A book about late Afro-Puerto Rican MLB legend Roberto Clemente can’t be found in the shelves of public school libraries in Florida’s Duval County these days.
“Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” by Jonah Winter and Raúl Colón — and other books about Latino figures such as the late Afro-Cuban salsa singer Celia Cruz and Justice Sonia Sotomayor — are among the more than 1 million titles that have been “covered or stored and paused for student use” at the Duval County Public Schools District, according to Chief Academic Officer Paula Renfro.
School officials are in the process of determining if such books comply with state laws and can be included in school libraries.
HISTORICAL POINTS OF 1911.
Indiana didn’t secede from the Union.
Kaiser Wilhelm was not seen on the vaudeville circuit.
Vienna was refused admittance to the Tri-State league.
Shibe Park was not converted into a moving picture show.
Connie Mack did not unconditionally release Eddie Collins.
...
Count Leo Tolstoy neglected to write a musical comedy.
...and it’s a damn shame he didn’t. I’d pay big bucks to see the singing, dancing grand finale of War and Peace: The Musical when [WAR AND PEACE SPOILER ALERT!] Princess Helene overdoses on abortion medication and dies.
Rocker says he’s written the book partly in response to a 1999 Sports Illustrated article that he says ruined his good name forever.
Interviewed during Eyewitness News at 6 Wednesday, he referred to the old proverb that says “Don’t pick up fight with a guy who buys ink by the truckload.”
He told 13WMAZ’s Frank Malloy, “I decided to buy my own truck.”
...Rocker says he wrote the book with J. Marshall Craig to add “meat” and context to those statements.
Some of the “meat” according to Rocker:
“The media have declared themselves judge, jury and executioner in the world of free speech and political correctness, and if you offer up an opinion they don’t agree with, rest assured they are going to put the crosshairs right on you.”
Arguing that Americans’ rights are being taken away due to the war on terror: “You know what? We lost (technically). The terrorists have won. My nation is no longer free.”
...Talking baseball, Rocker has praise for Braves manager Bobby Cox and former Yankees manager Joe Torre, and many of his teammates.
But not for baseball commissioner Bud Selig, whom he calls “a true cretin,” “idiot,” “head dummy,” and a “moron of extreme proportions.”
Conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith’s work is simultaneously among the most mundane and the most maddeningly provocative writing being done today.
A few years ago, I published a super-boring book that was a radio transcription of a Yankees–Red Sox game. I included everything that was on the radio, from the pre-game show to the ads to the broadcast-booth patter.
. . . .
When the book was published, I sent a copy to the Yankees organization. Naturally, I never heard from them.
Clearly, Goldsmith missed his true calling as a court reporter, instead of a “conceptual poet.”
It seems Moneyball has opened world-wide and some of the reviews I’ve been reading are eloquent ####### pips.
It’s certainly true that, in the field of literature and film, this Atlanticised form of rounders has inspired many fine works, of which Moneyball is just the latest. While admitting I may be a little parochial here, I think it’s a shame that some of the best films about sport – Field of Dreams and Eight Men Out to give two examples – have been about baseball, a game that most in the UK find arcane at best, and often unintelligible.
It’s like all the best comedy films being in a language we find very difficult to understand. I’ve been to a few baseball games, and never really understood what was going on. It felt like a hot dog-eating convention with a game going on at the same time.
The slowly unfolding plot of a baseball encounter is, say adherents, its essential appeal. To me, it felt like ritualised longeur. A friend of mine once explained: usually, you don’t want to leave your seat in case something happens, whereas at a baseball game, you leave your seat hoping something happens.
And then there’s the statistics, the endless litany of numbers and percentages that form the language of the sport, but which, to the untutored mind, are completely meaningless. Nevertheless, I urge you not to be put off by all this esoterica to go and see Moneyball, and not just for a bravura performance from Brad Pitt.
Speakeasy of Everything…an excerpt from Mark Ribowsky’s new book on Howard Cosell.
