Moneyball

April 28, 2003
Lewis (Liar's Poker; The New New Thing) examines how in 2002 the Oakland Athletics achieved a spectacular winning record while having the smallest player payroll of any major league baseball team. Given the heavily publicized salaries of players for teams like the Boston Red Sox or New York Yankees, baseball insiders and fans assume that the biggest talents deserve and get the biggest salaries. However, argues Lewis, little-known numbers and statistics matter more. Lewis discusses Bill James and his annual stats newsletter, Baseball Abstract, along with other mathematical analysis of the game. Surprisingly, though, most managers have not paid attention to this research, except for Billy Beane, general manager of the A's and a former player; according to Lewis, "y the beginning of the 2002 season, the Oakland A's, by winning so much with so little, had become something of an embarrassment to Bud Selig and, by extension, Major League Baseball." The team's success is actually a shrewd combination of luck, careful player choices and Beane's first-rate negotiating skills. Beane knows which players are likely to be traded by other teams, and he manages to involve himself even when the trade is unconnected to the A's. " 'Trawling' is what he called this activity," writes Lewis. "His constant chatter was a way of keeping tabs on the body of information critical to his trading success." Lewis chronicles Beane's life, focusing on his uncanny ability to find and sign the right players. His descriptive writing allows Beane and the others in the lively cast of baseball characters to come alive. (June)Forecast:Lewis's reputation, along with extensive national promotion, first serial in the
New York Times Magazine and a 13-city tour should help the book hit bestseller lists throughout the baseball season.

Starred review from January 2, 2012
In order to compete in professional baseball, conventional wisdom says a team has to have a solid cash flow and a flawless recruiting program. Oakland A’s general manager Billy Bean took another path to success and built a winning team from a collection of traditionally undervalued players. Scott Brick’s winning performance combines pitch-perfect narration that captures the spirit of Lewis’s text with a knack for reading sports stats, facts, and figures. Brick skillfully navigates an unsteady sea of information to produce a flawless reading that will keep listeners enthralled for hours. They will root for the underdog and gain a solid understanding of exactly why money can’t always buy a championship. A Norton paperback.

June 1, 2003
Unlike professional football and basketball, Major League Baseball has no cap on the amount of money a team can spend on its players, which makes it nearly impossible for "small market" clubs to compete with the behemoths in Gotham and L.A. On the other hand, as Lewis shows us in his engaging saga of the Oakland Athletics, there are always ways to win on the cheap. The hero of Lewis' tale is Oakland General Manager Billy Beane, a bust as a player but a deft judge of talent. Lewis was granted what appears to be unlimited access--he often found himself in the Oakland executive offices when a big trade was going down--and his book reads like it. He also does a wonderful job of picking the brains and explaining the motives of the baseball statistics geeks who are helping redefine the way the game will be played in the twenty-first century. With so many baseball books to choose from, it is difficult to single out a few as must-haves, but this one comes pretty close.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2003
The author of Liar's Poker and The New New Thing has written a remarkable book on how a really successful baseball team competes even when the economic odds are stacked against it. He profiles Billy Beene's reign as the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a team of modest payroll that is nevertheless loaded with young talent. He shows how a new generation ascertains talent by using computers and the cyber world with its abundant baseball statistics. Beene discarded older notions of scouting players and spent money wisely instead of gambling on whim to sign unproven players. For most sports collections.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2003
How the Oakland Athletics stay on top in baseball without a lot of dough: Norton's biggest book this season.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.