Jonah Keri Interview Prep

The Extra 2% - How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First – Available March 8th

Jonah's writing has appeared in ESPN.com, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, SI.com, FanGraphs.com, Bloomberg Sports, Salon, Slate, Playboy, Penthouse, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal, and he is a contributor to Investors Business Daily at the website investors.com.

Jonah is originally from Montreal, and like every other Canadian I have ever had the pleasure of encountering, and I’ve worked with quite a few in various endeavors, Jonah is exceptionally friendly and accommodating, he just comes off as a very nice guy…agreeing to an interview with me, even! Gracious almost to the point of suspicion. So let me start with that, Jonah. What’s the deal with you Canadians? Is this all an act as part of some national northern conspiracy, and are you all secretly amassing at the border and preparing for the inevitable invasion and using the affable posture as a cover, or what?

Well, even if you are secretly plotting a campaign against the states with your Maple Leafed companions, I am very pleased to welcome you to Vertically Striped Radio, and thank you so much for coming on. You are a well known fan of statistical analysis, and we will get into that in a bit, but I wanted to start out from the very beginning. I don’t want to get too James Lipton “Inside the Actor’s Studio” on you, but I’m always interested in finding out about the beginning of things. So, growing up as a boy in Montreal, how did this idea of you being a fan develop? How would you describe your beginnings as a sports fan, and would you still consider yourself to be a fan? Has your fanship changed as you’ve progressed into adulthood?

What’s it like to lose your favorite team?
How does one maintain interest in the sport when your team is ripped from you?

Sports reporting used to be limited pretty much to a four minute segment on the local news each night, the morning paper, and weekend afternoon television. Every league has their own 24 hour network, every major college conference has one, and we’re starting to see individual schools get their own channels, ESPN has so many channels that the joke from the movie Dodgeball about ESPN the Ocho may be shortsighted in a few years, and that’s before we even get into the ten billion sports blogs and podcasts littering the internet. Many would say we are in a golden age for sports, but do you think there is anything that was better from the time when we had to wait for the news to get scores and the next day’s newspapers to get boxscores?

What steps led you to journalism, and how exactly does one balance sports and investing reporting? It is quite an unusual one two punch.

My favorite thing I’ve ever read from you, and what made me a fan for life of your work, was your article from August 2009 entitled “Cheating Death” in which you write about an encounter where you walk away from a car wreck. It’s a brilliantly written piece, and tells an amazing story. I know it’s trite to say things like, “You live each day more fully, now.” Or “It really puts things into perspective.” Or something silly like that, but did that experience change you as a man in some way and has it had an effect on your work?

Also during that piece it brings up that you were expecting twins. If I’m doing the mental math correctly, that means right now you’re dealing with life as the parent of two one and a half year olds. As a father of a six year old and a three year old, I am in that same parents club. I’m curious how family life has affected your outlook on life.

You’re well known as a numbers guy, but I need you to help me understand this phenomenon. I kind of fall into the camp that sees sabremetrics as a triumph of number crunching over the human spirit. It feels like you need an advanced degree in statistics to have a conversation about baseball anymore, and while I appreciate that General Managers and scouts need a method for evaluating talent, I fail to see the importance for the fan. I don’t begrudge anyone who is interested in the stats, and I’m impressed by those with the devotion to crunch the numbers. I just don’t get it. I like baseball, but I’m hoping that baseball i Is there room in baseball for those of us who just want to watch a good game, but have no interest in WARP, VORP, WAR, RISP, or any of the other hundreds of acronyms that I have no idea what they mean?

It’s no secret that you’re a huge Simpson’s fan, there are no wrong answers on this question, but you I’m going to call you onto the carpet and you HAVE to make a call on it. With a gun to your head, who is your choice as the best supplemental character in the show? (So eliminate Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa, and Maggie, and who you got?)