Murray Chass was a New York sports journalist for The New York Times. In 2003 the Baseball Writers Association of America honored him with the J. G. Taylor Spink Award. He retired from the Times in May 2008.

Chass graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1960. He joined the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1962, when he worked for the Associated Press in Pittsburgh. He joined the New York Times in 1969, and started covering the New York Yankees the following year. In 1986, he was made the paper's national baseball writer.

Chass is a noted baseball traditionalist who laments the shift in baseball news coverage from daily beat-report biographies to more statistics-driven analysis like sabermetrics. In 2007, Chass asserted that, among "certain topics that should be off-limits," are "statistics mongers promoting VORP and other new-age baseball statistics." Chass particularly believes that in "their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game," these "statistics mongers" threaten "to undermine most fans’ enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein." Baseball Prospectus published an open letter responding to Chass' comments, and Chass was criticized by many.

In July 2008, Chass started his own website at http://www.murraychass.com/.

References

1. "BASEBALL; Chass to Enter Hall of Fame," New York Times (December 15, 2003). [1]
2. Murray Chass, "As Season Approaches, Some Topics Should Be Off Limits," The New York Times (February 27, 2007).[2]
3. "UNFILTERED; An Open Letter to Murray Chase," Baseball Prospectus (February 27, 2007) [3]
4. "This Is Why This Site Exists," firejoemorgan.com (February 27, 2007) [4]
5. "Opinion: Sportswriters, Stats, and Journalistic Standards: Is there any level of bad writing that won't be tolerated?" OhMyNews (February 28, 2007) [5]