During the 1984 American League Championship Series between the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals, Cosell and play-by-play man Al Michaels took to sniping at each other, though what viewers didn’t know was that Cosell had been drinking during the game. After Michaels disagreed with a point he made, believing Cosell’s explanation of a baseball strategy “made no sense,” Cosell waited until after the game before telling the even then respected announcer that he would never be a good broadcaster until he “learned to take a stand,” implying the latter was too soft on tough issues and on players and owners. Michaels, who personally liked Cosell, snapped back, “You’re drunk?.?.?. You’re ruining the ####### telecast,” adding, “You ever come in like that again, I’m not gonna work with you.” Needing a good stiff belt himself, he then went into the press room and asked for a large vodka. The apologetic bartender poured the glass only a quarter full—all Cosell had left him.
...In the end, Spence made the call: Cosell would not be used for the World Series, played between Gussie Busch’s Cardinals and the cross-state Kansas City Royals. His place as analyst would be taken by Tim McCarver, the former Cardinals and Phillies catcher who was moved up from working as a roving grandstand reporter. McCarver was a personable, keenly perceptive, and articulate man who broke Cosell’s stereotypical “dumb jock” mold, and with his entrance as a full-time color analyst, few mourned or noticed Cosell’s exit.
Don’t have time to thumb through all of it (flood of Waylon Thornton and the Heavy Hands EP’s take precedent!), but this…
However, the people who make this objection don’t seem to grasp the basic principles of imitation and catch-up. Once all teams are playing Moneyball, then playing Moneyball no longer gives you an edge. Indeed, the richer clubs have the means to play it smarter. The New York Yankees recently hired 21 statisticians, Beane marvels.
...Lewis breaks in: “To be totally fair to Billy, he likes attention less than anybody who’s got as much attention as he has. You’re shy, that’s what it is! You just hide it well.”
Actually, admits Beane, the film did give him one good celebrity moment. Unusually for anyone in professional sport, Beane counts among his many obsessions punk and indie music. (The Clash poster on Pitt’s office wall in the movie is strictly accurate.) When the film came out in north America, Beane found himself at a table at the Toronto film festival organised by Moneyball’s producer, Sony Pictures. He says, “I was sitting next to the Sonys. Brad and Angelina Jolie were over there. And right there was this guy, and the whole night I kept thinking, ‘Man, that guy looks just like Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.’ So the guy gets up to leave and I turn round and say, ‘That guy’s trying too hard because he’s trying to look just like Chris Cornell.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, that is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.’ I went, ‘What? I’ve been asking him to pass the scallops all night!’ And off I go and introduce myself to him. That was my closest lookie-me moment.”
Buzz La Bissinger returns! (checks Sequel-Buzz for further info)
Whether you loved Tony La Russa, as many millions of fans did, or hated him, as far too many millions of fans did, the verdict on him is simple. In the aftermath of Monday’s surprising announcement, three days after his St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series, that he was retiring after a 33-year managerial career, we might as well get the boilerplate of his legacy out of the way so there is no confusion:
Over the past half-century of Major League Baseball, the 67-year-old has been the game’s best manager, best innovator, best thinker, and best strategist. There is no argument, at least to those who appreciate baseball. He also makes the current rage, Billy Beane of Moneyball book and film fame and the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, look like the general manager of a T-ball team in Toledo in terms of accomplishment, as opposed to hype and exaggeration.
...La Russa loved the lore of baseball. He was a romantic at heart, but the best thing about him is that he changed with the game. He still looked for ways to turn baseball on its head with positive results. He still managed every game as if it were the first game he ever managed so he would not get lazy, exhausting to contemplate, given he managed 5,097 games. He also had great respect for the work of the famed sabermetrician Bill James. Just as he also realized that no matter how many numbers you pour into a computer, there will never be a way to quantify the intangibles of heart and chemistry and desire that define the success or failure of all of us.
I for one hope the naysayers do come around. Because in baseball, in any sport, a person like Tony La Russa only comes around once in a lifetime.
