MONEYBALL

by Michael Lewis
Hardcover: 288 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.08 x 9.56 x 6.36
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (May 10, 2003)
ISBN: 0393057658
Since the book deals with the Oakland A’s, we figure we had better throw our two cents in, for no other reason to hear the ‘clink’. But, it’s a rambling discourse so, try to stay close.

CLINK

This book is not a story. It’s about a story. It’s a narrative form used to convey the perpetuation of an idea. Some have taken to calling the book a story of Billy Beane, which it’s not. Some call it a story on the inner workings of a MLB team, it’s not that, either.

”I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? “ – Michael Lewis

Books are a tough sell. Especially to people who don’t write. Even tougher for people who don’t read. Books on sports are an even tougher sell. Books, in the baseball world, are what players have others write for them and what those who couldn’t play the game do for a living. Books serve no purpose other than to cover stains on coffee tables or to help fall asleep.

Or, that's the reasoning in most of the basbeall circle.

Side note: Jay Jaffe of the Futility Infielder is a baseball book-a-saurus. He has more thoughts on baseball books than he has baseball books...and he has a lot.
MONEYBALL has been reviewed and torn apart for a few weeks now. Excerpts from the book were available in Sports Illustrated and the New York Times as well as ESPN.com.

The excerpts were not the book. Yet, people jumped to conclusions that the excerpts were what the book was all about. People feelings were supposedly hurt and nerves were frayed.

This created a lot of controversy. Well, it created controversy, in that; writers and journalists said it was a controversy. In other words, a writer for a newspaper asks, “what do you think of the controversy surrounding the Billy Beane book, Moneyball?” The question is flawed, but the writer doesn’t care. They are trolling for sound bites and entries for a few columns. They got a few from none other than Kenny Williams;

''I've heard of those [kind of] people,'' Williams said of Beane. ''It's called ego-itis. When the ego weighs more than the brain and swells, it affects your powers of memory and recall.
''If I would have written that book, I would have started out by giving thanks to my director of scouting and that staff for drafting people like Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, Eric Chavez and Miguel Tejada.''

Kenny Williams thinks that Billy Beane commissioned this work and/or ghost wrote the book, just as Kenny Williams thinks he got the better of several deals with Billy Beane. We’ll don’t need to detail the trades.

The important point from Kenny’s quote is that he, Kenny Williams, does not comprehend the business he is in.

In an ironic twist, recently Kenny Williams was named in the top 20 of influential minority figures in sports. Billy Beane is quoted as saying of Kenny Williams “Kenny's one of the brightest minds in the game. He's very self-assured, straightforward and honest."

Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun Times (and ESPN’s Around the Horn) isn’t as big a fan of irony as Kenny Williams is of denial. Everybody sees the writing on the wall in Chicago except Kenny Williams and his scapegoat in waiting, manager Jerry Manuel.

Michael Lewis goes to great lengths in the book to examine how a particular Major League Baseball team, the Oakland A’s, operates. Through that literary prism the reader can plainly see that most of MLB, as an example - Kenny Williams, just doesn’t get it.

Look at the NFL and NBA. These sports both have highly publicized drafts and spawn enormous interest in who’s the next phenom, what team will take who, when and for how much.

Detailed analysis and research are poured into the player’s lives and abilities. The player’s are devoured and consumed. By the end of the process anyone with a casual interest in basketball or football can tell another average passerby how well or poorly a team did in the most recent draft. Yet, some drafted players are still busts and others, not drafted at all, still become stars.

Side note: With the NBA now in love with high school talent, could the NBA go the way of the CBA? Read Moneyball and take a look at the percentage of high school draft picks that make it in MLB.

Because of the operations of MLB and its minor league system the drafted players in baseball are the future of the sport. MLB does not have a highly publicized draft or go to great strides in marketing their draft. Why, though? To keep an even keel of not promoting their sport within, for one, but the real reason is elusive. To keep player’s salaries down? Possible. Lack of interest creates lack of marketability.

So why do most teams look at the draft as merely a crap shoot and then turn around and pay a king’s ransom for their 17 year-old high school draft pick? Most of the players in the draft are at best three years away from reaching the major league team. Most never will. There are mountains of data and research available, yet, largely goes ignored.

A lot of responsibility lies in the eyes and information from scouts each team employs. Lewis creates a vision of what a scout does for a MLB team and why it just doesn’t match what the rest of an organization is trying to do.

Especially in Oakland.

It seems that the scouting department was the last bastion untouched by the organizational approach in Oakland. While Clay Wood the ground crew guy understands the approach - the scouting department looks at statistical data as if it were math homework they’d rather not do.

It begs the question; what are the other teams doing and how on earth can they continue to do it year in and year out?

Is MLB, as an operation, and the 32 teams as organizations, run so inefficiently that monkey’s throwing darts at a dart board full of names a better way to conduct a draft of players than the current process the teams use?

Actually, yes.

MLB teams are run inefficient and without a concise vision or business plan. When teams do utilize a plan it plan differs from the parent team to the minor league teams and from the marketing department to the scouting department.

The amount of money that gets poured into scouting, drafting and the player’s salaries in MLB is ridiculous. When a team decides to trim payroll by trading off ‘expensive’ players.

It seems similar to fixing a flat tire on a car by planting a rubber tree near the offending tire rather than affixing the spare. When the rubber tree doesn’t grow into a tire, the teams just throw more money at over valued talent attached to over priced free agents. Buying expensive tires in the future won't solve the problem of flat tires.

