Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Movie Tie-In Editions): 0 - Softcover

Michael Lewis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393338398 ISBN 13: 9780393338393

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011

Synopsis

This is The New York Times best-selling book behind the major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Opening this autumn, Moneyball is the story of the Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt). He has an epiphany: all conventional baseball wisdom is wrong. Reinventing his team on a budget, he needs to outsmart the richer teams. Joining with Ivy Leaguer Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), they recruit bargain players whom the scouts consider flawed but who have a knack for getting on base, scoring runs and winning games. They'll either be the laughing stock of baseball or its vindicated underdogs. Moneyball is a Columbia Pictures release directed by Bennett Miller (Capote), from the screenplay written by Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network), and produced by Michael De Luca The Social Network) Rachael Horovitz (Grey Gardens) and Scott Rudin (The Social Network).

About this title

Review:

Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive cast-off veterans.

Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever.

Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top non-fiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, Next), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe, Amazon.com

Review:

"...the best and most engrossing sports book I've read for years. If you know anything about baseball, you will enjoy it four times as much as I did, which means you might explode." Nick Hornby "...his grandest tour de force yet." Tom Wolfe "...the most riveting sports book of the year." The Observer "[Lewis has] a gift for pithy observation and a wonderful turn of phrase..." --The Times Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0393338398
• ISBN 13: 9780393338393
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336