Dave Cameron Blink Watch: Blink+ for Bill James

Periodically, in these pages, we have considered the blinking habits of the guests of MLB Network program Clubhouse Confidential, hosted by the robustly coiffed Brian Kenny. Dave Cameron’s own blinking habits have been considered with no little enthusiasm in these electronic pages — as have those of other, notable members of the sabermetric community.

Recently, godfather of sabermetrics himself Bill James appeared alongside Kenny. Below is the data concerning his blinking patterns.

Beg and End mark the beginning and end marks of James’ time on camera*. Time is total time, in minutes and seconds, on camera. Blinks represents the number of blinks during the relevant interval. Blink/Min is blinks per minute. Blink+ is blinks per minute relative to the average human on television — about 40 per minute, we have learned via rock-hard science. (Note: there are errors, likely.)

*Includes only closeups. Data on blinks from distances is more subject to distortion.

With James added, here are the Clubhouse Confidential guests for whom we now have data. While there has been no acceptably rigorous study done concerning at what sample size blinking stats become reliable, one assumes that the figure is relatively low.