A
library for the price of a book.
The equal playing field that competitive sports like baseball requires
is in danger of being corrupted by the unequal money base that exists between
large market teams like the New York Yankees and small market teams like
the Oakland Athletics. Suggestions like revenue sharing as a way
to counteract this trend are predictably opposed by the large market teams,
and one
despairs that the entire sport will be spun out of whack as a result.
Why should anybody care, especially if they are not a sports fan?
A financial journalist enters into this fray and tells us why.
Michael Lewis spent the 2002 season with the management team of the Oakland
Athletics, and describes how one small market team has remained competitive
by thoroughly analyzing the value of statistical indicators and applying
the resultant knowledge to the unorthodox nature of player selection it
employs in building its roster. Oakland's general manager, Billy
Beane, has a century of statistics, lovingly kept, that allows him to revolutionize
how
players add to or subtract from a team's wins total. Other general
managers have access to the same stats, but baseball is primarily a good
ol' boys network. For most general managers, predominantly ex-players,
if it was good enough for Babe Ruth, it's good enough for Sammy Sosa.
Hallowed statistical measurements like batting average and earned run average
are
understood by management and fan base alike, so their utility goes
unchallenged.
This begins to change with the advent of sabermetrics. Sabermetrics
(Society of American Baseball Research-metrics), aided by spread sheets
and computers, make it possible to conceive new categories, to ask previously
sacrilegious questions and act upon radically different assumptions.
This becomes a necessity for small market teams, which have often been
priced out
of the market for superstars. Billy Beane specializes in finding
flawed players, who carry less onerous contracts, and in blending them
together to cleverly mask their deficiencies. He achieves seasonal
wins totals that rival the hated Yankees with a small fraction of the salary
base.
Lewis portrays this process in fascinating detail. He shows how the
Athletics actually improved after letting their best player, Jason Giambi,
sign a mega-deal with the archrival Bronx Bombers. He demonstrates
how ossified the philosophy of the national pastime has become, and suggests
that things are bound to change as a new generation of money manager owners
purchase teams and streamline the sport. Lewis gives the serious
fan enough fodder so that never again will that fan look at the game with
tired old eyes. He shows how some player categories, like relief
pitcher and base stealer, are over-valued, and how other categories, like
patient hitters who work the pitchers for bases on balls, thus driving
up the pitch count and inducing earlier fatigue, are under-valued.
And he gives fans a glimpse of baseball's future. The Yankees should
beware. Their most intense rival, the Boston Red Sox, a big market,
monied team like the Yankees themselves, has just hired a 29-year-old sabermetrician,
Theo Epstein, a disciple of Billy Beane, as their new general manager.
The curse of the Bambino may soon go the way of the Eephus pitch, the complete
game, and the five-tool superstar.
Dialogue on favorite books with Deane Rink before and during his latest trek to Antarctica, with a note from Bill Ransom and a digression about Frank Herbert (a.k.a Bookbabble 101) -- a very long and rapidly growing document:
Book reviews by Richard SeltzerA
library for the price of a book.
The
Middle East -- Context for Conflict: Iraq, Iran, Israel, Syria, Lebanon,
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf States. Historical
background and context for understanding today's news. This CD contains
the full text of 10 "Country Studies" published by the Federal Research
Division of the Library of Congress. Each country study is presented as
a single document, in plain text form -- easy to read, to print, and to
search (rather than as a collection of over 100 separate documents for
each book). The tables in the appendix of each book are presented as html
documents. In addition, we include: The 2003 edition of the CIA
World Factbook, an interlinked set of hundreds of HTML documents, with
detailed up-to-date reference information on every country in the world,
with images of maps and flags; and some classic works of history, literature,
and religion, including The Koran and books on the traditions of Judaism,
all in plain text form. Complete
table of contents Free sample: Iraq,
a Country Study.
Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. 617-469-2269 seltzer@samizdat.com
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