With the start of the baseball season, I’ve swapped the header image on this blog. Out with the snowy mountain top, in with the third base grandstand seats at Fenway Park. Those of you who have read this blog before likely know that baseball is one of my favorite subjects. And some of you may know that when I’m not day dreaming of Red Sox World Championships, I’m often thinking about the future of consumer technology.

Today, the Freakonomics blog on the NY Times published a Q&A with Bill James. James is the founder of the sabermetric movement – the modern study of baseball statistics. He began his work in 1977 and has continually sought to challenge assumptions about the game. In an interview aired this past Sunday, 60 Minutes even credits him with being a driving force behind the Red Sox World Series titles in 2004 and 2007. He is the pre-eminent mind in this field of study.

And yet, what is most striking about the Freakonomics piece is that James is willing to admit how little he does know. This made me think of a post written last week by Josh Kopelman wrote on his Red Eye VC blog. He wondered aloud why some entrepreneurs have difficulty admitting “I don’t know.” After reading the Freaknomics Q&A today, I think the answer is confidence (but I don’t know for sure).

Bill James is confident enough to confront that which he does not know. And I suspect that it is this never ending doubt which is his edge. Rather than focusing on “answers” he focuses on framing the best questions – knowing comes from wondering. Here’s an excerpt:

Q: Has sabermetrics pretty much squeezed the last drop of new insights out of traditional counting statistics? If so, what data ought to be collected to improve our understanding of the game? If not, where can the boundaries be pushed?

A: We haven’t figured out anything yet. A hundred years from now, we won’t have begun to have the game figured out.

Q: Is clutch hitting a repeatable/retain-able skill?

A: I don’t know.