The will to win is not an official baseball statistic but Chicago White Sox announcer Hawk Harrelson believes in it. Harrelson, a former big leaguer, is not fond of sabermetrics calling them a “joke” in a Monday piece run in the New York Times.
The Times notes:
Harrelson maintains that he does, in fact, like numbers and that sabermetrics does have a valued place in baseball, but that he would prefer it be a role much more limited that it is now and that too much deference is being paid in general to numbers crunching. He called its rise over the last decade “the biggest joke I’ve ever seen.”
Harrelson has long been a fixture on White Sox broadcasts and while number crunching may be valuable his style has always been entertainment though storytelling and zingy one-liners.
“He gone, grab some bench, put it on the board, don’t stop now boys….”
H/T: The Big Lead
Harrelson has stuck to his beliefs on this and who knows maybe one day broadcast booths can have both homespun stories and statistic debates.
