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June 12, 2003
Review: (book) Moneyball
Moneyball
Michael Lewis' The New New thing was assigned to me in an early English class. At that moment, I knew that my Prof was a woman of taste and substance, not to mention a certain amount of wit. The book was about Netscape, we lived on the outskirts of the Silicon Valley. If we didn't care about the book, who would?
I went back and read some of Mr. Lewis' other books, Liar's Poker being my favorite. When I read that he had a new book out, I borrowed it from work...
Moneyball has all the style and gamesmanship that I expect from Mr. Lewis. The man can turn a phrase until it comes full circle. His prose is as analytical as I would expect from a former bond salesman, with a slight hint of the Princeton art history major he used to be. What he misses is the future...
Mr. Lewis often makes this mistake; each thing he writes about tends to stop being a phenomenon almost immediately after publication of his book on the subject. He has even given the reason why. Right in his first book he makes the comment that they made the market for certain bonds behave just like every other bond, and thus the profit would be just like every other bond...
The Oakland A's (the subject of his latest book) are a slightly different matter. Mr. Lewis' thesis is that the A's win because they value stats that no one else values, and that these stats are A) better at predicting success of a team, and B) able to be cheaply purchased because no one else values them. One of the weaknesses of Mr. Lewis' book is that once the Yankees (say) catch on to A, B will no longer be true. Indeed the central irony is that Mr. Lewis' book is hastening the day when the A's will once more be priced out of the talent market...
The Style of the book (a style Mr. Lewis often employs) might be uniquely suited to a more visual medium. He takes a narrow focus on a specific incident and shows how it is a microcosm for thousands of similar incidents that have lead inexorably to the spot he is showing. The end result is rather like a series of flashbacks that arc towards a central motif. He does it quite well and I wonder if he has ever thought about licensing his works to television or movies...
Ultimately I enjoyed this book, and I know that it cannot be Mr. Lewis' fault that my Beloved Oakland A's are 7 games down in the standings...
Rating: 3 and 2 with runners in scoring position out of 3 and 1 with bases loaded. The high drama was there, but Lewis didn't always want to write a drama. The result is fun and interesting, but not usually at the same time...
Posted by Andrew at June 12, 2003 03:44 AM
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