Since Moneyball is considered the book about the game, at least in recent years, it seems inevitable that whatever happens in the game gets linked to it somehow. Here’s the latest, from Slate.com.
Moneyball, published in 2003, was a rebuttal to one George Mitchell panel report on the problems of baseball: the 2000 findings of the Commissioner’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics, which concluded that low-revenue teams were operating at a hopeless disadvantage against the top-revenue teams. Oakland gave the lie to that conclusion; it had a meager budget yet was a perennial contender, thanks to the innovations of Beane and his predecessor, Sandy Alderson. Moneyball‘s subtitle was “The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.”
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Where were the steroids in Moneyball? They were out of sight, where the baseball world wanted them to be. This is not a reflection on Lewis’ reporting, even. The book advanced people’s understanding of baseball, on the terms in which people were willing to think about baseball at the time. It accurately named and explained the batting approach that defines this era: power hitting channeled through strict strike-zone discipline. This is the engine not only of Oakland’s budget offense, but of the bankroll-busting offenses of the Yankees and Red Sox—each of which has included a Giambi brother on its roster (though not necessarily fruitfully).
Read the whole sad story here.
is available on Amazon.com,
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