why is Bill James not being ripped to shreds on here?

[Blackout]

BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are distancing themselves from comments made by adviser Bill James about Joe Paterno and the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State.

James has defended Paterno from a report that said he should have done more to prevent assistant coach Jerry Sandusky from sexually abusing boys. James also said in a radio interview that men showering with young boys was ''quite common in America 40 years ago.''

The Red Sox said in a statement that James' views do not represent those of the ballclub.
____________________


this is the most disgusting thing I've heard...it's like he thinks Sandusky is innocent!! wtf?

[Honus Wagner Rules]

How is this a baseball related issue????

[Jackaroo Dave]

BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are distancing themselves from comments made by adviser Bill James about Joe Paterno and the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State.

James has defended Paterno from a report that said he should have done more to prevent assistant coach Jerry Sandusky from sexually abusing boys. James also said in a radio interview that men showering with young boys was ''quite common in America 40 years ago.''

. . . .
____________________


this is the most disgusting thing I've heard...

Well, it's still early.

On another thread I also said that men showering with young boys was quite common in America 40 years ago--because it was. Does that mean that it's like I think Sandusky is innocent?

James basically said that Sandusky didn't work for Paterno, and the responsibility for reporting him fell on other shoulders. I haven't read the 279 page Freeh report and don't intend to, so I have no idea if he is right or reasonable or not. (If you've read it and can note where James misrepresents it, fire away.)

But the remarks you refer to would be an utter non-issue if he were talking about Joe Materno or somebody. "It wasn't this guy's responsibility, it was some other guy's."

To Honus Wagner Rules:

I agree that the Penn State horrors don't have anything to do with baseball, but James and the Red Sox do, and James's penchant for going with what he holds to be the evidence despite popular opinion is in plain sight.

I think the need to comment on the OP's approach to the issue outweighs the risk of encouraging it.

[ian2813]

Do we really need two threads on this? Better yet, do we even need one?

[Dude Paskert]

Yeah, the Bosox need to get away from this one given that they have their own ongoing pederast scandal with one of their former (now deceased) clubhouse men...people are still coming out to say they were abused, the club knew about it, and nothing was done about it.
Maybe you could argue that Paterno was not the biggest player in this scandal (other than Sandusky), but something so horrible needs to be stopped by any person and any means possible. If Sandusky had been murdering the kids, would it be reasonable to argue that it was OK to pass the buck if you knew what he was doing?
I think James' days with the Bosox are numbered, hopefully in the single digits. I love his writing, but he can't be tarnishing the Red Sox in this way. And please don't start to talk about freedom of speech, he can express his opinion freely but he can also be fired for expressing his opinion.

[leecemark]

--It was common to coaches or other men supervising boys to shower with them in group settings - i.e. large open shower facilities. Showering alone with a boy, except maybe your own son, not so much in my recollection. It is also true that people simply didn't think about child abuse so much back then. As a young boy I was allowed to roam without supervision all day in a way that would probably be seen as neglectfull today, but was common at the time. Anyway if the worst thing in James comment was to state this fact from his (and what would also be Paterno's) experience then its pretty much a non-issue and definately not represenative of his being "sick". However, I haven't read James full comments and, lacking an interest in his opinion on the matter, don't intend too.

[Captain Cold Nose]

I think James went so far as to say this was a media issue more than anything, they were making too big a deal out of it. The person interviewing him was absolutely incredulous.

It would be very easy to go off-topic on the subject, unfortunately. The Red Sox would have been foolish to not distance themselves from the statements of their employee. He wasn't so much advocating Sandusky's actions, though, so while what he said was quite strange, it wasn't near as horrific as what was going on all those years in Happy Valley.

Beyond the Red Sox, I wonder if James's reputation will take a hit, or is this just a quirk of being a genius?

[leewileyfan]

What the Penn State debacle and Bill James as sabermetric guru have in common escapes me, unless Bill was called into the shower venues to take architectural and/or physiological measurements and regress them to the mean.

Whoever thought it was useful, appropriate or informative to seek James' opinion on such a topic must have had an exaggerated impression of the extent of James' expertise. Absent his own large ego, James might have told him to get lost.

It's an ugly mess, sure to deteriorate like Dorian Gray's portrait, in the hands of administrators, alumni, victims and their extended families, lawyers, ghost writers, the media book publishers.

[SavoyBG]

BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are distancing themselves from comments made by adviser Bill James about Joe Paterno and the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State.

James has defended Paterno from a report that said he should have done more to prevent assistant coach Jerry Sandusky from sexually abusing boys. James also said in a radio interview that men showering with young boys was ''quite common in America 40 years ago.''

Bill also insisted that Pete Rose did not bet on games even after reading the report. I think it was just a function of him being totally ignorant of betting, therefore he did not understand how many things that Rose did pointed towards him being a degenerate gambler.

[Dude Paskert]

Bill also insisted that Pete Rose did not bet on games even after reading the report. I think it was just a function of him being totally ignorant of betting, therefore he did not understand how many things that Rose did pointed towards him being a degenerate gambler.

