Batter's Box Interactive Magazine - 07/08 Blue Jays Library in a Box: Jays Jazz

07/08 Blue Jays Library in a Box: Jays Jazz

Does this count as hot jazz or cool jazz?

Title: Jays Jazz
# pages: 136
Published By: He seems to have published it himself. 1987.
Availability: I would have to regard this book as basically unavailable. Try eBay, I guess, and cross your fingers. I got my copy from This Ain't the Rosedale Library back when they were phasing out their baseball section.

Author: David Driscoll
Who Is: An amateur sabremetrician out of London, Ont., Driscoll wrote the Blue Jays chapter in Bill James's 1985 Baseball Abstract. Jays Jazz is his second annual statistical look at the Jays (the first being The 1985 Blue Book, which I would totally review here, except that I don't have it and don't really expect ever to find it).

I don't know what Driscoll is up to these days. I tried to track him down online, and found a number of David Driscolls, none of which I can say with any confidence is him. (I suspect that someone reading this article will know more about him.)

What's It About: It is, basically, an attempt to write the 1987 Bill James Baseball Abstract, for just the Toronto Blue Jays, for the length of an entire book. I don't mean to slight Driscoll by comparing him to James in this way.
Secret Hero: In one way it's Bill James. In another, maybe Buck Martinez.
How's the Writing: Well... it's good, but. Driscoll has a lot of interesting things to say, and can say them in an engaging way. Only problem is that he needs an editor to restrain him when he gets EMPHATIC! KNOW WHAT I MEAN?!
Anyway. Driscoll did a good job overall, and I'm sure I'll find my way back to this book again.

Sabremetric Corner: The whole book is sabremetrics, really. Driscoll comes up with a lot of different angles on the different players on the team, and, rereading it, I was surprised to find it as interesting as I do, considering that a) it's about stuff that happened over twenty years ago, and b) the sabremetric principles involved are over twenty years old. Among the many topics he covers are: a hitter's performance in the first week after coming back from an injury, percentage of runners driven in, Willie Upshaw's power, and the importance of Gary Lavelle and the seventh inning.
Anecdote: No anecdotes.

Posted by Matthew E on Monday, July 28 2008 @ 09:35 PM EDT.

07/08 Blue Jays Library in a Box: Jays Jazz | 9 comments | Create New Account

The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

Dave Till - Monday, July 28 2008 @ 10:01 PM EDT (#189663) #

Oh my God. I used to own a copy of this. Sadly, I think it got lost about two moves ago.

Bill James used to quote Driscoll every now and again in his books, I recall.

Dave Till - Monday, July 28 2008 @ 10:03 PM EDT (#189664) #

Whoops. I should read your whole post before commenting, Matthew - I had forgotten that Driscoll had written a chapter in one of the Baseball Abstracts.

I remember when This Ain't The Rosedale Library had the best baseball selection in the city. Wow, that was a long time ago.

Magpie - Monday, July 28 2008 @ 11:12 PM EDT (#189668) #

I think mine got lost four or five moves ago (both this one and The Blue Book.)

As I recall, he had some interesting stuff on the pitchers and on baserunning.

Matthew E - Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 08:38 AM EDT (#189682) #

You guys must be really bad at packing.

Chuck - Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 10:44 AM EDT (#189708) #

I hear you Matthew. My copy of Driscoll's book has survived several moves, and not necessarily because it has been the benefactor of particularly careful treatment.

Maybe we can start a mini e-bay at Da Box and take advantage of the sloppy packers.

Magpie - Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 03:43 PM EDT (#189727) #

You guys must be really bad at packing.

It's not so much the packing, as the bringing-all-the-boxes-with-you and finding them again later part that always defeats me.

I remember when This Ain't The Rosedale Library had the best baseball selection in the city.

Oh yes, yes. I lived just around the corner from them for more than ten years, from 1980 into the early 1990s. (The Gay Ghetto is just a great neighbourhood to live in for a young couple. Lots of coffee shops, neat little stores, and women feel absolutely safe on the streets at night. Liam's mother still lives there.) The most amazing thing I ever found there was a hardcover of Arthur Daley's Inside Baseball. It was published in 1950, and my dad had a beatup old copy, for some unknown reason. I found it in a trunk when I was a wee little kid and it became my very first baseball book. I read it endlessly. All these stories about John McGraw and Pete Alexander and Lou Gehrig. It was astonishing to see it again, all those years later.

Dewey - Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 05:53 PM EDT (#189731) #

Yes, This Aint The Rosedale Library was excellent for baseball for a few years. So was Writers and Company, on Yonge a couple of blocks south of Eglinton. I forget the woman's name just now, but she was genuinely knowledgable about baseball and its literature. She was a real Blue Jays fan. She also had the best selection of poetry available in the city�bar none. Her husband raced cars, and unfortunately that somehow resulted in their packing up and moving to New Zealand. (Hey, maybe she's canuckkiwi?) The shop struggled on for awhile across the street from its old location; but it wasn't quite the same and eventually went the way of so many good indy booksellers.

I have Driscoll's two books, somewhere. He was no match for Bill James, especially in his ability to write well.

Incidentally, has Da Box ever considered a books/memorabilia column, or a way to faciltate buying/selling books and memorabilia?

StephenT - Tuesday, July 29 2008 @ 09:47 PM EDT (#189758) #

Driscoll scored every pitch of the season himself for at least the 1985-1987 Blue Jays seasons and 1986-1987 Tigers seasons, enabling more detailed analysis than you could get anywhere else at that time.

4 books that I'm aware of:

"The 1985 Blue Book: A Statistical Analysis of the Toronto Blue Jays" by David Driscoll

It's actually printed on light-blue paper (literally a blue book). Most of the pages look like they were printed with a dot-matrix printer.

"Jays Jazz: A Statistical Analysis of the 1986 Toronto Blue Jays" by David Driscoll

(Internally, a slightly different title is listed: "Jays Jazz: An Analysis of the 1986 Toronto Blue Jays")

This book was much more professionally printed. Supposedly it is for sale here: http://www.biblio.com/books/83114537.html

"Blue Jays Jazz: 1988 Edition" by David Driscoll

This book is about the 1987 season. The Introduction says Driscoll did some work for both TSN and NBC that year.

"Tiger Tracks: An In-Depth Look at the Detroit Tigers - 1988" by David Driscoll and The Mayo Smith Society

This book is about the Tigers' 1987 season. Driscoll kept score of both the Jays and Tigers games, sometimes at the same time. Supposedly it is for sale here: http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-tracks-depth-Detroit-Tigers-1988/dp/B00071D3TM

The 1988 books include an order form for the previous books, plus a 9 issue newsletter for the upcoming 1988 season. I might have subscribed to that newsletter, but I'm not sure if all 9 issues were delivered, and I'm not aware of any other Driscoll books.

There's a reference to a 1989 Tiger Tracks book at the following link, but it does not list Driscoll as an author: http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.collecting.sport.baseball/2006-03/msg00188.html .

I might be remembering completely wrong, but I think Driscoll may have been a columnist for a (short-lived) Canadian baseball publication called "Innings"(?) which I think was printed on newsprint a few times a year (I forget which years).

Mike Green - Wednesday, July 30 2008 @ 12:44 PM EDT (#189789) #

This book is about the Tigers' 1987 season. Driscoll kept score of both the Jays and Tigers games, sometimes at the same time.

Dedication, thy name is David Driscoll. Thanks, StephenT, for the information.

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