Moneyball: Michael Lewis

"Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in Baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-bedget Oakland Athletic's visionary general manager Billy Beane, and a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball theorists. They are all in search of new baseball knowledge - insights that will give the little fellow who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money."





The thing about Moneyball is this. It really shouldn't be any good.

Adapted into an Oscar nominated movie starring Brad Pitt Moneyball is an attempt to explain how a baseball teams can succeed with few stars, almost no cash and a system that emphasises conservatism over style. It's packed with the history of baseball analysis (Sabermetrics), judgements about which statistical measurement most successfully explains the worth of fielders, and the kind of easy use of insider speak and jargon that completely throws an English person reading about baseball for the first time.

An yet it's probably one of the most engrossingly enthusing non-fiction books I have ever read. Michael Lewis distills a book about baseball into a book about a certain king of baseball; a biography of the Oakland A's, a team with one of the lowest payrolls in American baseball who turned the acquisition of cheap, overlooked stars who failed to perfectly fit the baseball mold into a conveyer belt to success.

The nominal star of the book is Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's who transformed their scouting system into a scientific experiment designed to capitalise on finding players who would do one thing the most, but the book includes biographical accounts of some of the most unconventional of the Oakland A's stars, and a breakdown of how the success of Sabermetrics failed to penetrate a system still based on gut-feeling and looks, Moneyball elevates itself from being 'just' a book about baseball or statistics. Instead it's about why it's easier to ignore the evidence, and why small-team efficiency can sometimes trump the ability to buy the best. And, of course, about how statisticians can turn gambling into card-counting.

There's something gleefully enjoyable about a book that promises to break the secrets of success, that documents a way of working that defies all orthodoxy (and provokes such outrages amongst those invested in the system as it is). Moneyball could be about any subject and it would be worth reading.

I really can't recommend this book highly enough - if you're interested in sport or statistics, this is a book you should be reading. I can only imagine how good it would be if you know about Baseball.

Also Try:
Michael Chabon, Summerlands
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
Stephen King, Blockade Billy