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WORK IN PROGRESS
What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture
You can make a thing so perfect that it’s ruined.

By Derek Thompson
Photo illustration of a baseball player surrounded by mathematical graphs
Getty; Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic
OCTOBER 30, 2022, 6 AM ET
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The return of the World Series this weekend offers an opportunity to engage in America’s real national pastime: wondering loudly why people don’t like baseball as much as they used to.

Speaking personally, my relationship to the game these days is one of nostalgic befuddlement. The nostalgia part comes from spotless memories of watching Sunday Night Baseball on my parents’ couch, nestled between my dad and my dog: the chintzy ESPN graphics, the theme song that sounded straight out of a video game, the dulcet baritones of the announcers Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. The befuddlement part comes from the fact that, like a lot of people of my generation, I spend a weird amount of time wondering why I don’t spend any amount of time watching baseball anymore.