Back to the Top News Newsfeed

Happy birthday, Bill James: Look back at his 1970s Sporting News letters

Bill James is a baseball legend.

The man who coined the term "sabermetrics" led a revolution in thinking that resonates to this day. It's impossible to imagine 21st century baseball analysis without the path he forged with his ground-breaking Baseball Abstracts.

That's how we think of him today anyway. But back in the 1970s, James was just another baseball fan living in the heartland with a Sporting News subscription.

MORE: The 25 best baseball books of all time, ranked

To celebrate James' 67th birthday, let's take a look back at some of the letters to the editor he wrote to Sporting News.