One of my favorite parts of the Bill James Abstracts and Baseball books were the historical biographies, which were characteristically informative, droll and idiosyncratic. I don’t think they ever made it past the A’s, but no matter, they still covered a good bit of ground. Reading the entries on the Alou brothers last night, I wanted to share the following bit about “one of the best strings of graffiti” that James had ever seen:

‘First handwriting, somebody has written “Jesus is the answer.”
Second handwriting, next guy has added “What is the question?”
Third handwriting, “Who is Matty and Felipe’s brother…”

At the end of Felipe’s profile James adds,

‘Alou’s biography, “Felipe Alou…My Life and Baseball” was helpful in preparing this article, and will be of particular interest to those of you who talk about Christ as if he was renting the next apartment.’

Zing.