Michael Lewis interviews Bill James on COVID-19 and baseball
I asked James a question I’ve been asking lots of people: What are the three things that he’s saddest to have lost? “The NCAA tournament,” he said, without missing a beat. “My Jayhawks were the consensus No. 1 team.” After that he mourned the delay to the start of the baseball season. “That’s going to tear a huge hole in my daily life.” He rattled off the years that MLB’s season was shortened, by war or strike: 1918, 1919, 1972, 1981, 1994, 1995. A few days earlier he’d put a poll up on Twitter, asking people to predict this year’s Opening Day. He had his own prediction: May 15. More than a thousand people took his poll. All but one thought he was being wildly optimistic.