Moneyball: The Art Of Winning An Unfair Game
Written by Michael Lewis
www.ink2quill.com

“Moneyball: The Art Of Winning An Unfair Game” is a historical analysis, biographical look at how flawed collective wisdom can be, the same way we know that metadata is, within the world of baseball. It was written by the same author who wrote “Liar´s Poker”, Michael Lewis. Hollywood made a movie from the book and Brad Pitt stared as the central character, Billy Beane.

Michael Lewis website

Michael Lewis Amazon webpage

“Moneyball: The Art Of Winning An Unfair Game” is the story of one Billy Beane, a young man with a talent for baseball but who dreamed of going to Stanford and receiving a very expensive education at one of the top universities in the U.S. Scouts want him and under the great pressure to sign up as a pro ball player Billy Beane gives in and is drafted into the New York Mets. The unexpected then happens once Billy Beane is a pro ballplayer. Something the scouts and all the sports analysts could not foresee. He starts to crack under the pressure and flop. This promising talent eventually gets traded around until he retires and finds himself working in the front office of the Oakland A´s.

The latter part of the story where Billy Beane puts into action certain truths he has uncovered throughout the course of his career is what makes the story such a good read. Ultimately, this is not so much a story about baseball, budgets and winning games as it is the belief of false ideas by people who you would think would know better.

The idea of reconsidering who the overvalued players vs. the undervalued players were by using a new metric to judge value and discarding convention was a new heresy to the game that yielded some amazing results. There really is a place for heresy in the world.

The story of Billy Beane´s Oakland A´s is especially relevant in this day and age of metadata, predictive programs/ algorithms. It does not just apply to Baseball or sports or sports budgets but to finance and nearly all other aspects of life where groups of people manage money, people or resources. There are very valuable lessons to learn from Billy Beane´s story and I have to say that this book balled me over. I´m glad Michael Lewis wrote about the story of Billy Beane because we are all a little smarter as a result of it.

I have n´t seen the movie but considering it stars Brad Pitt it must be pretty good. I cannot say interesting a story this book was. I highly recommend this read. So pick up or download a copy now. You won´t be disappointed. What a great read.

John

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