George William “Bill” James (born October 5, 1949, in Hotlon, Kansas) is an American baseball writer, historian and statistician whose work has been widely influential. James began writing baseball articles after leaving the United States Army in his mid-twenties. James self-published an annual book titled The Bill James Baseball Abstract beginning in 1977. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose.More