Murray Chass

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Murray Chass is a sports journalist for The New York Times. In 2003 the Baseball Writers Association of America honored him with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, and he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame the following summer.

Chass graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1960. He joined the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1962, when he worked for the Associated Press in Pittsburgh. He joined the New York Times in 1969, and started covering the New York Yankees the following year. In 1986, he was made the paper's national baseball writer.[1]

Chass is a noted baseball traditionalist who routinely laments the shift in baseball news coverage from daily beat-report biographies (the common purview of columnists like Chass) to more statistics-driven analysis (sometimes called sabermetrics), exemplified by Baseball Prospectus and used by both fantasy baseball leagues and, increasingly, Major League Baseball team management. In 2007, Chass asserted that, among "certain topics that should be off-limits," are "statistics mongers promoting VORP and other new-age baseball statistics." Chass particularly believes that in "their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game," these "statistics mongers" threaten "to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein."[2]

Chass's comments understandably caused a stir in the online baseball community, with some suggesting that his views are little better than an unintentional '"satire of dinosaur journalism."[3] Certain players took issue with Chass's comments, including the Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, who declared that "the only thing [Chass's opinion] did was show his ignorance to me in modern day baseball" [4] For its own part, Baseball Prospectus sounded a more conciliatory note, suggesting that if Chass were to look more closely, he'd be "pleasantly surprised by how much you have in common with our readers," who "are all baseball fans first, and we come carrying neither agendas nor pocket protectors."[5]




[edit] Citations

  1. ^ " BASEBALL; Chass to Enter Hall of Fame," New York Times (December 15, 2003).[1]
  2. ^ Murray Chass, "As Season Approaches, Some Topics Should Be Off Limits," The New York Times (February 27, 2007).[2]
  3. ^ Keith Law, online chat session, ESPN.com (February 27, 2007).[3]
  4. ^ Curt Schilling, SI.com (March 22, 2007).[4]
  5. ^ Nate Silver, "An Open Letter to Murray Chass," Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered (February 27, 2007).[5]


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