Leonard Koppett (1923–2003)

Koppett was born in Moscow after his parents moved there from the Crimea. His parents both had the opportunity to receive a higher education because restrictions on Jews had been rolled back somewhat after the social unrest of 1905. In the late 1920s his father came to the United States with the foreign trade office, and the family followed shortly thereafter. When Stalin came to power in 1929, his parents realized they might be in danger and stayed in the US. In New York the family moved among the boroughs — he first realized he wanted to be a sportswriter when he was nine years old and lived a block away from Yankee Stadium — and by Koppett’s high school years they lived in the Sea Gate area of Brooklyn.

After high school Koppett enrolled at and graduated from Columbia, though his college years were interrupted by WWII and just under three years in the army. While at Columbia he worked for the school paper and became a stringer — Columbia football was big at the time — for a couple of the daily papers. Koppett started his formal sportswriting employment with the New York Herald Tribune in 1948. He later regarded the Herald Tribune of that era as the best overall newspaper of his career. In 1954 he moved to the New York Post because he was too often being confined to a desk job. He soon became acquainted with the “chipmunks,” a loose knit group of younger, irreverent sportswriters. Koppett described himself as too “orthodox” to follow their nontraditional approach.

Sportswriting for most dailies paid poorly in the early 1960s, and Koppett decided to leave the Post in 1962 to find a higher paying job in public relations or a similar business line. Fortunately for baseball enthusiasts, a spot opened up at the higher-paying New York Times, and Koppett jumped at the opportunity. In 1973 Koppett moved to Palo Alto, California, as the West Coast sports correspondent for the Times. He left in 1978 when the travel was finally becoming a burden, and he wanted to spend more time with his family and growing children. A couple years later he joined the Peninsula Times Tribune as columnist, also spending a few years as the overall editor for the paper.

As a young high-schooler, I learned how to explore questions and craft arguments by reading Koppett’s columns in The Sporting News. He had a seemingly straightforward but thought-provoking way of defining the underlying assumptions and approaches to questions he wanted to answer. One, in particular, struck me: an article in 1976 on how to determine if a player was overpaid. To systematically analyze the problem, Koppett devised a framework, reasoning “that there are only three possible approaches to an objective definition of ‘overpaid.’”

• One is a “share” concept: how much money is generated by this employes [sic] activity and what share of that income should go to him?
• A second is a “comparability” concept: what do other employes, in other fields or other places, get paid for comparable effort or comparable status or comparable special qualities?
• The third is “productivity”: what are the services provided by the employe “worth” to the business?

This systematic approach, often bolstered by a rare contextual understanding of statistics (for the time), offered Koppett’s readers a dimension they didn’t often get from other sources.

When The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Baseball came out in 1967 it provided the first comprehensive look at all the aspects of baseball, from a manager’s tactical decisions on the field, to the business of baseball, to the intricacies of hitting and pitching. And it offered it all up with an intelligent dose of historical and statistical context. More recently, Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball weaved between the game on and off the field, while delivering a deeper understanding of the connections among the various elements of both.

Koppett was great sportswriter who bought a historical and contextual appreciation to his work. Through his many columns, long-form articles, and books, Koppett’s comprehensive and reasoned explorations and explanations enriched generations of baseball followers.

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Rob Neyer (1966 – )

Also true: Rob seized this opportunity and forged his own career path, a path he essentially invented. When he began writing for ESPN.com in 1996, he became the first widely read, analytically savvy writer on the Internet. In this role, he not only influenced a steadily growing pool of like-minded readers, he influenced future writers, who could now envision such a path for themselves. “[Rob] paved the way for the next generation of writers to make their living on the Internet, instead of going through the motions at the local paper,” says Jonah Keri of The Athletic. “It’s not a stretch to say I owe a gigantic chunk of my existence as a sportswriter to Rob’s work back in the ’90s at ESPN.”

Years earlier, Rob’s childhood was spent moving around the Midwest before settling in Kansas City in 1976 just as the Royals were becoming a great team. He followed all the major sports as a kid, and was not immune to the popularity and success of the local nine, who became his entrée into the great game. He played a lot of baseball, but his love of the game would far eclipse his playing career.

After a few years at the University of Kansas and some time on local roofs, Rob landed his dream job. He spent four years with James, working extensively on all three editions of Bill’s annual Baseball Book (1990–1992) and the first edition of his Player Ratings Book (1993). He spent three more years working on various publications for STATS, Inc. before arriving at ESPN in 1996.