This is where Billy Beane takes over in the book. Lewis sets the build up to Billy Beane’s ascent to GM as a hero’s journey. Beane took over from Sandy Alderson who knew very little of baseball operations tradition, so he was able to skirt the ancient system. What held Alderson to a different standard was the ability of the ownership in the late 1980’s to throw money around. By the time Beane has taken the mantle in Oakland, money doesn’t get thrown around.

Lewis is able to get close the inner Oakland A’s and in a passage in the book sets up a scenario for the reader to relish. Billy Beane, the GM, the guy who runs the show, has a mission to quash the last realm of futility in the Oakland A’s organization: the scouting department. Beane surrounds himself, well, corners himself, with a handful of college educated guys and Paul DePodesta’s laptop versus a Hauf Brau table of scruffy, aged scouts who are still looking for the “good face” to determine a player’s ability.

This is where Grady Fuson’s feelings get hurt, in retrospect, because of comments made by Beane and in how he presents them.

Beane was excited the day of the draft and hadn't slept in a day or two. If he ordered a paperclip pizza with extra checkers for lunch, it would seem a reasonalbe reaction to his physical and mental state.

A few bad words and a few bruised egos.

Big deal.

In reality, Lewis is rather tame. A few scouts can’t comprehend what the organization is asking of them and will not be dragged into reality. What the scouts don’t grasp is there are monetary concerns in abundance and how internally Billy Beane is hoping to plug holes that are not even there, yet. There are issues like, singability and future trade options that aren't open for round table discussion or debate.

The internal part is where Lewis can only paint a picture and hope the reader can make up their own mind what is really going on inside the subject's head.

Lewis does miss the opportunity to counter Beane’s apparent all Hyde rampage leading up to the draft. But, then, he doesn’t have to. This is a book, not a sports column for a newspaper or website. This book isn’t a collection for the public record. It’s what Michael Lewis saw and encountered during a short period of time within the A’s organization.

Fuson went to the Texas Rangers and Billy Beane for all practical purposes sued the Rangers by filling a grievance for an unauthorized signing. Beane allowed Fuson to be interviewed for the GM position, knowing the Rangers would never hire him for that position. The Rangers signed him in a lesser capacity as assistant general manager. But, Fuson did not return to the A’s. Fuson obviously wanted to leave. The A’s were thrown a lump of cash for their loss.

That's just a thumbnail view of some of the stuff flying around about the book. Get your own copy. Do your own homework. Do your own thinking. Make up your own decided mind.

REVIEWS

A recent review of Moneyball by David Bush attempts to poke holes in the credibility department, without much of an argument either way. The Haas family did indeed take over the Oakland A’s in 1981, but it can be argued that they were in negotiations to buy the team in the late 1970’s as Lewis writes. Further, Lewis’ editor and publisher should be the one’s taking the EROOR. Publishing Houses have fact checkers for a reason. We imagine Lewis just asked a few people “when did the Hass family buy the A’s?” The answer, “sometime in the late 1970’s or around there”. Lewis probably just took the answer at face value from a few different people and left it up to the editor to figure out the details.

There’s also a tacky reference to a misspelling of a front office first name.

Please.

We still don’t know if it’s Corey Lidle or Cory Lidle. Is that really such a Ben Grievas error as to staple “FRAUD” onto the jacket of the book?

Also, Davis takes offense that Lewis uses colorful and foul language.

Grow the fuck up.

Lewis is a talented writer for being able to sift through the trivialities of life and detail the nuance at the same time. Obviously Bush has never read anything by Lewis before.

To describe life sometimes you need to utilize what comes out of your mouth, pen or brain first. In instances, it’s an objectionable word. Then again, what’s objectionable to some is common vernacular to others. Using one of George Carlin’s seven dirty words or referencing Lenny Bruce’s act shouldn’t even make you flinch.

If you don’t ask each person in your every day life to refrain from using vulgar and offensive language, then why bother lamenting an author’s work because it has an occasional blue word?

George Washington (that guy on the one buck bill) was one of the great orators in American history and could swear up a storm when necessary.

Swearing is a national tradition.

So there.

There are a few other bloggers who have ‘reviewed’ Moneyball. Alex Belth has a lot on Moneyball, just keep reading his site, plus Alex can interview anything not nailed down. Aaron Gleeman reviewed the book and claims it’s “freaking awesome”. Probably not the most eloquent thing out of Aaron’s keyboard in awhile.

Rob “don’t call me a guru” Neyer has a lot of Michael Lewis stuff going on. Including a Q &A with Lewis and a reference to possible treasues wasted. We emailed Michael Lewis and asked about some of the stuff he didn’t get to fit in the book…and if he would allow to let us post a few quotes or paragraphs here and there.

He responded within a few hours and was nice enough to say he’d be happy to if he could. But, ESPN had already asked about and been granted the leftovers.

Damn. Beaten down by the national media, again.

Other News

Jason Sehorn signed with the St. Louis Rams. Don't be surprised if Sehorn moonlights as a free safety AND fourth receiver. As the staff member here who played football with Jason at Shasta College says, "some receivers are just better athletes than their competition and some are just smarter or have the kanck to get open. Jason was a better athelte, could get open and just smarter than the guys in the wrong colored jerseys. He could get open in a standing room only subway car if he wanted to."