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So also with the essay in the "Top of the Eighth," Jay Bennett and Aryn Martin's foray into the sacred baseball ground of statistics titled "The Numbers Game: What Fans Should Know About the Stats They Love." Here, the late 19th-century's "second scientific revolution," which the historian of science Thomas Kuhn identified as "concerned with generating an 'avalanche of numbers,'" has interesting resonances with the emergence of baseball as the ultimate game of measurability. But somehow the application of statistical theory and the discussion of randomness miss the charm and mystery so bound up in baseball's statistics. When the essayists point out that Terry Pendleton's 1991 NL batting championship was by a mere .0011 points over Hal Morris, and that one more hit in Morris's 478 at-bats would have given him the title, our response is not statistical but visceral. And there is something further to the discussion of baseball and superstition than can be extrapolated from numeracy—Bennett and Martin offer another gem of John McGraw lore, and a particularity that stands all on its own, when they relate that "In 1911, Charles Victory Faust told John McGraw that a fortune-teller had guaranteed the New York Giants would win the pennant if he pitched for them. Although Faust had no skill whatever as a pitcher, McGraw kept him on the Giants payroll from 1911 through 1913 as a good luck charm. Faust warmed up for every game (though he never started) and the Giants did win the pennant in each of those years." Here is anti-philosophy, or perhaps the better word is lore, and I believe it is of such stuff that our baseball imaginations are made. I much prefer Bill James's quirky player profiles in his Abstract to the more algebraic formulae that he has derived.

Having complained enough about what seems the imposition of theoretical constructs on baseball, I want to add that Baseball and Philosophy does offer some moments where the game is elucidated by speculation. Randolph Feezell's wonderfully subtitled mock-Socratic dialogue in the "Top of the Fourth" essay, "Baseball, Cheating, and Tradition: Would Kant Cork His Bat?", provides a helpful fleshing out of various perspectives on what exactly should be allowed as "just part of the game." As Abbey the Absolutist, Ron the Realist, and Trev the Traditionalist (who represents an Aristotelian "middle way") hashed out the issues in conversation, I found myself wrestling with such inviolable violations as catchers framing pitches—how should we navigate such subjectivities? Another essay that touches upon rules and fairness is R. Scott Kretchmar's "Top of the Ninth" piece "Walking Barry Bonds: The Ethics of the Intentional Walk," wherein the author makes an interesting case for baseball's moral and aesthetic superiority over all the other major "time-regulated" sports, since these sports devise stall tactics and manipulations of time to effect competitive advantages, whereas in baseball, as Kretchmar beautifully phrases the point, "Ballplayers have to honor the nine innings. They have to play to the end. … The team that is batting always has hope. Sharp breaking balls still come to the plate. If first base is open, Barry Bonds or the mythical Casey will undoubtedly be intentionally walked. And despite the unfavorable odds, Barry's and Casey's teammates will continue to take their lusty swings. Aesthetically, for the fans in San Francisco and in Mudville, this is a far more pleasing way to end the story."

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49