Rating: 
Summary: A Great Book For Baseball Fans
Review: "MoneyBall: The Art of Winning", is a book about success,
stradegy, challenge, overcoming obstacles, desire,
passion, winning, and making it happen. The book gives great insight on the subject and concept
of baseball. A great book for baseball fans. Michael Lewis,
the author, writes it well. Diana: Author of: "Inpirational Wisdom For Love,
Beauty, And Richness"; "You Hold The Key To Riches
And Happiness"; (and) Sure Fire Ways To Make More
Money And Get A Better Job".
Rating: 
Summary: Extended magazine article, but still good reading
Review: I came across Michael Lewis' Moneyball through an excerpted article in the New York Times Magazine one Sunday back in the spring. Not being a huge baseball fan, I was still fascinated by the success of the Oakland A's despite having a budget less than a quarter of some of the top paying teams (i.e. Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, etc.). I was intrigued by the article and sent innumerable copies to friends: first to baseball fans and then just to fans of good writing. Almost all of them read the article (or so they told me), and we all basically had the same reaction: can't wait to read the book. Unfortunately, I think that the story was better as a long magazine article, rather than stretched out to book length. Unlike the article, the book was slow getting going, with the personal history of Billy Beane. Once the story moved into the offices of the Oakland A's, the book became much more interesting. I particularly liked the fast paced atmosphere that Lewis recreates surrounding the draft and the mid-season trading period. In fact, some of these reminded me of his best writing about the bond trading floors in Liar's Poker. Overall, Michael Lewis has detailed a very interesting angle on success in baseball, although he might have done it with 50 fewer pages without losing anything. For anyone interested in baseball (or particularly the business end of it), I think that this book will make fascinating reading. For those interested in underdogs succeeding, you might enjoy this as well. At a minimum, anyone who appreciates good non-fiction writing should read the NYT Magazine article, and then get more details in the book if they like it.
Rating:
Summary: Moneyball Insightful for passionate or casual fan & science
Review: The importance of not making an out in any particular half inning of offensive baseball comes though load and clear and the ways to do this to get on base and keep the inning alive raises all kinds of questions about the conventional wisdom of the last 125 years until the Billy Beane Oakland Athletics era! The personalities of the managers, coaches, staff and players to carry out blue collar lunch box play by staying close to a discipline that favors the team and winning over personal/agent negotiated stats creates a dynamics of tension that causes those on the outside to second and third guess. When luck is evened out over a 162 game season the faithfulness is justified with results. Now for with a hopefully soon to be realized winning post season playoffs and world series victory, the exclamation point will be placed on the statement for all to see. Changes are coming thoughout baseball even down to the Little Leagues!
Rating: 
Summary: Figures lie and liar's figure
Review: There is a saying "If you torture the data long enough, you can get it to admit to anything". Michael Lewis starts with the premise that Billy Beane is the best and smartest GM in baseball, then butchers the statistics to make it seem so.It's simple, the A's don't win so many games with a minimal payroll because of their on base pct. or because Billy Beane outsmarts his fellow GM's constantly. They win because they drafted (before Beane) three of the best youngs starting pitchers in baseball.A fact that gets amazingly little mention in the book.
Predictions:A) When Zito, Mulder, and Hudson become free agents; Beane will will become a free agent right along with them and leave. B)When the before mentioned pitchers leave, the A's will stink, no matter how many pitches Scott Hatteberg takes.
Rating:
Summary: Baseball will never be the same....
Review: Baseball may never be the same, yet nothing is. Moneyball has taken a look at where the game is today and where it is headed in the near future. A must read book for all fans (past and present) of "America's National Past-Time."
