A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.
Do we need to have 280 brands of breakfast cereal? No, probably not. But we have them for a reason - because some people like them. It's the same with baseball statistics.
The second we see somebody on the street or meet someone, we make snap judgments about them, about who they are and why we wouldn't necessarily sit with them or why we would or what's cool or not cool.