Special interview: Jonah Keri

One of the best things of having a sportsblog is the opportunity to interact with other people, who enjoy or have a good knowledge on the subject. Not just the interaction with readers (one of the reasons I love twitter and writing mailbags), but also getting to know people who came before me in this world of sportswriting, many of them people I admire and who have inspired me, and even influenced me when I started doing this - like Bola Presa, the Brazilian basketball blog that made me create Two-Minute Warning. But recently, I had an opportunity that doubles as the highest point in almost five years of writing: talking about baseball with one of my favorite writers, the great Jonah Keri.

If you like baseball and don't know Jonah Keri, you are wasting your time. He is, on my opinion, the best baseball writer right now. He is the main baseball writer for ESPN's Grantland; the host of a very good podcast on the subject; and author of two best-sellers: the excellent "The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First", and the recently released "Up, Up and Away" (more about it in on a minute). And of course, one of my favorite writers on baseball and any other subject.

I asked Keri if he could give me a quick interview. The objective, as I explained to him, was to give the Brazilian public some insights about baseball from the standpoint of a specialist, someone who works daily with the subject. Many people (including myself) here in Brazil do a good job of spreading baseball in our native country, but I still see a lot of prejudice, many people unwilling to list to a Brazilian words on the subject, someone who didn't grew up with and lived the sport as someone in North America would. And even if Keri is Canadian and not American, he works for a big american company, he lives in Denver, lives and write about the MLB reality, and is overqualified to discuss this subject. I thought maybe having someone of that caliber talking about baseball could reach a much bigger number of people.

Luckily for us, he agreed to a quick interview, to talk a little about MLB, baseball in Brazil, sabermetrics, Montreal Expos and his new book, "Up, Up and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgetable Montreal Expos"!

(By the way, that's the book I will be raffling to celebrate this interview and the launching of our baseball special: The Top 100 Prospects in Baseball. If you want a chance to win the book, just send an email to tmwarning@hotmail.com.)

Below you find the original interview, in english. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Você também pode ler a versão traduzida para o português clicando aqui. 

Two-Minute Warning: Jonah, when someone think about Canada and sports, the first one that comes to your mind is Hockey, then Lacrosse. It's not exactly the same as Brazil, that was basically a one-sport country (with soccer), and Montreal DID have a baseball team at the time, of course. But how was that you ended up working with baseball? Did you also have the experience of growing up in love with a sport that wasn't all that popular around you (if so, could you please tell us a little about it), or was Montreal enough of a baseball town back then?

Jonah Keri: Montreal was actually quite a significant baseball town when I first started following the sport in the early 80s. The Expos ranked 2nd or 3rd in the league in attendance for a few years in that span, they even outdrew the Yankees for a couple of years. It wasn't quite at the level of hockey, but they certainly had support when I was a kid. 

TMW: Baseball has experienced a recent growth here in Brazil, with more games on TV on a bigger number of channels, two players at the Majors and more accessible coverage, both from professional and amateur media. It's still small, of course, but it's growing. What do you think could help us take the next step? Maybe a preseason game in Brazil? Do you think there is any chance of this happening any time soon?

JK: I'd say that's some time off in the future, since they'll likely have other countries they'd want to go to first. But it's nice to see the sport being embraced in such a big, vibrant country, for sure.

TMW: One thing that undeniably helped push the interest in Baseball here in Brazil was the arriving at the MLB of two brazilian players, Yan Gomes and Andre Rienzo. What's your take on them as players? Do you think any of them can get big enough to get even more attention?

JK: Gomes is a starting catcher in the big leagues, which is something only 30 other people on Earth can say, so that's a big deal. He's young enough to stick for a while too. Rienzo isn't as good a player, and his track record doesn't necessarily suggest big things in the future. But he's still pitching for the White Sox, and that's something to be proud of.

TMW: One of the biggest complaints of people that just got introduced to baseball is that the game is too long and stops too much (specially when compared to soccer, one that never stops). Do you see this as a problem to the expansion of baseball to new markets?

JK: Not just new markets, I'd like to see that addressed even for people who are used to the game's rhythms. Tough to imagine it improving much, though, unless umpires start forcing pitchers to throw faster.