But I absolutely hate the movie “Moneyball” and everything it stands for. I think it is a fraud, one that people I respect bought into, for what they thought were noble reasons having to do with the little guys vs. the big bullies. I also dislike the philosophy of moneyball as it is applied to sports. My problem with the movie is a matter of truth. My problem with the philosophy is a question of art and beauty.
...The thrill of baseball has nothing to do with statistics, as much a part of the game as they are. It has to do with the athletic skill of the players: the rifle throw from right field to third base; the dazzling speed of a runner stealing a base; the grace of a second baseman making the turn on a double play.
Perhaps “Moneyball” struck a chord with audiences because it presented what seemed like a fresh, unromantic, realist’s view while also presenting a smart plan of attack for the little guys. But in doing so, it not only perpetrated a fraud, it also glorified statistics over beauty and joy, and that is a trade-off that diminishes life itself.
While Mark DeRosa has 74 career errors…Joe DeRosa looks for some in Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding.
A ballplayer could react to a terrible slump in a number of ways. But all of them should be vastly different to a person reacting to the loss of a supernatural gift. A slump usually begins with the wrong mix of flawed mechanics and dumb luck and spirals into Adam Dunn-level tragedy when the player gets trapped inside his own head. Henry’s situation is closer to Prometheus and his gift of fire than it is to Adam Dunn and his buck-fifty batting average.
Because all of the characters ignore this essential difference, the baseball in the book loses integrity – a distraction that I could not tolerate.
I’m sure Harbach has loftier intentions than examining Henry’s fielding ability, but he wrote a book around a baseball team – and from what I can tell, nobody’s been shy promoting it as a baseball book. At the very least, the context of the baseball season should serve as the binder of the story, but since the author doesn’t get the baseball right, the binder dissolves. What’s left is still good enough to carry your interest for a while, but since the baseball is palpably unreal, it taints the other stuff too.
WATCHING I like music documentaries. I just recently saw “We Jam Econo — The Story of the Minutemen,” who were a California punk band from the ’80s. The Minutemen were one of those bands that didn’t really catch on in the mainstream and yet was incredibly influential on other artists that did make it.
The other one that I saw was “Hype!,” which is about the Seattle grunge scene. It has great archive footage of bands like Nirvana and Sound Garden and also Alice in Chains playing in the Seattle bar scene. It’s interesting how clusters of bands develop in certain areas.
LISTENING I listen to a lot of podcasts. My favorite is World Football Daily. It’s a two-hour soccer podcast. It’s got a lot of correspondents from all over the world who cover soccer. My go-to band is Oasis, but I have a friend in the music business who keeps me up to date with newer stuff, some of which I like, some I don’t. He recently introduced me to Glasvegas and Cold Cave.
BB: One of the incredible things about Fenway Park is that it has changed over 100 years, and although it may seem antiquated, the current Red Sox ownership has done a lot to add modern touches without tearing the place down. Can you talk about some of the most significant alterations the place has seen and why it continues to last.
GS: Fenway Park has lasted because until quite recently they never really tried to preserve it. There was little waxy nostalgia about the place until the 1980s. If they needed to change something, they just changed it. In that way the ballpark was allowed to evolve, and, except for the original grandstand, was almost entirely rebuilt in 1933/34 anyway. Significantly, I think, is that despite all the things they’ve done recently, they’ve left the interior footprint of the field alone. That allows fans to imagine they’re in the same park where Ruth and Williams and Yaz played, and where Fisk and Bucky hit it over the wall, and to connect that history. That’s mostly a fantasy, but an effective one. So despite the fact that I find Fenway far too busy these days – there are signs EVERYWHERE, and a constant barrage of noise – in many ways the park more resembles the retro parks that were built in imitation of Fenway more than the original Fenway Park – fans can still have a unique and memorable personal experience. A significant number of fans at any given game are tourists, and tourists will even find cramped seats and posts charming.
We Want the San Jose Airwaves! ~~ Part I and Part II.
