Rating: 
Summary: Question Everything!!
Review: Obivously, as a baseball fan, this is required reading for anyone wondering about how things work behind the scenes. We get interesting portraits of Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford, players who every other team thought were worthless, but are helping the A's win games. Additionally, it will be interesting to see how Jeremy Brown and the other draft picks discussed in the book pan out in the future. Throwing money at big name ballplayers is not a surefire way to win ball games (as Texas, the Mets and countless other teams know). People have been doing things in baseball for so long that it's hard for some to do it any other way. Hopefully, this book will inspire other teams to spend their money more wisely, which might revive the average fan's interest in a sport that is wildly unfair. As a teacher, I think Billy Beane's reexamination of how things are done could also help school districts as well. In times of great financial hardship, school districts should really EXAMINE what they spend their money on. Like the Oakland A's, they could get more bang for their buck if they learned to think in different ways.
Rating:
Summary: Forget Everything You've Been Told About Baseball
Review: I admit as I read this book I was a little disturbed. As a baseball fan, you want to believe that the closer and clutch hitter are of vital importance to the game, but not in the view of Billy Beane. A seemingly callous view of almost every romantic role in baseball leaves you wondering throughout the book, unable to put it down. This book sheds some light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of baseball, how do the cash strapped Oakland Athletics keep winning? This book has something for everyone. It involves a lot of mathematics and statistics, but not to worry. I have a C- math student throughout high school, yet Michael Lewis' storytelling and explanations even made me understand. A must-read for baseball diehards who are ready to here a view completely opposite from everything they've ever been told about the game.
Rating:
Summary: Much More Than a Sports Book
Review: Michael Lewis was great in getting access to Billy Beane and his staff. He does a great job is weaving a business and baseball story together. I love Billy for his passion and commitment to his method, never wavering in his goal. Ownership of the A's are very lucky to have a Billy Beane navigating the A's in this time of tremendous fiscal turmoil in baseball. Read it for every reason you would read both a baseball and business book.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining read, but may not be very enlightening to some.
Review: Lewis is a gifted writer who draws attention the great things that Billy Beane has accomplished in Oakland. This is really the first time that Beane has been given the credit he deserves in the mainstream, and it is long overdue. When discussing Beane's player evaluation techniques, Lewis outlines a field of study known as "sabermetrics." For anyone who has not yet been exposed to sabermetrics or has only a passing familiarity with the subject, this will be an eye-opening book and could change the way you view the game of baseball. Many of the things you thought you knew about baseball will be proven incorrect, and you will be introduced to a number of new concepts that you will undoubtedly use in the future. On the other hand, for anyone who is already quite familiar with sabermetrics (and more specifically, Billy Beane), you will not get much out of this book. Chapters 2, 5, and 9 will be informative, but the rest is either filler or a review of concepts you already know. You won't regret reading the book, but it may not be a particularly memorable one for you (it wasn't for me, hence the three stars). For people in this situation, it would be fine to wait for the book to come out in paperback and save a few bucks. Overall, I would recommend reading Moneyball, but don't set your expectations too high if you're already familiar with the subject matter.
Rating:
Summary: Billy Beane's Teams always Wins
Review: I loved this book. You really get an inside look of how the small market team works. The Oakland A's are changing the way baseball works and this book explains why and how. If you are a baseball fan who loves to see the underdog win, this is the perfect book for you.
Rating:
Summary: BeaneBall....The look of the future?
Review: I consider myself a baseball fan. However, I indulge my interest by following the Boston Red Sox, which is to say that I have a love/hate relationship with the game depending on how things are going with the Old Towne Team. Recently a friend put me on to this book and I am eternally grateful for the recommendation as things have been going on in baseball that I have been blissfully unaware of and finding out about them was both entertaining and informative. The recent success of the Oakland Athletics is something I knew about, if for no other reason than they raised hell with Boston's efforts to secure a wild card spot. Billy Beane? Never heard of him. Not as a baseball player (not many others did either) or as GM of the Oakland A's. Michael Lewis has made sure that we all know about Billy in this eminently readable account of how a young general manager takes players that no one else wants or appreciates and using an approach that has been around for some time devised by Bill James turns the A's into a force to be reckoned with. And he does it with little or no money by the standards of the bigger franchises. The part of the book where James's theories are explained can be a bit dry, but the book really sizzles when we get into the stories of the players. We are permitted into the drafting process and given an inside look into the acquisition of some of the A's key players and the mind of Billy Bean as he wheels and deals to trade for players whom he needs to fill in the blanks in an organization which appears to have many. It is funny, it is instructive, it is irreverant and it is very, very readable. There are a lot of traditional wisdoms in baseball and this book exposes many of them. If you want to understand what is happening with teams such as the A's, the Red Sox and the Blue Jays, this book is required reading.
Rating:
Summary: Amusing and informative book.
