"Moneyball" by Michael Lewis; 5/10

The fourth of six non-fiction titles that I have read in three years.  Only one of those is particularly compelling, and this one isn't it.  I read this because my cousin, Lowell, with whom I have shared an enthusiasm for baseball since our fifth year of life, told me I'd better read it to know what the fuss was about.  I am glad I read it, exactly for that reason, though it was neither mind-blowing nor life-altering.

Michael Lewis, a bestselling writer who makes his mark by exploring business/money angles as an outsider (wiki apparently calls him a "financial journalist," which hits close to the mark), decided to do something of an expose on why the Oakland Athletics, led by general manager Billy Beane, were gaining so much success in baseball even though they were spending far less on player salaries than other, larger market teams (Red Sox, Yankees, etc).  The book winds up being probably the most important thing in print on the strategic and financial revolution of baseball which was beginning as the book was written and continues to play out even today (with great benefits, I might add, for baseball fans everywhere).

This book is great for bits of what it does, ie exposing the strategy of Billy Beane and the simple importance of On-Base Percentage as a statistic for evaluating baseball players.  It had a few other things to say, from a baseball/business standpoint, particularly on the subject of relief pitching, which has also proved influential in the sport subsequently. It introduced the statistical revolution begun by baseball statistician and former nightwatchman Bill James to the masses, and more importantly, to much of hitherto ignorant baseball front offices. Most importantly, it winds up making interesting sketches of players themselves and the lives they lead, such as Scott Hatteberg, Kevin Youkilis, and David Justice, and most of all, of Billy Beane himself.  Any front office executive in MLB worth their salt has read this book and explored its maxims.

However, they have also probably taken it with a grain of salt.  Much of this book has withered with age. 

A significant portion of the book focuses on Beane's "revolutionary" draft strategy.  Beane is determined to draft value players from colleges because they are less uncertain than high school prospects.  He also is determined to employ James' statistical methods (On-Base Percentage) instead of listening to the physical talent evaluations of his scouts (the traditional mavens of prospect values) in making selections. All of this leads Lewis to focus the narrative on Beane's goal of drafting a collegiate catcher from the University of Alabama named Jeremy Brown.  When this is achieved, Lewis treats it as a climactic moment in the book, a major coup. Brown would subsequently go on to be a failed prospect who only ever got ten at-bats with the Athletics. En route to this draft choice (made over the objections of his scouts), Beane explains why he'd rather have Brown than high school guys who are "impossible to project," like Zack Greinke, Prince Fielder, Scott Kazmir, and BJ Upton (subsequent all-stars).  In that particular scene, as it turned out, every guy Beane mentions doubtfully will someday wind up being pretty good, while his own will not make the bigtime.

[Does Billy Beane look like Brad Pitt to you?]

Lewis spends a long time talking about players who Beane has ingeniously managed to gather on the cheap, even though they are criminally under-appreciated .  Many of these players (Eric Chavez, Barry Zito, Chad Bradford, Bobby Crosby) have not made these sentiments look particularly good in hindsight.  In fact, with hindsight, the A's run of success (which ended not long after the publication of this book and has yet to return) seems like a pack of flukes overachieving and having career years at the same time, and powering a mediocre team to a first-place finish in the worst division in baseball, after which it always lost in the playoffs. 

None of this is really harmful, it just means that "Moneyball" said or stood for a lot of things that don't look particularly true a few years later. The one harmful thing, which I consider very harmful, is that Lewis uses this expose to argue against a salary cap for baseball, which is something I happen to believe it sorely needs.  A salary cap, for the uninitiated, says that no team may spend more than X dollars total on player salaries.  The result is that you can't have a team like the Yankees buying all of the best free agent players and therefore ensuring a return to the playoffs every single season on the strength of their huge revenues (which themselves are primarily a result of merchandise sales and television revenue, not ballpark ticket sales) while a team like the Pirates is left with the chaff because they are a poor team. 

Lewis basically argued that if Billy Beane could game the current system that it didn't need fixing.  I thought it a lame argument, especially as a fan of a poor team (the Reds) which has traditionally raised a crop of good players through the minor leagues only to see them leave to rich teams in free agency while the team goes nearly a decade without a winning season.  There is far less parity in terms of win-loss records in Major League Baseball, which has no salary cap, than there is in the National Football League, which has a salary cap precisely to ensure parity in the player pool.

And you so didn't care about any of that! But thanks for sticking with me this far. As a reward, here is a picture of a kitten dressed as a bunny!



But seriously, if this bored you, don't read "Moneyball," although he probably writes it better than I do.  But he winds up being wrong about a bunch of what he says.  No, I haven't seen the movie, and yes, I want to, but no, I don't have any idea how someone read this book and saw a movie in it.  It's supposed to be good though.  We'll see. 

Ho-hum.