Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money

One of my go-to quotes about my dessert island book comes from and episode of M*A*S*H in which Hawkeye answers the question with “The dictionary; it has all the other books in it.”

This year marks the 20th anniversary since the publication of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. I doubt there’s a serious fan who has not read the book, seen the movie, or at least heard the term, which has become practically the go-to when digging into the background of any business or idea. Examples of non-baseball books include:

Moneyball for Government
MoneyBall Medicine
Dental Moneyball
Moneyball Church
Moneyball Marketing
FUD Moneyball
Motley Ball: A Fictional Book Not At All Based On Moneyball

Given its importance (it won the prestigious Casey Award from Spitball Magazine for best baseball book of 2003), I was curious how many other baseball books include at least a mention of the impact of this seminal work. As I posted in the previous entry, Russel Carleton refers to it in The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden Fores Shaping Modern Baseball. This particular book does not have an index, but I thought it might be interesting to try to find out which volumes published since 2003 do (or, if like New Ballgame, there is no index, some reference to Moneyball). Actually, let’s make that 2005, given Lewis’ work some time to worm itself into the consciousness of writers and authors. This is by no means a complete list; I’m too lazy for that kind of digging.

As customary on the Bookshelf, the books listed are not targeted towards younger readers. Also, almost all of the biographies or histories published post-Moneyball but about the game prior to 2003 of necessity would not include a reference. I’m also eliminating annuals like Baseball Prospectus or The Bill James Handbook, with the assumption that most of them would use “Moneyball” at one point or another. Asterisks indicate a Bookshelf Conversation with the author, either about that particular book or a different work.

Smart Baseball: How Professionals Play the Mental Game, by Buddy Bell and Neal Vahle (2005)
Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top, by Seth Mnookin (2006)
Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, by Vince Gennaro (2007)
Dropping the Ball: Baseball’s Troubles and How We Can and Must Solve Them, by Dave Winfield and Michael Levin (2007)
Dynasty: The Inside Story of How the Red Sox Became a Baseball Powerhouse, by Tony Massarotti (2008)
Red Sox University: Baseball’s Foremost Institution of Higher Learning, by Andy Wasif (2009)
Taking the Field: A Fan’s Quest to Run the Team He Loves, by Howard Megdal (2011) *
The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball, by Sheldon Hirsch and Alan Hirsch (2011)
The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball, by Benjamin Baumer and Andrew Zimbalist (2013) *
Francona: The Red Sox Years, by Terry Francona and Dan Shaughnessy (2013)
The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports, by Jeff Passan (2015)
In Pursuit of Pennants: Baseball Operations from Deadball to Moneyball, by Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt (2015) *
The Cardinals Way: How One Team Embraced Tradition and Moneyball at the Same Time, by Howard Megdal (2016) *
Ahead of the Curve: Inside the Baseball Revolution, by Brian Kenny (2016)
Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball, by Keith Law (2017) *
Intangiball: The Subtle Things That Win Baseball Games, by Lonnie Wheeler (2015)
Power Ball: Anatomy of a Modern Baseball Game Hardcover, by Rob Neyer (2018) *
Scouting and Scoring: How We Know What We Know about Baseball, by Christopher Phillips (2019)
Unwritten: Bat Flips, the Fun Police, and Baseball’s New Future, by Danny Knobler (2019)
Inside The Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees, by Bob Klapisch and Paul Solotaroff (2019)
Buzz Saw: The Improbable Story of How the Washington Nationals Won the World Series, by Jesse Dougherty (2020)
Fan’s Guide to Baseball Analytics: Why WAR, WHIP, wOBA, and Other Advanced Sabermetrics Are Essential to Understanding Modern Baseball, by Anthony Castrovince (2020) *
The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, by Keith Law (2020) *
Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball’s Home Run Revolution, by Jared Diamond (2020)
Future Value: The Battle for Baseball’s Soul and How Teams Will Find the Next Superstar, by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel (2021)
Sho-Time: The Inside Story of Shohei Ohtani and the Greatest Baseball Season Ever Played, by Jeff Fletcher (2022)
The Science of Baseball: The Math, Technology, and Data Behind the Great American Pastime, by Will Carroll (2022) *
In Scoring Position: 40 Years of a Baseball Love Affair, by Bob Ryan and Bill Chuck (2022) *
Intentional Balk: Baseball’s Thin Line Between Innovation and Cheating, by Daniel Levitt and Mark Armour (2022) *
The Baseball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History, by Aaron Baker (2022)
The Franchise: Boston Red Sox: A Curated History of the Red Sox, by Sean McAdam (2022)
Baseball’s Endangered Species: Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It, by Lee Lowenfish (2023) *
Smart, Wrong, and Lucky: The Origin Stories of Baseball’s Unexpected Stars, by Jonathan Mayo (2023)
Penguin Power: Dodger Blue, Hollywood Lights, and My One-in-a-Million Big League Journey, by Ron Cey and Ken Gurnick (2023)

As one might imagine, most of the books that deal with baseball as a business — including scouting — make at least a passing reference to the original.

Carleton writes a sentiment in the closing pages of The New Ballgame: “Years from now, someone will write another book about how it’s a new ballgame and they’ll have a good laugh abut how inefficient they all were in the old days.” Who knows, maybe the same could be said about Moneyball when researchers and analysts discover a new way to evaluate players.