Daily Archives: February 28, 2005

Breakfast with Bill James

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Rich Lederer over at the Baseball Analysts posts this first segment in a three part series of his recent interview with Bill James, who is the creator of Sabermetrics, the mathematical and statistical analysis of baseball records. Check out this fascinating interview, which includes such interesting observations as the following:

RL: In the 1979 Abstract, you noted that Rod Carew once swung at two pitches when he was being intentionally walked, trying to get the pitcher to throw him something he could reach. Do you think that is a strategy Barry Bonds could employ today?
BJ: I don’t know. I would argue about it this way. If it is genuinely advantageous for the defense to intentionally walk Barry Bonds, then logically it has to be defensible for Bonds to swing at one or two pitches to try to negate that advantage and try to tempt them into throwing him a pitch. On the other hand, if hitters never react by swinging at pitches to try to stop the opposing team from intentionally walking them, the implication is that the offense always agrees to accept it even though the defense thinks the walk is helpful, which seems somewhat illogical.

A couple of previous interviews with Mr. James can be reviewed here and here. Mr. James was hired last year by the Red Sox as a consultant and, although he would attribute the Red Sox subsequent World Series Championship as pure coincidence, I’m not so sure. Bill James is one smart cookie on matters relating to baseball.
Update: Here is the second segment of the interview.
And the third.

An evening chat with U.S. Senate candidate Barbara Radnofsky

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Greg’s Opinion brings us this post in which he describes an evening chat with Vinson & Elkins partner and Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senator, Barbara Radnofsky of Houston. Barbara is a formidable candidate who will be interesting to watch as her campaign develops. If she can overcome the name recognition hurdle, my sense is that she could give any Republican candidate for the Senate a real run for their money.

Is the end of the line near for Foley’s?

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In a deal that may well be the equivalent of Custer’s last stand for department-store retailing, Federated Department Stores Inc. — the owner of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s — has agreed to buy its longtime and smaller rival May Department Stores Co. for about $11 billion. May is the owner of Houston’s venerable chain, Foley’s.
Federated will pay about $36 a share in cash and stock, and assume about $6 billion in debt, to buy May, which also owns the Marshall Field’s and Lord & Taylor chains. Although the proposed merger will create a huge company of nearly 1,000 department stores, the deal underscores the critical condition of department-store retailing, which has to undergo a transformation to survive in the brutal American retailing market. Big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on the low end and upscale stores such as Neiman Marcus Group Inc. on the high end are squeezing the profits of big department chains, which have been losing market share steadily over the past 25 years.
Although Federated operates only one Macy’s store in Foley’s home base of Houston, divestitures are still expected to occur, particularly in the 94 malls across the nation in which Federated and May both maintain locations. The merger is subject to regulatory approval, which is expected given the deteriorating condition of the department store-retailing sector.
Update: Dylan has interesting inside observations about May in this post.

Robert Dawson, RIP

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Robert “Mad Dog” Dawson, who taught criminal and juvenile law to a generation of law students at the University of Texas Law School, died Saturday at his farm in Fentress at the age of 65. Although illness forced him to into a motorized scooter in the last few months of his life, Professor Dawson continued to teach his criminal law class at UT until a week and a half ago.
Professor Dawson taught at UT for 30 years and founded the school’s Criminal Defense Clinic in 1974. The clinic gives third-year law the opportunity to represent criminal defendants in court under the supervision of UT law professors. Dawson authored the state’s juvenile justice laws in 1973 and advised lawmakers on the revision of the Texas Juvenile Justice Code in 1995.
According to his obituary, Professor Dawson’s ashes will be mixed with old horse stall bedding and scattered by manure spreader on pastures at the farm. “They will make good fertilizer for the hay crop,” he wrote before his death.
Arrangements were pending with Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home in Austin. A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. April 2 at UT’s LBJ Auditorium.