I’ve got a book called The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, by Paul Dickson. It’s an expensive and expansive book, and I believe I was only able to afford it during the great Borders going-out-of-business sale of 2011. As the title suggest, it is a baseball dictionary, giving the definitions and origins of baseball terms, both common and uncommon.

Some of those terms, though, are weird, and, in other cases, kind of foolish.

Take, for example, the Aggressive At-Bat Stat. The page that has the “AAB” is available in preview format on Google, so you can check it out yourself, but in short, it is a stat, meant for Little League players, that tracks the number of times a plate-appearance ends with the batter swinging, a measure of the “determination” of the batter to try and hit the ball… even if that means him striking out or grounding weakly back to the pitcher. Dickson noted that the stat was introduced by a Stephen Barr and Brian Opitz in the New York Times in 1999, and that they believed that it was an important lesson to encourage trying to make contact no matter what, as even a strikeout would mean the kid was trying. Obviously, the stat hasn’t gained much (or any) leverage since then (a Google search on it brings up only references to Dickson or the New York Times article), and it isn’t hard to figure out why: It’s wrong way of going about it.

Okay, I’ll give that it is able to give a kid a lesson in never giving up and showing determination, but it is a bad way to teach baseball skills, particularly in our Moneyball days and especially in little league where all but the very best pitchers are going have to a hard time finding the strike zone. To encourage this stat would likely mean a great increase in strikeouts and a great decrease in base-on-balls, turning every little leaguer into a pint-sized Vladimir Guerrero, only without, y’know, being Vladimir Guerrero. The kids would easily be able to swing themselves out of a game flailing at pitches nowhere near the strike zone. Compare this to my greatest Little League moment: when I was walked, forcing in the winning run.

If I’d been going for an “Aggressive At-Bat”, I probably would have struck out and then, since I was six, been all angry about it until I got a post-game candy bar from the concession stand. Mmmm, candy bar….