TB: How do you figure out - is there a metric that you guys have outside of the really simple one of wins - but is there a metric to figure out whether your manager is doing a good job? Do you sit down at some point and review every decision they make in a game and then give him a ranking, or is it strictly the wins and losses? How do you guys go about judging that?
BB: We don’t have a specific metric for evaluating a manager. I’ve always been somewhat protective of our managers here in that you ultimately have to have good players. If you don’t have the talent, then it is very difficult to do the most important thing, which is winning games. That is the metric by which we are all judged and certainly managers are as well. But ultimately you have to have the players to get it done.
...BB: Then again, I don’t play video games - actually, I do play Call of Duty. My wife gets mad at me.
TB: Are you kidding me? Do you play on the 360 or the PS3?
BB: You know, I don’t get into it as much as I used to but my dad and me, we kind of get into it. It’s fascinating the way they’re put together. The graphics are unbelievable.
Last Chance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Eight…
As soon as the last day of the regular season concluded, I was convinced there was a book to be done that would focus strictly on that final day, arguably the most dramatic in regular season baseball history. I thought—think—that if you go back to the eight teams involved in those four deciding games, focusing on the four teams fighting for the playoffs but also including the other four teams and get players, managers, coaches, broadcasters to walk you through that day in detail, you have one hell of a story.
My agent, Esther Newberg, who is one of those Red Sox fans who is STILL mad at Bill Buckner, says the story might be good but no Red Sox fan will buy the book even if you get really good stuff from Theo Epstein, Terry Francona, Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz et al.
I understand that feeling. In 2008 when my book on Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina came out, I got a really nice note during spring training from Gary Cohen, the Mets longtime play-by-play announcer who is a good friend. Gary wrote that he loved the book, in fact thought it was the best one I’d written.
I wrote back, thanked him and asked him if it might be possible to come on for an inning or two one night to talk about the book, the process of writing it, why I chose Glavine and Mussina—typical promo stuff.
Gary’s answer was to the point: “John, I loved the book and you know I’d love to help in any way. But after the way last season ended (Glavine getting shelled for seven runs in 1/3 of an inning with the season on the line on the last day) there’s not a Mets fan alive who wants to hear the name Tom Glavine again anytime soon.”
He was, of course, right.
So, Red Sox fans, is Esther right on this one too?
All told, there is zero evidence to support one of Moneyball’s pillars: Beane’s unique ability to identify and draft undervalued prospective stars. Indeed, Beane’s weak track record drafting players clearly contributed to the team’s disastrous performance in 2011. Many low-budget teams fared better – not just this year but over the past several years.
In Lewis’s telling, the A’s use of advanced statistics also produced superior game management. The team adhered to a key tenet of the advanced statistics crowd: outs are too precious to give up with sacrifice bunts or to risk with aggressive base-running. There are various problems with this overly tidy analysis, and both pre- and post-Moneyball many teams thrived by ignoring the admonition against risky base-running. Beane himself came to see the light – his A’s have become an aggressive base-running team.
Asked about the change in tactics, Beane cites the intangible effects that mathematical formulae cannot capture. His teams take chances on the bases because of the cascading benefits of what Beane calls the “mentality of aggressiveness.” Beane deserves credit for changing course, but that doesn’t change the fact that another key insight attributed to him by Moneyball did not stand the test of time.
So Butterfly Winter should be a very big deal in Canadian publishing. The author of Shoeless Joe is back. He’s writing about baseball. He’s including hallmark elements of magic realism.
...Nevertheless, Butterfly Winter should appeal to his core audience. It’s the story of twins Julio and Esteban, baseball players from the fictional Caribbean country of Courteguay who aim for the big leagues while being controlled by a mysterious man in a hot-air balloon known as the Wizard. The tale unfolds as an interview between the Wizard and a character referred to as the Gringo Journalist, both of whom appear to contain elements of the author.
As with so many of his novels, baseball becomes a rich backdrop for a tale about family, romance and magic. For Kinsella, the game has always been a deep well to draw from, even if the explanation for his obsession sounds somewhat enigmatic.
