I met Rob Neyer in person once. It was July or August of 2000, when I was a summer intern for Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. Rob announced earlier that day at the end of one of his columns that he'd be doing a book talk in Seattle. There probably aren't many jobs that will let you out at 3 or 4 the same day to drive across the (always, constantly packed solid) bridge to Seattle to listen to some goofy baseball writer, but non-programming summer intern at Microsoft is one of those jobs. He spoke to the audience of 25 or 30 guys about the current season, and then signed our copies of Baseball Dynasties (and one baseball, which Rob said was the first time he'd ever been asked to do that). That was my first real baseball-nerd get-together -- my first confirmation that, yes, there were really other people out there like me.

Which was appropriate, since just a year or two earlier, it was Rob himself who had made me the way I was. Contrary to what The Common Man said over at my current gig, I was much later than he was in making the conversion, and TCM was definitely my introduction to Neyer. It probably happened in 1998 or 1999 at a Twins game, when the Twins were losing spectacularly (as, in those days, they were wont to do) and we were just generally talking about things baseball, and I probably made some comment that had something to do with batting average or RBI, and TCM mentioned Rob to help illustrate to me the error of my ways. It was something like that. I became almost immediately obsessive, reading Rob's column every day (and getting irritated when it got to be the offseason and there was no column). I then picked up the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (the '86 version, in anticipation of the then-new New one) on Rob's recommendation, and found these other whole communities of people who thought like me (including, for a while, specific Rob Neyer ESPN message boards, which were to general ESPN baseball boards as Faulkner is to the new book by Snooki), and the whole way I thought about baseball had suddenly changed forever and completely.

Did you know that the convention for OPS didn't always include the decimal? In Neyer's early days pushing the much-better-than-batting-average statistic, he'd write it as, say, 620 (Neifi Perez) or 1074 (Nomar Garciaparra). Makes sense, when you think about it. OBP and SLG both measure something that compare rationally to 1; 1.000 OBP is perfect, while 1.000 SLG is one base per at-bat. 1.000 OPS? Nothing in particular, except "really good." no more meaningful than .999 or 1.001. Might as well make it 1000. Another thing that nobody remembers (and honestly I don't know if Rob ever talked about this, but while I'm on the subject) is that one of the early efforts to correct the SLG-heaviness of OPS was OPS-prime, either 1.4 or 1.2*OBP+SLG. Certainly not as accurate or interesting as wOBA and the like, but I liked it.

Is it even cool that I'm coming back here after about six months at the other place to write something? I don't know, but I found in Twittering and such today that I had a bit more to say about Rob than what The Common Man so eloquently wrote for both of us -- and separate and apart from what he's done for my blogging "career" -- so I thought I'd come over here to say it. The amazing thing is not that one guy who used to be a fantasy baseball writer for a company affiliated with ESPN had such a profound effect on the way I think about baseball, but that he had the same effect on so many other people.

Bill James had all the ideas, but Bill James' ideas might not get anywhere in the internet age without Neyer. Without Neyer, maybe there's still a baseball blogosphere, but maybe it's something that Murray Chass is damn proud to be a part of. There aren't a lot of people who can look back at what they've done in their current job and think, an entire field is completely different from what it might otherwise be, because I did what I did. Rob can say that (if he wants to, but I doubt he does).

A comment I've seen a few times today goes like this: Rob isn't dead, he's just leaving ESPN. He'll probably be writing somewhere new tomorrow, doing the same thing he's always done (and as of now, it actually sounds like it will literally be tomorrow). And I get that, as long as you weren't there in 1999 or 2000 or 2001. Because a big part of what the reaction is about is the continuity. The internet looks very different now than it did a year ago, and almost completely different than it looked three years ago. That one guy has been writing more or less the same stuff at the same site for the last fifteen years is absolutely astounding. They've even had the same predominant blue color for most of that time. If you were there, as a reader and a saberhead, the end of that -- just that, just Rob's work appearing in that same place -- is kind of a big deal, and it's OK to be kind of silly and nostalgic about it for a day.

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