Rating:
Summary: Very good book, but far from perfect
Review: I really enjoyed every chapter of Michael Lewis' Moneyball. It took me only one week to read, and I found that I could never put it down once I started reading (I'm a college kid, I even missed an early class from reading this book too early in the morning.) I enjoy the field of statistics, and I am a big baseball guy, so this book made sense for me to buy. What I found most fascinating was the way the A's evaluate batters and pitchers. THeir drafts really did go very well each year, although they never did really explain why high school pitchers are worse to draft than college pitchers. For batters, on base percentage, number of pitches taken, and slugging percentage, and extra base hits are the best ways to evaluate, while for pitchers, it's strikeout to walk ratio, homers allowed, ground ball to fly ball ratio, and extra base hits given up. What makes it so fascinating is that the standards for evaluating players (avg/HR/RBI for hitters, and W-L, ERA, WHIP for pitchers) are very rarely, if ever, considered when evaluating the talent.) What Billy did at the Trading Deadline was unique, and I think that other GMs should get some ideas from him and try to rip off other GMs like Billy did. The stories of Scott Hatteberg, Billy Beane himself, and Chad Bradford were also really interesting. However, a little too much credit is given to Billy Beane. More credit should have been given to his assistant, Paul DePodesta, his scouts, and his coaching staff, in particular Rick Peterson, his pitching coach. This book also doesn't mention the aspects of the A's that have failed since Beane took over as GM (never past the first round of the Playoffs, an offense that even with Jason Giambi was only mediocre overall because of the greatness of the Big 3 in the starting rotation, and some bad acquisitions (Terrence Long, Carlos Pena, Johnny Damon, John Mabry, among others), and the fact that his choir boy manager in Art Howe was right more times than he gave him credit for. Billy Beane might be very creative and might be very successful in correlation to his team's payroll, but he is far from a "genius". Just one piece of information that confuses me: after this book was written, at the trading deadline in 2003, Billy Beane traded a couple of decent pitching prospects for Cincinatti Reds outfielder Jose Guillen, who is the total opposite of a player Billy Beane likes. Guillen might have put up good power numbers the first part of the season, but he draws very few walks, takes very few pitches at the plate, strikes out a whole lot (1 in every 5.2 plate appearances), and his career OPS before 2003 was below .700. He's also been a big disappointment this year as an Athletic.....which makes me wonder why Billy thought he would be a great acquisition.
Rating:
Summary: Moneyball
Review: Great book!Even for kids it is an incredible glimpse into professional baseball and baseball management.
Rating:
Summary: The Tom Wolfe of his generation takes on modern baseball
Review: Tom Wolfe had hippies, Black panthers and astronauts, Michael Lewis had wall street, entrepreneurs and now...baseball. This is a hilarious, almost too wierd to be true dive into modern baseball with a focus on Billy Beane, a new kind of general manager and outrageous character. It's about a lot more than baseball and is for anyone interested in how people think outside the box and revolutionize a sport, or business, or anything. Lewis has improved his stuff since Liars Poker and I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. Great stuff!
Rating:
Summary: 4 Line Review
Review: One of my favorite books in 2003. Michael Lewis could write about lint and make it interesting, he's that good a writer. He weaves stories seamlessly. Still this book is only for readers with at least a passing interest in baseball.
Rating:
Summary: Organizations devoted to baseball lore will hate this one...
Review: Any organization that is dedicated to preserving the idea of baseball as a mythic game and flourishes on celebrating its' tradition will attack "Moneyball" like Michael Moore does Bush. "Moneyball" is the kind of book that will have thoughtful baseball fans wondering two things: 1. Is it really this simple to find undervalued guys based on one or two traditionally overlooked stats? 2. When will people stop criticizing the Oakland GM Billy Beane for things like his arrogance and aggresivness and actually look at what that has accomplished? In this age of players holding out for huge contracts before they've even played one inning, Beane is a great anecdote, refusing to draft players that have all the right aesthetics, baseball-related or otherwise. It's very funny, in a sad way, that Billy Beane seems to be the only baseball guy who actaully looks at what a player has accomplished so far. Everyone else, he correctly claims, looks at what a guy MIGHT become, as opposed to what he has done. Why take a high school golden boy who statistics say has an overwhelmingly low chance of high major league success and has spent his last 2 years mowing down skinny future engineering majors named Scooter over a proven college player who has posted good numbers against much stiffer competition and has much more experience? When I was in high school, everyone was drooling over our shortstop who could hit the ball a mile and run like the wind, but could do nothing in between. At the same time I knew a guy that played for a local college that routinely posted great numbers and had great showings agasint other guys being scouted, but he didn't fit the traditional baseball paradigm and was therefore forgotten about and I always wondered why. This book finally gave me my answer. This is exactly Beane's strategy, to find guys who fit the stats that he thinks are important and let the numbers and odds dictate the rest. Something should be said too about not just the content of this book, but the way it is written. The most interesting story is, bar none, the story of Beane's own personal failure as a can't miss prospect. Everyone else who speaks of players talk fondly of a player who reminds them of themselves in their glory years, but Beane picks people who are the exact opposite of what he was, a high school golden boy who had all the potential in the world, but had not accomplished much stat-wise. There is even a story in the book in which Beane talks with a scout who once scouted him and loved him, despite admitting he never looked at a single stat of his. The way this book punches a hole through not only traditional baseball and strategy but the real psychological makeup of those who run it is nothing short of amazing. You'll be fascinated by every single story in the book, even though they are all about guys who you probably never heard of and might not for years. And that's exactly Billy Beane's idea of a great #1 draft pick.
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