Sabermetrics the search for objective knowledge about baseball through statistical analysis has taken over the national pastime. The authors argue that this approach began as a useful corrective but has come to harm baseball. The book demonstrates that the socalled moneyball approach based on sabermetrics offers only limited guidance for assembling a team managing games and evaluating player performance. Equally important the obsession with statistics and vision of the game as wholly predictable obscure baseballs spectacular improvisational quality. It is the games unquantifiable and relentless capacity to surprisethe source of wonder so central to its greatest stories and personalitiesthat informs any real appreciation of baseball.