Raw Charge, a Tampa Bay Lightning community

"It’ll be neat to find out what the numbers are," said Toronto Blue Jays center fielder Vernon Wells, who is known for smoothly tracking down deep fly balls. "It can be another tool to help you improve in areas of the game. People will learn about playing defense, which has gone by the wayside as people have cared so much about offense and hitting the ball out of the ballpark."

Not that all players welcome the new numbers. A few lockers down, Wells’s teammate Scott Rolen — whose excellent defense and base running would presumably be evidenced by the tracking system — said: "I don’t believe that baseball is a game that can be encapsulated that way. That’s the beauty of the whole game."

During spring training in '04, Dewan was giving a presentation to the White Sox' front office in the team cafeteria when manager Ozzie Guillen and his players wandered in to have lunch, their game that day having been rained out. Dewan noticed that Guillen would occasionally glance over at the presentation. Eventually he walked up to Dewan and started flipping through his statistical samples. "If they had this s--- when I was playing," the manager announced to the room, "I would have been the best f------ shortstop who ever lived."