They're Playing (Well Not Really) Baseball

I wouldn't even wanna know how many hours I spent playing THIS GAME as  a kid, so it's pretty thrilling to read about the guy who's the Godfather of Baseball video games and fantasy league baseball and Money Ball and sabermetrics and other stuff I couldn't have imagined existing at the time:

But John seized on something Okrent didn't factor in to roto ball — something that only became mainstream when Billy Beane started taking Bill James seriously. John, for no other reason than that it seemed like a neat trick, figured out that quantitative multivariable computer analysis could determine the relative merits of baseball players and figure out who would win a game. Using objective parameters like batting averages and RBI totals and slugging percentages, John was able to run a comparative performance test in an infinite number of fantasy scenarios. Twenty years later, James defined sabermetrics as "the search for objective knowledge about baseball." John Burgeson was looking for just that.

Fascinating cat: tank-sized computers and computer punch cards and op-eds about global warming.