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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (by Michael Lewis)
I don't care much for baseball, and I only bought this book because of how much I loved Michael Lewis' previous books; it's interesting how he keeps picking great topics to write great books about. And "Moneyball" is right on the money, so to say. It is a book about the general manager of a poor baseball team defying the odds and winning a huge number of games despite having a laughable budget compared to the larger-than-life teams in the league. It is a tale about business, perception, innovation, and winning strategies.
Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's, invented a scientific approach to player selection that after you have read it here seems to be the most common-sense approach. Although baseball is a game built on statistics (ever tried to follow a baseball game report on TV?), frighteningly enough, nobody seemed to have utilized them properly when selecting players and making general strategy. Billy Beane, with the help of a Harvard math whiz, did exactly that. The results he came up with where that counterintuitive to all baseball experts that he was able to buy the players he really coveted for insanely cheap money because nobody apart from him was even remotely interested in those players. As a result, the Oakland A's had one of the best records in the league for three years in a row despite having one of the lowest budgets. After having dismissed it as luck at first, other teams have now started to copy Billy Beane's strategies promising to a complete make-over of baseball's recruiting mechanisms.
The whole story is a great metaphor on innovation and the inertia inherent in all organizations preventing them to act the right way. It also shows how human perception is oftentimes grossly wrong, yet us humans cannot fathom our errors even in the light of mathematical evidence (also see Inevitable Illusions).
I ripped through the book in just three evenings. It was that exhilarating. I can't even specifically describe what I liked so much about the book; it simply is perfect all around. Entertaining. Enlightening. Enjoyable. And ending much too soon. It is very much recommended.
Sidenote: Thinking further, once all baseball teams use that knowledge, the game is open again and the richest teams have their full advantage back. Until the next wave of innovation comes to shore. Just as in business.
- Book Title: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
- Book Authors: Michael Lewis
- Year of Publication: 2003
- Buy the book at Amazon.com.
- My rating:
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