More than anything, Power Ball does exactly what its subtitle promises: it details the anatomy of a modern baseball game. Whether that’s counting and sabermetrically inclined stats, notions of how the game should be played, or even social issues that affect our everyday life as much as baseball. In his writing, Neyer does a good job balancing the old and the new. So I found a real logic to the flow of the book, even if it hardly follows the game it is ostensibly structured around. Hell, you might even be reading this review while watching a game. I love baseball, Neyer loves baseball, I’m sure you love baseball, but the game lends itself to thinking about other things. But even if Power Ball isn’t truly new, it is truly enjoyable and informative.īy structuring the book around nine innings of a game, Neyer’s narrative loosely follows the path my own mind wanders. Of course, he’s not wrong, and he made the statement in the context of all writing, that it’s hard to come across something truly new anywhere. It’s a hell of a statement for an author to make: This thing I wrote, you can find it all elsewhere. "It's not a stretch to say I owe a gigantic chunk of my existence as a sportswriter.One of the most fascinating things Rob Neyer said to me about his book, Power Ball, is that it is not very original. " paved the way for the next generation of writers to make their living on the Internet, instead of going through the motions at the local paper," says Jonah Keri of The Athletic. In this role, he not only influenced a steadily growing pool of like-minded readers, he influenced future writers, who could now envision such a path for themselves. When he began writing for in 1996, he became the first widely read, analytically savvy writer on the Internet.
And this is all true, as far as it goes.Īlso true: Rob seized this opportunity and forged his own career path, a path he essentially invented. Rob has never been hesitant to tell this story, of a young, unsettled guy working as a roofer in Lawrence, Kansas-armed with a love of baseball and the written word, and a willingness to work hard-being granted the opportunity to work with the most famous baseball researcher in the world. Rob Neyer (1966-) received his big break in 1989 when Bill James hired him as his research assistant.
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