Once upon a time there was a little boy. The little boy wasn’t very good at sports, and others often made fun of this, but he liked sports. He liked sports a lot, because when he liked something, he usually liked it a lot.
The little boy wasn’t good at sports, but he liked to write. He liked to write even before he knew how to write. The little boy would go with his mom on the bus and see things and if an idea popped into his head, he’d tell her to write it down. If she didn’t write it down, he’d repeat it, over and over again. Once the little boy learned to write, he’d write things down himself. He still does. A lot.
The little boy didn’t just like to write. He liked to read. He liked stories and newspaper articles. The little boy was reading the newspaper when he was five. He tended to gravitate to the box scores and the statistics.
The little boy also liked books. And he didn’t just read books. He’d read them with intensity. When the little boy’s fourth-grade class went away for a few days and others went on outdoor adventures, the little boy pulled out his “Mel Martin” baseball books, sat on his bed and read. If a class had a substitute teacher, the little boy put a book on his lap, put his head on the desk, and read for over an hour without so much as looking up.
The little boy also liked math, from the time he would play with his grandma’s adding machine in her house in Elmont. Growing up, he was always a step ahead of the others in his class. When they were adding, he was multiplying. When they were subtracting, he was dividing.
For whatever reason, numbers came easy to the little boy. When he was seven, he got a book called The Bill James Baseball Abstract. It had a lot of complicated math, and the little boy didn’t know what to do with it. But he liked the book anyway, because it was about sports and it was about numbers.
Fast forward through life a little bit. The little boy was lucky. He went to a good high school and a good college and got a lot of practice at what he wanted to do. He eventually got to be a sportswriter and a sportscaster and a researcher, which allowed him to write, read, do math and talk, all at the same time. People thought he was good at what he did. They liked his articles, his broadcasts and his research. And he liked that people liked him and liked his work.
Now the little boy has written a book. In the book, he looked a lot up, he wrote a lot down, he did a lot of math and most importantly, he told a lot of stories. He’s really excited about the book and he really hopes that you will be too.
You can buy “The Yankees Index” at this link or at an online retailer or bookstore near you.
Mark Simon 