeptical, sympathetic but probing. Wolfe later became one of America’s most famous authors.