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Summary: The Calculus of Baseball
Review: Who would have ever thought that taking the romance out of baseball would lead to one of the most engaging books of the year? Lewis is a skilled storyteller with a great gift for characterization. This book documents a fascinating revolution in the philosophy of building a professional baseball team. Moneyball is the best nonfiction I have read since Positively Fifth Street!
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Summary: Please, don't be put off by the title!
Review: This is not (as I mistakenly assumed at first) one of those splenetic rants by a so-called baseball traditionalist, bemoaning how the great game has been destroyed by filthy lucre. It is instead a vastly entertaining account of how one extraordinary man (Billy Beane) used his grasp of the imprecision of conventional measures of possible future baseball prowess to overcome his teams comparative lack of cash and assemble an extremely effective bank of young talent (albeit one that has, so far, failed to triumph in the post-season). The best baseball book I've read since Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" nearly 25 years ago.
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Summary: Great read...
Review: I picked up this book because it was recommended to me by a professor in a corporate strategy class. It brought issues of corporate strategy to life.
An enlightening book that brings theories to life in an enjoyable manner.
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Summary: Good concept, unnecessary language
Review: I enjoyed the concept of looking for objective measurements, challenging traditional views and methods, and choosing what to measure.The locker-room lanquage was not needed to convey this concept.
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Summary: Winning without the green
Review: Michael Lewis is back in fine form with "Moneyball." The book explores two themes: the financial inequities of Major League Baseball, which force small-market clubs to take a unique approach to building their teams; and Billy Beane's passionate and idiosyncratic leadership of the 2002 Oakland A's, a low-budget success story with very few equals. Baseball fans will certainly enjoy the insider's perspective of the A's organization (e.g., why Hatteburg and Mabry were added to the team, why Art Howe was dumped). And non-fans should appreciate Lewis's folksy descriptions of the great American pastime, including both on-the-field and off-the-field anecdotes. My only quibble with "Moneyball" is that the book could benefit from an index, to help readers find references to important characters associated with the team. But that's just window dressing. There's plenty of meat to this well written story, proving that Michael Lewis, despite a couple of recent clunkers, hasn't lost his touch.
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Summary: A Gripping Story and Balanced Analysis Even for the Non-Fan
Review: As a fantasy baseball devotee and a regular reader of Rob Neyer's columns on espn.com, I was excited to see how a non-specialist, Lewis, would react to the quirks of the baseball world. Lewis's reaction is the defining baseball book of this generation. Lewis masterfully weaves together A's GM Billy Beane's personal story and conversion to statistical analysis with theory and reasoning behind that analysis. Lewis also does a superlative job describing the other side: the baseball old timers who distain number-crunching and instead look for intangibles when scouting ballplayers. Why look into how well the hitter controls the strike zone if you can simply see if he has "the Good Face". Imagine an accountant eschewing numbers to see if a company just looked right, just felt right in her gut; well, that's how baseball did, and mostly still does, operate. Not some esoteric tome, but a terrifically engrossing and informative book. I think even my mom would like it.
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Summary: CASEY Award Finalist
Review: Moneyball is a great book, a no-doubter as a Finalist for Spitball Magazine's CASEY Award. It may not win the CASEY because the competition for Best Baseball Book of the Year is stiff; but anybody who gives this book less than 5 stars should write his own baseball book and show us all how it's done.
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Summary: A fluff piece, but a very well done fluff piece
Review: Michael Lewis attempts to address what should be the wildly anomalous winning of the bargain-basement Oakland A's. While it is an open secret that Billy Beane relies on new-wave objective analysis, his past, his motivations, and the extent to which he uses it was not widely known. Lewis takes an adoring look at the A's organization, Billy Beane, the growth of sabermetrics, and baseball as he recounts a meandering tale that brought us the current edition of the A's. Michael Lewis in unabashed in his admiration for Beane, and spares little time to give Beane's critics voice. (Even then, he does so in the weakest form, by quoting the less-than-geniuslike Joe Morgan, and even then giving Billy Beane the last word) Many reviewers have chosen to take Beane to task for the A's lack of postseason success, which is not relevant to this book. Instead Lewis tells a story charmingly and brimming with lightweight, character-revealing anecdotes. Lewis's prose is very down-to-earth, and he conveys ideas with tremendous clarity, and especially excels at introducing new concepts, contrasting them well with the previous line of thought. Moneyball is a fun read that gives a terrific look inside the front offices of baseball that is very accessible to the casual reader. While the author's perspective does color the tale, this does not alter the fact that the book is very enjoyable and even worth a reread.
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Summary: More than just a baseball book
Review: I avoided this book for a while because I had heard that Billy Bease came off as very arrogant. I had even heard that some general managers in baseball this past year were not going to trade with him because of the way he was presented in Moneyball. I didn't feel that the depiction of Beane was negative. He is a driven guy who has basically changed baseball-for the good of the game. He has proved that a team with lesser financial resources can compete. This book can be used to relate to any area of business or life in general. Be smart, be prudent, and think and you can be successful although the odds seem to be against you. I appreciated the discussion of the postseason failings of the team. Although, I do feel that this will even out eventually. This team (pitching in particular) is too good to not succeed on a grander scale. The story of sabermetricians may have been the best part. Amazing how a bunch of numbers guys can change a sport. An awesome book about an awesome guy. Beane deserves to be in the hall of fame one day.
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Summary: Intense drama played out on an uneven field
Review: This book is one of twists and turns, full of literary vehicles. I haven't felt this dizzy since I saw Pulp Fiction (to which I would not give 5 stars). It's great to see those that deserve to win in baseball win--especially against Steinbrenner--at least in the regular season, as the Oakland A's have done for the past several years. And this, on a budget that rivals what the Yankees' bullpen alone costs. Given the buzz on the book, I was prepared for Lewis' discussion on how statistical science is changing the game, which he does so without losing the quick tempo he establishes from the leadoff page. However, his greatest achievement was a surprise to me--he gets us close in to meet the obscured, brilliant personalities that have contributed to the Little Paradigm Shift That Could, over the protestations of eight generations of baseball scouts and owners barking up the wrong mathematical trees to preserve traditions without foundation. Most good baseball books are autobiographies, or written by insiders, or written by those obsessed with the game. Lewis is able to write effectively as an outsider, and also closely connect and earn the trust of the insiders. Beyond the math, I hope that baseball insiders will use the truth of Moneyball to make MLB more competitive than it is today, instead of pleading with Congress to preserve a questionable status quo.
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