Baseball
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intentionally walk the batter in order to face one who is less likely to succeed. Sabermetrics refers to the field of baseball statistical study and the development of new statistics and analytical tools. The term is also used to refer directly to new statistics themselves. The term was coined around 1980 by one of the field's leading proponents, Bill James, and derives from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). The growing popularity of sabermetrics since the early 1980s has brought more attention to two batting statistics that sabermetricians argue are much better gauges of a batter's skill than batting average: Some of the new statistics devised by sabermetricians have gained wide use:
Sabermetrics
* Slugging percentage measures a batter's ability to hit for power. It is calculated by taking the batter's total bases (one per each single, two per double, three per triple, and four per home run) and dividing that by the batter's at bats.
* Walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) measures a pitcher's ability at preventing hitters from reaching base. It is calculated exactly as its name suggests. Writing in 1919, philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as America's national religion. In the words of sports columnist Jayson Stark, baseball has long been "a unique paragon of American culture"—a status he sees as devastated by the steroid abuse scandal. Baseball has an important place in other national cultures as well: Scholar Peter Bjarkman describes "how deeply the sport is ingrained in the history and culture of a nation such as Cuba, [and] how thoroughly it was radically reshaped and nativized in Japan." Since the early 1980s, the Dominican Republic, in particular the city of San Pedro de Macorís, has been the major leagues' primary source of foreign talent. Both the local winter league and major league ball are closely followed in Puerto Rico; major league Hall-of-Famer Roberto Clemente remains one of the greatest national heroes in the island's history. In the Western Hemisphere, baseball is also one of the leading sports in Canada, Colombia, Mexico, the Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela. In Asia, it is among the most popular sports in South Korea and Taiwan. The major league game in the United States was originally targeted toward a middle-class, white-collar audience:
Popularity and cultural impact