The motion for a Sox Machine Book Club was brought to the floor, seconded and thirded in my site survey post last month. Normally, Luis Robert's Rules of Order would lead to debate and a vote, but I'm going to exercise executive powers and establish the practice, because Keith Law's new book lends itself to such a discussion.
The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves is Law's endeavor to bring the tenets of behavioral science into the sphere of baseball, and it's pretty effective at taking heuristics out of denser, more scholarly reads like Thinking Fast and Slow and applying them to the relatively straightforward world of sports.
(Disclaimer: I'd recommend buying either of the linked works through your preferred local bookseller. If one isn't available to you, the bookshop.org links above dole out proceeds to independent booksellers, along with a commission to Sox Machine.)
The Inside Game strikes me as a good guinea pig for the inaugural Sox Machine Book Club for a few reasons:
Length: It's 235 pages divided over 15 seconds (introduction, 13 chapters, conclusion). I knocked out the whole thing in three sessions, but it's pretty easy to sneak in a chapter with a spare 5-10 minutes for those who don't have long stretches of undivided attention.
Density: It's meant to be a lighter read than the heavyweights of behavioral sciences -- there are plenty of footnotes and references to deeper reading if you're so inclined -- so you shouldn't get bogged down in any chapters.
Relevance: Most chapters and concepts immediately brought White Sox-related examples to mind, so the post and discussion we generate should be worth following even among people who aren't able to read the book immediately. Plus, I've alluded to or directly mentioned some of these concepts in previous posts, but now I'll have something to reference going forward.
So if you're game, sign up below, and give me an idea of when you might be able to get 40 pages in (it's an easy 40 pages, both in terms of material and page design). I'm thinking four or five posts over a fortnight or so should be able cover it, but I'm flexible. In the time of COVID-19, time is all we have.
