“How we got Enron” is a reference to a statement made by Hall of Fame second baseman and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball loose cannon Joe Morgan when asked by a San Francisco Weekly reporter about the book Moneyball and sabermetrics, an objective statistics-based approach to performance analysis in baseball. The sabermetric approach is most often associated with Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who was the focus of Moneyball. Naturally, the Old Guard in baseball find this trend threatening to their way of life and Joe Morgan is their self-appointed spokesperson. Of course, you probably already knew all that. Or you don’t care.

In any case, I found it very amusing when Morgan decided to illustrate his point by equating modern baseball performance analysis with corporate fraud that cost investors millions of dollars: “I watch baseball every day. I have a better understanding about why things happen than the computer, because the computer only tells you what you put in it. I could make that computer say what I wanted it to say, if I put the right things in there. … The computer is only as good as what you put in it. How do you think we got Enron?”

This is my homage to an historically stupid statement. Enjoy.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep at this, but I thought I’d try to start writing a little bit more. You’re likely to see a lot of stuff about baseball here, including some very amateurish statistical analysis. I’ll also probably be popping off on political subjects. And there’s a decent chance I’ll touch on pop culture topics and other things that interest me, like technology. We’ll see where it goes…