Even though the Florida Marlins grabbed end of the year headlines, the poster child for baseball economic efficiency remains Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s. That team is radically different from every other team in the majors. They operate on one baseball’s smallest budgets, yearly lose stars to other teams, and yet they have been among the league’s most dominant teams the past three seasons. Beane holds the key to the A’s success by holding to principles that befuddle traditional thinking baseball thinkers, not unlike the way Warren Buffet holds secrets about the stock market. It’s a story of vital interest to any baseball fan, and should be of major importance to any baseball executive. Judging from the fact that Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game landed on the 2003 best seller list, it’s an account that also has great interest for the general public as well.

Not a beat writer for baseball, Lewis’ previous books Liar’s Poker and The New New Thing have taken humorous, offbeat looks at Wall Street and the business world. This time he applies his narrative skills to an intimate inside view of Billy Beane, from the early stages of his budding baseball career (when he was viewed as a far superior prospect to his teammate Darryl Strawberry), to his unorthodox demand to become an advance scout, to his current stint as the brains behind the Oakland A’s franchise. A revolution of sorts is at hand in baseball’s front offices, as other franchises begin adopting the unique principles that Beane uses to evaluate talent. Toronto hired Beane’s assistant, J.P. Ricciardi, expressly to apply the knowledge he had gained for the faltering Blue Jays, and then held their collective breaths when the Boston Red Sox attempted to lure Ricciardi to remake their long frustrated franchise into the image of the Oakland A’s.

Even though the key lies in objective, cold statistics and unwavering reliance on the wonders of increasing both Slugging percentage and On-Base Percentage (OBP) (the latter through patience at the plate), Lewis spins this narrative with suspenseful dramatic flair throughout. Billy Beane becomes an eccentric character as Lewis vividly paints his portrait through humorous anecdotes. Just his description of the personalities makes this book worth reading—take Lewis’ picturesque metaphors for A’s scout, Billy O:

"Billy O is what you’d get if you hammered Shaquille O’Neal on the head with a pile driver until he stood six foot two. He’s big and wide and moves only when he is absolutely certain that movement is required for survival."

Even wilder are his accounts about Billy Beane, a rare general manager that never sits in the executive suite nor watches the game. Instead he works out in the training room or takes long drives, monitoring the game through a white box that gives only the essential facts. If he watched the game, he’d get too upset and smash things. Lewis relates just such a scenario when Beane “thought” it safe to watch, before the A’s blew an 11 run lead on their way to a club record twentieth straight victory in 2002.

Every one of baseball’s general managers would love to get inside Billy Beane’s head to see what he knows, because he has flown in the face of conventional baseball wisdom ever since taking on the A’s in 1998. His team often hasn’t even looked much like a major league team, as it’s a collection of overlooked misfits that come at bargain basement prices. Any general manager that gets a call from Beane now suspects that he’s being taken advantage of, yet he continues to charm them and outmaneuver them with his systematic and detailed research. Just the chapter giving a blow by blow description of draft day 2002 is enough to show Beane’s unique ability to mold the A’s into his grand design. He celebrates when the beleaguered Detroit Tigers make a “sentimental” choice that allows him to select his most coveted prospect and later thrusts his fist into the air when the Arizona Diamondbacks violate his rule against selecting high school players to allow him another of his choices.

Michael Lewis has unleashed a baseball book that should be required reading for all that want to understand the inner workings behind the game. That he has done so without burdening the fan with incomprehensible statistics is remarkable, and the fact that non baseball geeks can still gain from Moneyball is a miracle, worthy of comparison to the Amazin' '69 Mets. Come to think of it, that team was also made up of misfits and unlikely characters.

Recommended:
Yes