Review: I came across this book to find out the answers to two question. 1) How did Billy Beane put together a good team with such little money? and 2) How is it like to be a General Manager for a major league team? The book does a good job at trying to answer these questions. You'll get an interesting perspective of how the author Lewis approached the material because he compares the building of a team to managing a stock portfolio. Beane took advantage of the traditional beliefs of baseball insiders and turned it on its head. You'll read his beliefs on how he believes the game should be managed, how a batter should approach his at bats, and how to make trades and draft players. But aside from the methodology, I liked the stories about some of the players in the A's organization as well as the story about the life of Billy Beane before he became the general manager. Lewis gives a good angle about the players personal lives and makes you like the players because he makes them look like underdogs. Other scouts and insiders had passed up in drafting players the A's picked up because they didn't fit a certain stereotype. Beane didn't care if the player was too short or too fat or threw weirdly on the mound. He just cared about men who can play the game. You'll get funny stories and some dramatic stories. My only regret was that I wished that there was more to read. It only takes a few reading sessions to read the book and its easy reading. I confess that as a Giant's fan I have only admired (and despised) them from afar just across the bay but I have a newfound respect for the people in the organization from reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Release Your Inner Baseball Nerd.
Review: To anyone who has wondered why Oakland GM Billy Beane seems to perform miracles, or more importantly, anyone who truly values statistics and logic over Sportscenter highlights, this book is for you. To anyone who thinks the regular season shows true talent, while the playoffs are a crapshoot, this book is for you. This book chronicles the Oakland A's in three aspects - Billy Beane's own personal history and style, his scientific and more accurate view on recruiting and trading, and the lives of a few A's players themselves. He also delves into the history and explanation of Sabrmatrics, the relatively new and better way of looking at baseball statistics. Billy Beane's philosophy is based on high base percentage, good pitching statistics, and disregards speed, power, arm-strength, or any other characteristic that the typical recruits look for. While other teams only concentrates on potential and tools, Billy exploits this inefficiency and year after years constructs a great baseball team. Instead of game, he approaches it as if it was market, and reacts accordingly. Lewis does a great job expanding on this and paints Billy Beane as a man who can think outside the box. The most intriguing part is when Lewis chronicles the A's draft. He follows them through this ordeal, and details the strategy of drafting and signing those players. After reading this quick book, I can now say I'm Billy Beane fan. I cannot help but respect Billy Beane and the other statisticians that have revolutionized baseball. With all the insight and thought presented, it has helped me appreciate baseball as truly the greatest sport of them all.
Rating:
Summary: Right on the Money!
Review: Michael Lewis is not a name that comes to many people's minds when they discuss the best writers working today, but it should be. He's a great wit, has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and a clever mind for seeing behind the ruses and props of the traditional powers of everything from finance to politics to, now, baseball. A recent hot topic that has engaged many baseball fans over the last several years is the relationship between payrolls and winning. More so than most professional sports, there is a lopsidedness to the size of payrolls between baseball's richest teams and its poorest. This is important because many of baseball's wealthiest teams are also its winningest. One large exception to this pattern is the Oakland Athletics. With one of the smallest budgets in baseball, the A's have put together a team that also has one of the winningest records in the Major Leagues over the last five years. Why? According to Lewis, the key to the A's success lies in both economics and psychology. The economics is that good, non-superstar baseball players have now become so expensive that there are financial constraints on small-market teams to acquiring them. This, in turn, has also pushed a few owners to hire creative management to find other ways to acquire talent rather than just purchasing it on the free agency market. Still, many small-market teams remain stuck in the traditional ways. The A's have not largely because of the psychology of their General Manager, Billy Beane. Beane was once a baseball scout's wet dream; he could run, hit, field, throw, and was pretty level-headed for a young and talented kid. What's more, tall and slim, he looked like a baseball player. But Beane failed as a major-leaguer, and it was in his failure as a player that his genius as a General Manager was born. Beane knew first-hand that scouts were often wrong and this intimate knowledge provided enough of an impetus for him to appreciate the new science of baseball statistics that other baseball people couldn't care less about. The new science basically argued that the traditional baseball stats did not accurately measure what was most important to winning baseball games, and that other, newer ways of looking at stats provided a more efficient way of measuring talent that would help teams to win. While this science had been building up among fans for some time, it was having a difficult time penetrating the inner sanctum of baseball management and professional scouts. They had their traditional ways of figuring out what was a good baseball player and no fan was going to tell them differently. Until Billy Beane arrived. While Beane was no statistician, he was smart enough to see what the new science had to offer, and his background ensured he would be sympathetic to it. After all, Beane had once been the scout's darling boy and he had suffered from overly high expectations because of it. He knew how wrong scouts could be. With Beane in charge, computer programs and Harvard grads were soon taking over the jobs of seasoned, professional scouts. What happened after that forms the main story behind this marvelous book.
Rating:
Summary: Most Important Baseball Book In Years
Review: Since this book has came out- some have questioned the accurracy of events and quotes in the book. I don't care about that. I also do not think Lewis is the greatest writer in the world.
I still gave this book FIVE STARS just for the information that I learned about Beane and how he goes about his business. I am probably more knowledgeable than most Baseball fans, if for no other reason, because I have followed the game so closely for several decades. That said- I have had several paradigm shifts in how I look at the baseball business. I won't get specific because I do not want to ruin anything. If you are a baseball fan- this is a MUST read just for what you will learn about baseball. It is a fascinating book, regardless of whether some or all events/quotes are true or false. The window into Beane's organization is so interesting. You will never look at the baseball business, or baseball for that matter, the same way again. Simply put- the most important baseball book of this generation. There are Beane sidekicks and clones such as the GM in Toronto (JP Ricciardi) and in Boston (Theo Epstein) using the same valuation methods and strategies. There will be more of these types running teams each year. The future of baseball will get alot more interesting if this trend keeps up. Who knows, maybe these guys will be the ones to bring financial sanity back to the game.
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