Release Date:- 2004-03-17
Reviews Counts:- 1176
User Average Rating:- 4.5
Availability:- In Stock
Kind:- ebook
Michael Lewisās instant classic may be "the most influential book on sports ever written" (People), but "you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewisās] thoughts about it" (Janet Maslin, New York Times).
One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century ā¢ A Kirkus Review Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far)
Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyoneābut then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games?
In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only āthe single most influential baseball book everā (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what āmay be the best book ever written on businessā (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical placesāthe front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant playersābut discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.
What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to winā¦how can we not cheer for David?