A lot of what sabermetricians do is, in some form or another, alternate history. Any sort of “adjusted” or “neutral” statistic has a few assumptions built in—usually sensible and correct assumptions, but assumptions just the same. Playing “what if?” is at the heart of most sports arguments and an ingredient in a good bit of useful sabermetric analysis.
Bill Gutman's new book, What If the Babe Had Kept His Red Sox?, turns to the narrative portion of alternate history to bring up several interesting cases across the sports spectrum, and for the most part it turns out well. The book doesn't stick with just baseball, though the plurality of the 12 chapters focuses on it; football and basketball have a few stories apiece, and boxing, hockey and even golf show up once each.
This variety is a tad frustrating to a baseball writer for a baseball site, but reading about other sports was informative, and Gutman's treatment of each subject was deep enough that I didn't have to go to another book to follow his narrative. Still, this book is best for a sports omnivore; better yet, it's perfect for that relative who wonders why you deal in “all that stat junk,” as Gutman's narratives and alternate histories are just begging for statistical analysis to come in.
