Moneyball by Michael Lewis p 1-118

Moneyball is one of the most popular sports books of the past ten years or so. If you are a baseball fan, you may have heard the title already. Since this book's publication "moneyball" has been a term that people use for how some baseball teams with very small budgets can hang with teams with much bigger payrolls. For instance, this year the Florida Marlins are close to making it to the playoffs with a team that gets paid less than three individual New York Yankees.

So far this book has focused on two people: Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's, and Bill James, a freelance baseball staistician.

Billy Beane grew up as one of the top prospects in Major League Baseball. He was drafted straight out of highschool, but never did much once he reached the Majors. This ruined his beliefs about how new ballplayers should be chosen for the Majors. Beane eventully quit playing baseball and asked to be a scout for the team. Within years he was the general manager of the A's.

Bill James was not hired by any professional team. He used to compile his stats from box scores in newspapers (there was no Internet then), and publish a book called Baseball Abstract every year. He would advertise his book in classified ads across the country. In his first year he would sell under 50 copies. His abstract took into question the way baseball records were kept. He also suggested new ways of keeping stats and records. Not many people took him seriously -- then.

The last chapter I read was about the 2001 Major League Basball draft. Beane, using James-like information has just chosen 20 players that nobody else wanted. Most of the other teams are laughing at him at this point. From memory, I know the A's did pretty well that year, and Beane got many people's attention that year. I also know that the A's, with Beane as their G.M. is about to win their division this year, so something must be working.

I am not sure how I would rate this book at this point. I think I would reccomend Buzz Bissenger's and Tony LaRussa'a Three Nights in August over this one.