“It’s the open-endedness of the game,” he says. “The other sports are all twice enclosed, first by time limits and then by playing boundaries. On a true baseball field, the foul lines diverge forever, eventually taking in a good part of the universe. There’s no time limit on a baseball game. So it makes for larger-than-life characters. Things like basketball and hockey are limited to that little playing surface. It’s hard to get really magical happenings.”
At the time, as I was becoming more and more recognized as a member of the LGBT community, I was sure that Billy was getting the short end of the stick. It was OK for me to be confused with a general manager of a Major League Baseball team, but I wasn’t so sure how he felt about people thinking that he was “the gay baseball player.” He’s a straight Republican, who’s married with kids, and I’m a gay Democrat with two Jack Russell Terriers. To make matters worse for him, my book, “Going the Other Way: Lesson’s From a Life in and out of Major League Baseball” came out in the summer of 2003. It spread through the sports world pretty quickly. It’s the one topic that catches every athlete’s attention, and not always in a good way. However, I have to say that the reaction to my book by players was mostly supportive. I was told that Billy was constantly receiving my cards for him to sign. The LGBT community in San Francisco and Oakland area was hopeful, but ultimately disappointed that I was not him.
...The movie is amazing and you should go see it. One of Hollywood’s greatest writers, Aaron Sorkin wrote it, and I’m sure that Brad Pitt will finally win an Oscar for Best Actor. Not because he’s long overdue for his profession’s crowning achievement, but because it will cement my fate of having to answer this question for the rest of my life and say, no it’s not me….it’s the “other” Billy Bean(e).
Truth is, I don’t really mind the questions at all. I’m happy for Billy Beane, and his movie, but I wouldn’t trade places with him for all the money in Major League Baseball. My friends, my family, my community. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
Terry Francona didn’t talk about OPS numbers on Friday after he was fired in Boston. He didn’t talk about Pythagorean winning percentages or range factors or runs created or win shares. He didn’t talk about Bill James or Billy Beane or sabermetrics, the cult that now runs baseball. Francona essentially spoke of how the men on the field playing the game for the Red Sox this past September weren’t enough of a team when their season exploded all over the American League East.
...All the numbers-crunching, numbers-loving general managers and boy wonders of the sport, all of the disciples of the Bills James and Beane must have pushed back from their laptops and had a pretty good laugh when Torre said it in his book, and when Francona echoed it Friday in Boston, when he was the World Series manager on his way out the door.
Of course if you even question the way the numbers-crunchers and numbers-lovers run baseball now you worry that you sound like the scouts turned into such dim bulbs in the movie “Moneyball.” As if you are locked hopelessly in the past.
And the numbers guys win again. And guess what? It will only get worse now that “Moneyball” is a hit and Brad Pitt is going to get an Oscar nomination. If you are a manager, you put the computer on the desk the way Francona did and go along or you lose in the end.
Right on the tail of “Lion King” were baseball drama “Moneyball” from Sony Corp.‘s Sony Pictures and the family film “Dolphin Tale” from Time Warner Inc.‘s Warner Bros. Pictures. According to early studio estimates, the former grossed $20.6 million from 2,993 theaters while the latter grossed $20.3 million from 3,507 theaters.
An adaptation of the non-fiction book by Michael Lewis, “Moneyball” stars Brad Pitt as Oakland As general manager Billy Beane and appealed primarily to older audiences. According to exit polling provided by the studio, 64% of the audience was over the age of 35 and almost evenly split by gender, with females making up the 49% of the audience. Getting women to see the film was a priority for the studio’s marketing department, which advertised on shows popular with females, incluing “Dancing With the Stars” and “Glee.
We didn’t get it today, but we battled and we will be back at the Oscars next year!
Former Oakland Athletics manager Art Howe (above, right) hasn’t seen ‘Moneyball’ yet, but he’s talked with people who have and he says he isn’t thrilled with the way he’s portrayed in the film.
