"This is an Information Age story . . . In Schwarz's lively telling, The Numbers Game is a history of eccentrics whose unshakable thirst for baseball numbers is shared by millions of Americans." (click here for full review)
"The fascinating new book by Alan Schwarz tells the history of baseball statistics, from the primitive box scores of the 1850s to today's confounding maze of Sabermetricians and fantasy-league junkies. What sounds potentially dry -- a stat freak family tree -- is instead a lush landscape of eccentric scientists, pack-rat alcoholics, back-stabbing partners and a minimum-wage night watchman whose essays created a sensation (perhaps you've heard of Bill James)."
--San Jose Mercury News
"Schwarz has created an essential book for any baseball library, one that simultaneously makes for breezy summer reading and holds up as an essential piece of research."
--Chicago Sports Review
"Crafts a wholly original and entirely readable examination of baseball's long dance with statistics. Schwarz provides nothing less than an alternate history of baseball and its crucial subtext."
--Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"The real strength of The Numbers Game is how Schwarz humanizes the people who have advanced the statistical study of baseball . . . He brings out the personalities."
--The Beaver County (Pa.) Times
"Reads like a whodunit, covering the link between Henry Chadwick and Billy Beane seamlessly with a season-full of heretofore under-reported facts, nuances and stories. It is twice the hitter as last year's hot book, Moneyball, and Moneyball was pretty good.”
--Long Beach Press-Telegram
"One of the very best baseball journalists working today, (Schwarz) has written a wonderful history that will appeal even to those with no particular interest in the game. Remarkable."
--New York Observer
"For once, the box-score junkies aren't depicted as Revenge of the Nerd castoffs or homicidal hermits. They are passionate fans -- writers, military men, college kids, corporate vice presidents -- who happen to spend a ridiculous number of hours obsessing over baseball (what, there are people who don't?)."
--ESPN.com
"Besides presenting the evolution of baseball statistics and the vital role they played practically from the time the game was invented, Schwarz makes a compelling case for why baseball traditionalists, who value conventional scouting methods, and the number crunchers, who are in many ways reshaping the way players are evaluated, cannot only coexist but can thrive if properly integrated."
--The Boston Globe
An "intelligent, smartly researched and often hilarious look at the use of statistics in baseball, which Schwarz definitively shows to 'date back to the game’s earliest days in the 19th century.' It will delight any fan who memorizes the numbers on the back of trading cards or pores over newspaper box scores . . . Delivered in a delightfully breezy and confident style, this volume also serves as an excellent alternate or parallel history of the sport."
--Publishers Weekly
"Gives us not statistics themselves but their historical progression to the center of the game . . . Casual fans will almost certainly find something here to pique their interest, while raving statistics buffs will devour it."