I read James' long essay about this in the Historical Abstract in detail (more than once) and he NEVER said that Rose did not bet on baseball...that is a gross misstatement and tells me that you haven't even read his argument. James' point was that the physical evidence was almost nonexistent and the bulk of the case rested on the word of a roids dealer/gambler who had a hard grudge against Rose because of a dispute about a large amount of money. Kind of like the much later Clemens trial, James argued that it would be almost impossible to convict Rose or even convince an uninterested person that he had done something wrong with the evidence and testimony at hand.
James did write that Rose had "lost his moral compass" and was associating with people who were almost bound to help him get in trouble in some way, and also discussed the slight problem of Rose not paying taxes on memorabilia earnings. He thought it was fully believeable that Rose had bet on baseball, just not close to being proven at the time.

[JR Hart]

I'm not a big fan of James. Certainly he has better math skills than me. While some his stuff is interesting, one should pick and choose what has value from his stuff. I also believe that old fashioned just watching players play is a way (not the only) to evaluate talent. Before James, we knew that Ruth, Gehrig, and Williams were great. I don't need 25 formulas to reaffirm that. Plus, I'd take Tony Oliva or Steve Gravey in a clutch situation over Darrell Evans.

Now, what Mr. James has to do with the Penn St sex scandal is beyond me.

And Pete Rose agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball and later admitted to gambling on baseball. What's there to disscuss about him?

[Dude Paskert]

I'm not a big fan of James. Certainly he has better math skills than me. While some his stuff is interesting, one should pick and choose what has value from his stuff. I also believe that old fashioned just watching players play is a way (not the only) to evaluate talent. Before James, we knew that Ruth, Gehrig, and Williams were great. I don't need 25 formulas to reaffirm that. Plus, I'd take Tony Oliva or Steve Gravey in a clutch situation over Darrell Evans.

Now, what Mr. James has to do with the Penn St sex scandal is beyond me.

And Pete Rose agreed to a lifetime ban from baseball and later admitted to gambling on baseball. What's there to disscuss about him?

Charlie Mashdtaters had it all over those three guys in the clutch.

If you don't like this discussion, why don't you post in one that is more to your taste?

[drstrangelove]

BOSTON (AP) -- The Boston Red Sox are distancing themselves from comments made by adviser Bill James about Joe Paterno and the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State.

James has defended Paterno from a report that said he should have done more to prevent assistant coach Jerry Sandusky from sexually abusing boys. James also said in a radio interview that men showering with young boys was ''quite common in America 40 years ago.''

The Red Sox said in a statement that James' views do not represent those of the ballclub.
____________________


this is the most disgusting thing I've heard...it's like he thinks Sandusky is innocent!! wtf?

Nice job of taking a quote out of context.

Here is the part you snipped:


At the 14:10 mark Gottlieb asks James, “have you ever showered with a boy? Do you know anybody who has showered with a boy?” James says “Yes, that was actually quite common in the town I grew up in. That was quite common in America 40 years ago.”


Ok, just FYI.

1) Yes, when I was growing up, it was common at my Judo club, at my public swimming pool, at the YMCA, for boys and men to shower in the same public shower. We also could go to stores where pickles were in large vats where people put their HAND in the vat to take out the pickle they wanted. We also, as 6 year old kids, would go out for hours on end to play blocks away from our home with the parents unaware of where we were. We also would use a rotary phone, black and white TVS, and a radio that created heat from the tubes inside. We also at ages 10-12 walked for blocks at night on Halloween and went into homes to get candy and treats without supervision.

2) It would have been impossible to be bothered by showering that way when I grew up because NO ONE THOUGHT ABOUT IT. It was no big deal. We weren't raised to fear life and people. Thanks God.

3) If people don't like the answer because it's true, then we should chastise the speaker for being honest and insist he retroactively change history to fit our current morality.

None of this means he thinks pedophiles are good or that we should support child rape. But by all means, lets have an Animal Farm day.

[Captain Cold Nose]

Ultimately, and the reason why I guess this is in the history forum, this should not impact James's reputation as a baseball writer and historian.

[Dude Paskert]

2) It would have been impossible to be bothered by showering that way when I grew up because NO ONE THOUGHT ABOUT IT. It was no big deal. We weren't raised to fear life and people. Thanks God.

To be honest, I say thank goodness for the change in attitude.
When I was in junior high, we were forced to take showers after gym on certain days. One certain gym teacher, who never even taught any of my classes, would always make sure that he was positioned perfectly to have a view of the boys showering. This perv would sit there in his chair and stare at us...like I said, he had nothing to do with the class itself, but he wanted to have his little show. We weren't even allowed to bring towels back to our locker with us and had to be totally uncovered as we passed within a few feet of this guy going to and from the shower. I can remember guys slipping on the tile and crashing into things because they were trying to run by this creep as quickly as possible. Coach Sicko would sit there with his mouth hanging open and eyes as big as dinner plates until the show was over.
We all knew exactly what he was doing and were disgusted by it, but you just didn't complain to your parents about adults doing things like that back then. Even if a parent had complained, I'm sure they would have been told that the guy hadn't been caught touching a kid and to stop whining.
Things finally started to change when a wrestling coach at the high school in the same town was arrested for raping kids. He preyed on the kids he coached until he chose one who was a little too big and strong to handle and got the living crap kicked out of him before the kid went to the cops. The kids who weren't able to fight him off were too ashamed to come forward. We heard that the guy back at JH had to give up his shows shortly thereafter (yes, he was notorious enough that people talked about him years after getting away from him).