Baseball writer and analyst Bill James probably should be given a spot in the Hall of Fame someday -- but this isn't about that. This is about 2017 inductee Tim Raines, and how, if not for James and his legion of intellectual descendants, he may never have landed in Cooperstown.
As you might have guessed, this is also about baseball statistics. In Raines' case, it always was.
In the early years of his window to be elected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, the stats worked against him. Gradually, however, they came to elevate him all the way to immortality.