Flutterby™! : Moneyball

Finished Moneyball this morning on my walk to the office. I was slightly disappointed, but only because the first few chapters raised my expectations so high.

In the abstract, Moneyball is a business book about measuring quality. While it nominally follows the management of the Oakland As, especially their general manager Billy Beane, it's about how that group of people took the ideas of a bunch of amateur statisticians about what really matters in winning baseball games to choose players more efficiently. Of course, as in all institutions, it's also about the ingrained attitudes and prejudices that keep excellence out of the final product.

In the process of exploring the exploitation of that economic friction that results from the difference between those who play the game well and those who manage the game well, and that the career path often leads from one to the other despite those being largely separate skills, author Michael Lewis tells some entertaining misfits-to-heroes stories that warm the heart of even the most jaded baseball detractor (ie: me), and has more than a few lessons that I think could be brought from that business into others.

He also takes some well deserved shots at sports journalism.

Surprisingly, this one's not an "oh my you must read this immediately" book, but if it ended up in your bag on an airplane trip I don't think anyone out there'd be dissappointed.