Play Ball!
With Opening Day close at hand, we heartily recommend Jane Leavy’s 2025 Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It, a rip-roaring good read, even if you only have a passing interest in our nation’s pastime. Leavy, a veteran sportswriter, weaves together savvy insights, memorable interviews with baseball cognoscenti, and charming anecdotes drawn from the many years she has covered the game. And while she may never get to be the baseball commissioner, those in charge of overseeing the sport would do well to consider her recommendations for addressing key issues that are plaguing MLB and for simply keeping the game fun to watch.
The quotation in this week’s puzzle comes from a portion of Leavy’s book that walks the lay reader through the explosive growth in the type and quantity of baseball statistics in recent times. Like many, she has mixed feelings about the role that sabermetrics is having on the way that baseball is played and managed these days. And she’s not above poking fun at some of the nerdy analysis that has crept into the sport, as the quotation makes clear.
Given the subject matter, we felt it imperative to include a reference to “Moneyball,” the iconic 2011 movie based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 book of the same name. The movie and the book chronicle the 2002 season of the Oakland A’s, in which the General Manager, Billy Beane, used advanced analytics and data-driven strategies to produce a division-winning team with an excellent 103-59 record, despite a severely constrained budget.
We snuck in a variety of other baseball-themed clues and answers as well, as is our wont. How many did you see? Did any of the clues particularly strike your fancy?
If you’re into baseball stats, or even if you just like watching Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill talk about such stuff, you might enjoy this clip:
“Holy cow!” What an Acrostic. Harder to hit than Phil Niekro or Hoyt Wilhelm. You covered all the bases with that one. Thanks for the challenge.
Where are the answers?
James — the New York Times publishes the answers to our acrostics on the following Sunday, but only in the hard-copy paper. You can find the answers in the Magazine section, appearing alongside the new puzzles.
Are there particular answers to the most recent acrostic that you are seeking?
Wow. That was a real struggle, but highly rewarding when it finally broke for me.
It was sufficiently difficult to that, about an hour into it with no real progress, I was tempted to consult an outside source (which I’ve never done). I’m glad I continued the lonely struggle. The payoff was worth it.
I’m a baseball fan, but you so cleverly hid the clues that I had no inkling as to the theme of the puzzle until well into it. Ebbett’s field was one of the few easy fills for me, but the penny didn’t drop on the theme until later.
Baseball related themes that I could detect:
A, B (as in “launch angle,” one of the newer stats), C, E (Vince DiMaggio? A real stretch), F, G (as in “Greg Maddux was known for his masterful control”), I, K, L (never knew why it was called that, so I looked it up. Wikipedia says: “Although the origin is not known for certain, “eephus” may come from the Hebrew word אפס (pronounced EF-ess), meaning “zero””. Who knew?), M, N, R, U, V (second game of a doubleheader, starting late), W (another newish stat for the speed of the baseball off the bat), X (radial nerve injuries are relatively common with certain types of pitching motions).
Bravo and brava!
Another fun challenge, so intricately crafted! I caught onto the general theme quickly with EBBETS and MONEYBALL. And I was able to make a guess about the book title which helped with filling in. (Greg, I think VINCENT evokes one who held that baseball office…) So I was momentarily a little jelly-legged when the word PYTHAGOREAN appeared…;)
Thanks for including the word EEPHUS…I only knew it from reading about the recent movie of that name. Spurs me to try to see it again, tho I think it’s only on a streaming service I don’t have…
Thanks, David. I’m sure you’re right and that Fay Vincent is the intended baseball reference.
After my first pass of the clues I had nothing. Then I thought, OPENING DAY for N and started thinking baseball, which led to Ebbets, Berra (had to smile), catcher, Moneyball, statistic and radial. Adding it all in the quote, I looked for a possible “baseball.” It kept building with, on base, manager, knucklers and switch it up. Home run! That was really fun! Sad the A’s have left the Bay Area. A lot of history, but good memories.
Being a dedicated word finder who meets success only in the shower when pelted by sufficiently hot water I would not have come across this godsend save for my friend, former Times public editor, Dan Okrent, a polymath, whose new book on Stephen Sondheim deserves this and more. It’s so nice to have smart friends who also love baseball.
Play ball!
Your new Commish, Jane Leavy
What an honor to have the new commish weigh in! 😉
I loved your quip about Bill James’s over-the-top nomenclature. I too have mixed feelings about the ascendancy of sabermetrics in baseball. But I have nothing but admiration for Bill James, who was really the first to do it. He also wrote so well that I kept a few of his books from the early 1980s.
What a grand slam of an acrostic: Timely, well crafted, and right in my wheelhouse. After spotting the theme early I thought I’d crush it. Trying home opener before spotting OPENINGDAY , however, brushed me back and made my grid a mess. I rallied for a ninth inning comeback and won with a walk off. A lifelong baseball fan looking forward to the new season, I was an early adherent of Bill James’s advanced statistical analysis in the eighties. But like kudzu run amok, the proliferation of ever more arcane statistics threatens to overrun and obscure the pastoral pleasures of the most genteel of sporting pastimes. Kudos for including EEPHUS.
One of the charms of the acrostic is discovering books I did not know about. Now I have another! In other news, GO RED SOX! GO CUBS!