During his 15 years at ESPN, writing five columns a week for a while and eventually evolving into what we now call a “blogger,” Rob increasingly acted as the public voice (on radio, on television, at conference panels) for a new way of thinking about the game. Michael Lewis’s 2003 book Moneyball further legitimized Rob and his readers. “If Bill’s Abstracts are recognized as the birth of contemporary sabermetrics,” says Cory Schwartz of MLB Advanced Media, “it was Rob’s column that lifted those ideas out of the margins of fandom and made them familiar and accessible to a national audience. That spirit inspires not only much of what happens where I work, but dozens of baseball websites and blogs, and probably all 30 MLB front offices.”

Rob’s influence extended beyond simply writing well. He also used his platform to tout talented baseball writers who were struggling to find an audience. Craig Calcaterra, then an Ohio attorney, began blogging about baseball daily in 2007. Rob linked to one of Craig’s pieces, then another, and soon Craig found a readership. He soon left the law for a brand-new career as lead baseball writer for NBCSports.com. “Rob didn’t have to do it,” Craig says. “But he did because he’s a selfless and decent man. Rob has done more to advance baseball thought and discourse over the past couple of decades than anyone, yet he has never hesitated to elevate the work of others before promoting himself. Anyone who does what I do now is in his debt.”

While doing all of this, Rob also found time to write seven books, including Baseball Dynasties (with Eddie Epstein, 2000), Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Lineups (2003), and The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (with Bill James, 2004), which was awarded the Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award in 2005.

Rob left ESPN in 2011 to become the National Baseball Editor for SB Nation, and three years later joined FoxSports.com. Rob has been mainly freelancing for the past few years. After a decade hiatus from writing books, his 2018 effort, Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game, won the Casey Award as the best baseball book of the year.

Rob married Angela in 2014, and their daughter Olive came aboard in 2015. In 2019, Rob will serve his second year as the Commissioner of the West Coast League, a collegiate wooden bat league in the Pacific Northwest. He is also tapped to host SABR’s brand-new baseball podcast, the start of what will likely be yet another successful chapter in the baseball life of Rob Neyer.

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Abraham Roth was born in Montreal on May 10, 1917, the son of Nathan and Rose (Silverheart). Nathan worked as a tailor and the family moved around Ontario province before returning to Montreal during Abraham’s high school years, when he attended Strathcona Academy, playing all the major sports. He also spent many free hours from ages 13 to 16 compiling statistics for the International League and his home town Montreal Royals. He passed the entrance examination for McGill University, where older brother Max was already studying. Family circumstances, however, prevented paying for a second college student, so Abraham took a job. He worked as a salesman, first of magazines and later of men’s ties, suspenders, belts, and mufflers. In 1940, he married Esther Machlovitch and changed his name to Allan before going into the Canadian army.

Roth started his quest for a major league career by writing Brooklyn Dodgers president Larry MacPhail in December 1940. MacPhail was, at best, non-committal. After his 1944 discharge for medical reasons, Roth’s attention returned to the Dodgers, but this time focused on Branch Rickey, MacPhail’s successor and an executive Roth considered the most innovative man in sports.

Roth’s four-page letter contained proposals to track a wide range of statistics. Some of these were standard, but others, such as where the ball was hit and the count it was hit on, hadn’t been compiled regularly. Roth also proposed to break the statistics down into various categories that would reveal tendencies which the front office and the manager could use to win ballgames.

Breakdowns that are mundane to us now—performance against left-handers and right-handers, in day games versus night games, in the various ballparks, in situations with runners in scoring position—were rarely compiled or used, and never part of the public discussion in Roth’s time. The letter was intriguing enough to get a meeting with a still-skeptical Rickey. The conversation turned positive, Roth said, when Rickey asked him about runs batted in. Roth said he didn’t think much of runs batted in unless they were correlated with the chances to drive them in, then differentiated again by which base they’d been drive in from.

With postwar restrictions on visas for foreigners, it took until 1947 for Rickey to get Roth on the Brooklyn payroll. And, then, he kept him under wraps. Roth’s work went only to Rickey. In his first season, for example, Roth used one of his innovations—spray charts marking the location of all a player’s batted balls—to show that an increasing number of Dixie Walker’s hits were going to the opposite field, a sign his bat speed was fading. Rickey, following his own dictum that it was better to trade a player a year too early, sent Walker to the Pirates. “The People’s Cherce” batted .316 in 1948, but was down to .282 the next year, his last in the majors.

