On other non-Sox baseball matters: why is it Bill James, Rob Neyer, and Rany Jazayerli, three of the most prominent sabermetricians, are all Kansas City fans? Back in college when I was studying urban economics we looked at agglomeration - how the act of gathering into cities can cause locales to sprout very specific industries (the button district in Manhattan), and perhaps this is an example of one…
Having never been anywhere near Kansas City, my impression of the city is shaped by: Kauffman Stadium; that recent New Yorker article about Hallmark; the Royals and Rob and Rany’s writing on them; the sound of Kansas City jazz and the American Jazz Museum; and the local ads I see when they show the KC feed of Sox-Royals games. How skewed is that? It’s like learning about Boston through seeing Fenway Park, Aerosmith, and Bernie and Phyl’s ads.