Here’s Howe on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Radio:
“Considering the book wasn’t real favorable to me to start with I figured it would be something like this but to be honest with you it is very disappointing to know that you spent seven years in an organization and gave your heart and soul to it and helped them go to the postseason your last three years there and win over 100 games your last two seasons and this is the way evidently your boss (Beane) feels about you.
Art Howe isn’t happy about his portrayal in ‘Moneyball’“They never called me to get my slant on things as far as the movie was concerned. So, I mean, it’s coming from someone. I don’t know who it is but maybe it is Hollywood to make it sell, I guess. I don’t know. It’s disappointing. I spent my whole career trying to build a good reputation and I think I did that but this movie certainly doesn’t help it. And it is definitely unfair and untrue. If you ask any player that ever played for me they would say that they never saw this side of me, ever.”
...But Howe doesn’t see it quite the same way.
“The thing that bothers me about the movie is that, you know, I think everybody in baseball knows who I am but so many people who are going to be seeing this movie really don’t know me. This is their impression of me probably the rest of my life so that’s disappointing.”
As “Franko” Cassavetes repeatedly repeated in The Dirty Dozen...“You SLOB! You SLOB!”
Why are Beane, author Michael Lewis and the A’s getting a free pass from the sports media on this?
...What other dopers did the A’s have on that team? Well, Jeremy Giambi later confessed to the use of anabolic steroids, but did not specify 2002. Reserve outfielder-third baseman Adam Piatt says he dealt steroids to other players but has been ambiguous about whom besides Tejada he dealt them to.
Is it possible that Piatt was dealing but had only one customer among his teammates? It certainly seems unlikely. But something else also seems unlikely: that Billy Beane could have been the team’s general manager during those years and not have known what the researchers for the Mitchell Report knew. And what did Michael Lewis know, and when did he know it?
...Though Tejada is mentioned eleven times in Moneyball, there was no reference to any drug use in any edition. Nor is Tejada’s admission to having used drugs included in even the newest edition.
The subject of steroids and Beane and Moneyball has been brought up in the past (in Tom Scocca’s 2007 Slate story “Mitchellball: How the steroids report changes the Moneyball story,” for instance). But especially now that the movie is stirring up such publicity, shouldn’t the A’s, after the revelations regarding Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire and steroids, merit more scrutiny from the media instead of less?
Given that, we were taken aback when Federal Express delivered a letter…
The revolution is over. Well, that one, anyway. The new ideas earned a place at the table on merit, by being good ideas that contribute to winning baseball games. While I’m no capital-S stathead, I was fortunate enough to work at Baseball Prospectus for a dozen years alongside some of the best in the field, from Clay Davenport and Gary Huckabay, through Rany Jazayerli and Keith Woolner, through Dan Fox and Nate Silver.
...All of this probably happens without Prospectus. The ideas were too important and there was too much money to be made for them not to become the way in which baseball teams were run. Nevertheless, Prospectus happened, and became the way in which many people within the industry were introduced to these ideas. Prospectus was, for a time, the center of the stathead world, publishing research that would set the discussion for years to come, that would change the way players were evaluated. Fielding Independent Pitching ERA shows up on the MLB Network. Felix Hernandez is honored with a Cy Young Award with 13 wins. Every team has a Peter Brand or three, collecting, parsing and presenting data, gaining credibility every time a defensive shift or pitch sequence or lineup change puts a W on the board.
Moneyball captures the tipping point in that revolution, when a team embraced something new because it had to, and won a lot of games because of it. I’m proud to have been a part of the history. The smoke has cleared and the guns have been laid down, and I’m excited to see what will come now that so much less energy is being spent drawing lines between two sides that both want the same thing: great baseball.
Going into Friday night’s three-game set with the Yankees, the Red Sox have dropped 14 of their past 18 games. Still, despite what you think, what you feel, what you know deep in your bones, they are not — repeat not — choking.