TMW: If you were introducing someone to baseball, what are the main things you would tell him? In other words, what do you think that, in baseball, is more interesting to someone who's just getting acquainted to the game? 

JK: Well the deliberate pace -- as long as it's not TOO deliberate -- can be great. As a fan you get to think along with the hitters and pitchers, as opposed to in a faster-moving sport (say, basketball or hockey) where everything is moving so fast that there isn't any time to think. And of course baseball has many tremendous athletic feats, just like soccer and other sports. It's a big treat to watch someone like Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, or Yasiel Puig play.

TMW: What is your opinion on sabermetrics? Do you think they can do a very good job of capturing the impact of what happen in a game or a season (given enough sample size), or do you stand by the tradition and old ways? Why?

JK: I am immersed in sabermetrics, both in my job and as a fan. This doesn't have to be an either/or situation. You can watch the game and enjoy it on a basic level, but also appreciate more nuanced ways to look at the game. I never understand why people want to make it about one or the other.

TMW: One thing I noticed here in Brazil is that the overall baseball fan base is very interested in advanced stats, it's the main focus of requests and emails I receive, and my post explaining sabermetrics is THE most read in four years of TMW. However, there is a big obstacle: many people - including ones from mainstream media - simply hate them and do whatever they can to dismiss them. You can't use a stat to make a point or even a curiosity that they will start complaining - once a friend casually said on twitter Jeter was a poor defender and three or four of them started going nuts claiming the stats were wrong without pointing to any other kind of evidence. You probably dealt with this kind of thing all the time, and probably in a much larger scale. What's your take on this kind of thing?

JK: People are threatened by concepts they don't understand. Your job, my job...our job is to write in a way that invites them into the conversation. Write crisply and intelligently and also respectfully, listen to others' opinions, but also don't be afraid to defend your position -- again, with respect. If at that point people still don't want to hear it, well, they're the ones missing out.

TMW: Once, I was watching a baseball game and, during a dead moment (a pitching change), the commentator started explaining some sabermetric. It wasn't even anything too complicated, it was FIP. The play by play guy promptly asked him to stop, because he claimed "those things aren't useful and turn people off the game". I thought this was ridiculous. I can understand if a guy tell me he don't fully trust a stat like WAR or VORP, or that stats don't tell the whole story, but to totally ignore all kind of stats and claim his visual opinion is more trustworthy of decades of stat development, it's a whole other thing. Once a guy even went as far as to say "No sabermetrician has ever won a title".In your opinion, why does that still happen? 

JK: See above. When your livelihood depends on your opinion being valued, and you know nothing about stats, you have a vested interest in shutting out stats. Like I said, intelligent, open-minded people are perfectly capable of processing and even ENJOYING both.

TMW: You are, of course, a big Expos fan. Strangely enough, the Expos are pretty popular around here, a charismatic team that was gone too soon, frequently drawing comparisons to the Sonics. Can you tell us a little about the team and their popularity?

JK: They were a team full of Hall of Fame-caliber players, and also great characters. Montreal was the only Canadian team for a few years, and even after Toronto joined the league, the Expos remained unique, because Montreal is the only major league city that truly feels European (Toronto is like a cleaner Chicago, basically). The Expos were also the only team that had everything take place in two languages (English and French) which set them apart. Montreal is very much a party city, so when the team was good (late 70s-early 80s, then again early-to-mid 90s), people gravitated to the stadium and loved to watch them play.

TMW: Finally, can you tell us a little about your new book, "Up, Up and Away: The Kid, the Hawk, Rock, Vladi, Pedro, le Grand Orange, Youppi!, the Crazy Business of Baseball, and the Ill-fated but Unforgetable Montreal Expos" (Now that's a title!), that I will be given as a gif to celebrate the launch of our new baseball project?

JK: It's tons of fun. I talked to every major player in the franchise's history -- Pedro Martinez, Gary Carter, Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, Dennis Martinez, Rusty Staub, Steve Rogers...130 interviews in all. So what you're getting are very candid and fun responses from the people that were there, in a way that you wouldn't from a current player who has to be cautious and guard his reputation. There's also material about the city's history, about changes in the economics of baseball, slice of life stories from myself and other fans...the works. It's probably the best thing I'll ever write in my life, and I'll be delighted to have others read it.