Remember when you could just watch a game without seeing 1,000 tweets about player PER and WAR?
By @ashkindof · Sports
Being a sports fan feels more like doing homework now. The obsession with advanced stats has completely killed the fun of just watching your team and having a normal debate.
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I grew up watching baseball with my grandpa. We'd sit on the couch, he'd have the game on, and we'd talk about who was clutch, who had a good swing, who had heart. The deepest we'd get with stats was batting average and ERA. It was about the feel of the game, the story of the season. Now, I can't even say I like a player without some random guy on the internet sending me a spreadsheet about his 'low defensive win shares' or 'unsustainable BABIP'. It's exhausting. Every debate devolves into who can pull up the most obscure metric from FanGraphs. The 'eye test' is a laughable offense. You're not allowed to think a player is good unless his numbers back it up in a very specific, analytical way. It's bled into the broadcasts, it's all over social media, and it's sucked the soul out of it for me. We've traded passion and gut feelings for calculators and algorithms. I miss the days when you could just passionately and incorrectly argue that your favorite player was the best, and the only thing the other guy could say was 'nuh-uh' instead of linking you to a regression analysis.
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