Choking, like clutch-hitting, is an archaic expression. They are really counterintuitive notions rendered obsolete with the advent of sabermetrics. It’s worth reminding you that the Red Sox have for years employed one Bill James, who espoused and popularized the bloodless idea — I simplify, of course, but you get the point — that position players can be represented by their statistics, particularly those that take into account on-base and slugging percentages. It was “Revenge of the Nerds” meeting that least nerdy of endeavors, sports. And its gospel was spread through the book “Moneyball,” now a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt.
...The Red Sox, meanwhile, acquired the aforementioned Crawford (whose $142 million contract represents more than three times the Rays’ annual budget), and Adrian Gonzalez to go with John Lackey, whom they signed before the 2010 season. In his first year with Boston, Crawford has an on-base percentage of .295. Lackey, 32, in the second year of a five-year, $82.5 million contract, has an ERA of 6.49. Unfortunately, the geeks have yet to devise a statistic that measures the falloff in performance when one goes from the second team in town (the Angels) to the second team in baseball. Perhaps, that, too, is counterintuitive.
...Only two Boston players have been there that long — David Ortiz and Tim Wakefield. I don’t know if they subscribe to the theory of “Moneyball,” but they’re old enough to remember when the Red Sox were chokers.
Personally, I’d rather watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown with Bill…but there is some choice biz here.
Bill James stands in the atrium at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Oakland, surveying the crush of people who have arrived for the world premiere of Moneyball. He looks pleased and a little overwhelmed. His wife, Susan, is on his arm. A Hollywood movie premiere is a first for both. “We usually get our movies from Redbox,” he says as he maneuvers his broad, 6-foot-4-inch frame by the bar to snag an apple-vodka martini. “Getting through crowds like this,” he jokes, “I always want to say, ‘Excuse me, I’m a minor celebrity.’”
...An audience member updates James on that day’s Boston Red Sox game. James has been a senior adviser to the Red Sox since 2002. The Sox, stumbling badly in September, lead the Baltimore Orioles 11-5 in the third inning. “That’s 92 percent of the runs [John] Lackey needs to win,” he says of Boston’s starting pitcher.
...James, for his part, gets four mentions on screen. At each, his wife clutches his hand or pats him on the knee. In the first, the camera pans over a page from an early Abstract as a voiceover tells the audience that “Bill James and math cut straight through” misperceptions about baseball. “Seeing those pages was the strangest part,” says James. In the second, an Oakland scout incredulously asks Beane whether he’s “buying into this Bill James bullshit.” (James: “That was my favorite.”)
...James watches the revelers stream into the after-party and says that the thing people need to understand is that he’s not as big a deal as Moneyball makes him out to be. “It’s somewhat exaggerated, but my contributions to the game have been a bit exaggerated for quite a while now.”
Not that he’s complaining. “I thought it was a terrific movie. Among all the baseball movies of the last generation, this was the baseballest.”
The A’s quietly stepped away from the mantras of “Moneyball.” By 2006, they used their top pick on high school pitcher Trevor Cahill, a refutation of the principles that dictated that premium picks should not be squandered on prep pitchers. Fuson returned to the organization before the 2010 season as a special adviser.
The draft strategy that Lewis touted simply did not work. The A’s elevated on-base ability to the level of the most coveted tool, and the organization found itself with one-dimensional players who could not find positions or excel in the majors, leaving the A’s short on talent and struggling at the big league level. For a small-market team, drafting and development is critical, and the draft had failed the Athletics.
So as “Moneyball,” the movie, hits theaters, Moneyball, the philosophy, collapses into rubble, and “Moneyball,” the book, begins to look like a literary antiquity.
Old hands will call this the wages of hubris and mutter about the Baseball Gods. In retrospect, it was preposterous to boast about the genius of a plan that had never been tested. Viewing the book now, eight years after publication, is like walking through a museum of the obsolete. Not only does Lewis gloat about the inevitable success of the A’s new approach, but he extols the virtues of derivatives and Wall Street brilliance. That does not carry the same luster in 2011.
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