Unlike contemporary statistical analysts, Roth generally ignored higher mathematics. “The figures concerned in baseball statistical work don’t call for integral calculus or even advanced algebra,” he said. He summed up his philosophy: “Baseball is a game of percentages—I try to find the actual percentage, which is constantly shifting, and apply it to the situation where it will do the most good.”

Rickey’s departure from the Dodgers after the 1950 season meant changes for Roth. The new president, Walter O’Malley, was dedicated to the business side of the organization. The new manager, Charlie Dressen, managed by the seat of his pants. Roth was moved into the radio booth to feed timely material to the Dodger announcers and quickly struck up a strong friendship with Vin Scully. “If you had some question that came to you in the middle of a game, he would reach down into the bag, and next thing you knew you’d have your answer. It was marvelous,” said Scully.

In 1954, Roth’s work hit the big time—with a heavy coating of Branch Rickey. Life ran an article titled “Goodby (sic) to Some Old Baseball Ideas.” The article said it had been written by Branch Rickey, whose picture graced the first page. Roth’s back is visible in the background of that photo, and he is pictured on the article’s third page. Clearly, the multipart equation in the background was the work of Roth. Rickey called the equation, “the most disconcerting and at the same time the most constructive thing to come into baseball in my memory.” Thirty years later, John Thorn and Pete Palmer wrote in their seminal book, The Hidden Game of Baseball, that “Rickey and Roth’s fundamental contribution to the advancement of baseball statistics comes from their conceptual revisionism, their willingness to strip the game down to its basic unit, the run, and reconstruct its statistics accordingly.”

In many ways “The Equation” was years ahead of its time. The equation, which contained eight different terms, was vastly complicated for contemporary baseball organizations. In his history of baseball analytics, The Numbers Game, Alan Schwarz summarizes the impact of Roth’s equation: “No evidence exists that anyone took it seriously.”

Roth returned to the role he had played under Rickey. But now his analysis was not going just to Rickey, but to the manager and directly to individual players. On Friday, September 18, 1959, the Dodgers arrived in San Francisco for a key series against the Giants. They needed a sweep to have any realistic hope of making the playoffs. Friday night’s game was rained out and manager Walt Alston announced that Don Drysdale, who’d been scheduled to start Friday, would pitch the Saturday afternoon game. Roger Craig would start the evening game. Roth went to Alston and pointed out that Drysdale’s night-game record was substantially better than his daytime performance while Craig showed little difference. Alston switched the pitchers, Los Angeles won both games, and Sunday as well. The Dodgers finished the season in a tie with the Braves, won the playoffs and the World Series for an improbable championship.

After the move to Los Angeles, Roth started to attend spring training in Vero Beach. He and a coach would meet with each player to go over their performance of the previous year, both positives and negatives, and suggesting changes that could improve the player’s statistics. Sandy Koufax would credit such sessions in the early 1960s with helping him learn to emphasize first-pitch strikes and taking something off the ball.

In 1964, Roth left the Dodgers and expanded his freelance work. Within weeks, he was contributing regularly to The Sporting News. He revived a monthly column he’d written for Sport magazine from 1952 until 1960. He continued to edit the annual Who’s Who in Baseball, which he’d done since the 1954 issue. He contributed statistical data for Koufax, by Sandy Koufax and Ed Linn, and the publisher felt it important enough to be included in advertising for the book. He collaborated with Harold Rosenthal on the spring training magazines from MACO publishing.

In 1966, NBC came calling with its new contract for the Game of the Week, the All-Star Game, and the World Series. The Sporting News column disappeared and for the next decade, Roth would sit between Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek, feeding them the kind of statistical nuggets he’d supplied to Scully for years. A few years later, he moved to ABC to provide the same service.

While spending his time producing statistical nuggets for the broadcasters, Roth continued his exploration of ways teams could use statistics to improve performance. He consulted for 20 major league teams and identified Joe Morgan as the league’s most valuable player long before voters did. Harking back to his early talks with Branch Rickey, Roth focused on Morgan’s on-base percentage, power, and stolen base success.

Ill health forced Roth to retire in the late 1980s and he died of a heart attack in Brotman Medical Center in Culver City on March 3, 1992.

“He was the guy who began it all,” said Bill James. “He took statisticians into a brave new world.”

Click here to learn more about the Henry Chadwick Award.