Steve Kettmann of The New York Times talks about the nostalgic appreciation for baseball on a physical more straight forward level rather than the more in depth analytical way of appreciating America's most beloved sport. Kettmann argues that fans nowadays focus too much on abstract statistics that in reality don't mean much when he comes down to the heart of the game.
When presenting his argument, Kettmann uses well-known experts to establish credibility with his argument. The first source he brings up is San Francisco Giants manager, Bruce Bochy. Bochy agrees with the importance of actually watching and comprehending the game rather than the number crunching that modern day fans favor. Bochy being the manager of the current World Series champion team shows that his word has value in it as his ability to win a championship must mean something.
The next and probably the more important rhetorical device that Kettmann uses is analogies. The first, Kettmann presents rather early and he does so, so that people who wouldn't typical understand baseball can understand why he feels the way he does. He claims, "When it comes to watching a matchup of, say, the Mets pitcher Matt Harvey and Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins, statistical analysis is about as helpful in deepening an appreciation of the human drama unfolding before us as it would be for a Pavarotti aria." This allows the more intellectual fellow, which is what the NYT audience base mostly consists of, to understand just how dumb statistics are in relation to an opera singer's performance.
Kettmann continues the usage of analogies further throughout his passage and to tie all of his analogies together is the underlying theme between them which is music. He later on states, "You can go to the symphony and hear the music even as you’re texting with a client to close a deal. As your thumbs fly and you try not to be distracted by the dirty looks of the guy next to you, you might note the orchestra is playing Mahler’s Ninth. But with your attention so cratered, are you really listening to the music? Are you enjoying it?" This one is easier to comprehend and quite direct with it's purpose. Focusing on the minute and unimportant stats of baseball is like texting during a beautiful musical performance. You can't appreciate the beauty of what's going on when you do that, which is the point that Kettmann is attempting to convey through his musical analogies.
Overall, I felt that Steve Kettmann did a respectable and adequate job of representing that stats are meaningless and over appreciated by current baseball fans. By incorporating baseball specific experts, Kettmann was able to remain reliable and allow the audience to understand a possible unfamiliar topic of baseball by using musical analogies.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/opinion/baseball-by-the-numbers.html)
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