Throne of Jade and Black Powder War, Naomi Novik

Whatever muse Naomi Novik tapped in to for the first Temeraire book remains in full effect. Superb page-turners. Hurry up and write some more.

Empires of the Word, Nicholas Ostler

A history of the languages of the world. Competently written, and I learned a lot, but not quite well written enough to keep it from turning into a slog by the end.

George Vecsey writes, "... baseball players come off as average people, although obviously their hand-eye coordination is anything but typical. (The bulked-up physiques seem to be returning toward normal dimensions, for some mysterious reason.)" That's the sort of cheap shot that I guess you can get away with when you aren't held to journalistic standards. If you look at a chart of player height/weight over the last hundred and thirty-plus years, you see a very clear trend of annual increases in height and weight, back to 1871 when ballplayers averaged about 155 pounds and five foot eight and a half. The 2006 average was about 200 pounds and almost six foot two. Not normal dimensions. Further, most of the steroid users caught in the last two years of testing have been using drugs to rehabilitate injuries, not grow to hulk-like proportions.

Next, a classic "back in my day..." story, "Of Rocks and Apples and the Disappearance of 20-Game Winners." Murray Chass investigates the mystery of the first-ever full-length baseball season without any twenty-game-winning pitchers, with penetrating analysis like, "Gone are the days, as recently as in the mid-1970s, when pitchers worked 300 innings a season, started every fourth day, and often finished what they started." Note the moral judgment implied in that wording—what kind of man doesn't finish what he starts?

Which expert does he quote in depth? Third-base coach Rich Donnelly, who relates, "I was raised in an alley. They would deliver coal for the furnaces, and waste would come out and there would be a clinker, a rock. We had rock fights all the time. These guys never had an apple fight or a rock fight in their life. I'll bet all the no-parking signs in their neighborhoods are clean." Chass adds, "And they don't win 20 games."

Donnelly also says, "It used to be if you're tired, you're coming out. Now you get around 100 [pitches], you're coming out ... I think everybody is overprotective." Sadly, Donnelly and his ignorance coach for the Dodgers. At least he's not a pitching coach, though. Yankee pitching coach and former star pitcher Ron Guidry: "I don't know if there are as many quality guys as you used to have ...." (Guidry was a very good pitcher, with one great season at age 27, and a sharp decline in his last three seasons, retiring at age 37 in 1988. I guess he ran out of quality.)

Stephen Jay Gould wrote the book on this argument, Full House. He convincingly argues that the decline of statistical high outliers in the major league baseball population proves that the quality of competition is increasing, not decreasing: as everybody gets better, it's harder and harder to stand out. In the book he talks about .400 hitters, of which there haven't been any since 1941, but the argument applies as well to 20-game winners. One more bit of actual data for you: a chart of the best baseball pitchers in history, with currently active pitchers in bold. You will notice that two of the four best pitchers in history are still pitching (probably).

On the bright side, the same article quotes Curt Schilling, who seems to be one of the smartest guys in baseball: "I think there's a lot more good pitching in the game now." And the same section does have a fact-based article, No Reason to Use a Designated Hitter Who Doesn't Hit, which includes quotes such as "Had [the Mariners] instead acquired Branyan ... they probably would have added enough offense to win two or three more games this season, and saved $6.5 million." If only the Times baseball writers would read their own paper. Or be expected to base their opinions in reality. (Of course, David Brooks and many other Times opinion writes fail that standard as well....)