“What is an error?” he asked. “It is, without exception, the only major statistic in sports which is a record of what an observer thinks should have been accomplished. It’s a moral judgment, really, in the peculiar quasi-morality of the locker room…. Basketball scorers count mechanical errors, but those are a record of objective facts: team A has the ball, then team B has the ball…. But the fact of a baseball error is that no play has been made but that the scorer thinks it should have. It is, uniquely, a record of opinions.”
