Moneyball

Author:

By Michael Lewis

Format:

Paperback

Availability:

In print, usually dispatched within 3-4 days.

Price:

£8.99

Tagged with:

Baseball, Economics, Sports Business, Billy Beane, Oakland Athletics

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Further Details

• Published: 30th Jan 2004
• ISBN: 0393324818
• Pages: 316
• Size: 208mm x 141mm

From Word of Sport:

Wow! There are some books that just demand your attention and this really is one of those.

A wonderful portrait of Billy Beane and his Oakland team / project. It's a great insider's look at the workings of a team and, perhaps even more than that, the workings of a sport.

As with most insider portrayals, you need as a central character a captivating figure and in this regard, Billy Beane certainly doesn't disappoint. Lewis' handling of Beane and the rest of the numerous individuals associated with the A's is deft and really helps you feel as if you're getting to the heart of the team and its inner sanctum.

The book works on numerous levels which is why it's probably been called both the single most influential baseball book ever (Rob Neyer, Slate) and may be the best book ever written on business (Weekly Standard).
Whatever your particular take, I think you'll be hard pushed to disagree that it's absorbing. Quite simply, it's one of those titles you really should read.

From the Publisher:

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?

With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities - his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission - but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers - numbers! - collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors.

What these geek numbers show - no, prove - is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Billy paid attention to those numbers - with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to - and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win...how can we not cheer for David?

From the Critics:

“Whether Billy Beane is a prophet or a flash in the pan remains to be seen. In either case, by playing Boswell to Beane's Samuel Johnson, Lewis has given us one of the most enjoyable baseball books in years”

Lawrence S. Ritter, The New York Times

“An ebullient, invigorating account of how an unconvential general manger named Billy Beane rebuilt the A's, a team with the second lowest payroll in baseball, into a team that won 103 games last year - as many as the filthy-rich Yankees”

Time

“You need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of Lewis's thoughts about it....Moneyball moves nimbly between sheer exuberance and strategic wiles”

Janet Maslin, New York Times

“One of the best baseball - and management - books out....Deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame”

Forbes

“Anyone who cares about baseball must read Moneyball”

Newsweek