Bill James is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. 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.
In 2006, Time named him in the Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world.
In an essay published in the 1984 Abstract, James vented his frustration about Major League Baseball’s refusal to publish play-by-play data of every game. James proposed the creation of Project Scoresheet, a network of fans that would work together to collect and distribute this information.