After I purchased my DjangoCon airfare, I knew I’d need a book (or two) for the trip. I immediately purchased The Devil in the White City, which I have been wanting to read since Emma recommended it to me. I enjoyed it, and in fact I blew through almost the whole book on the way there.
While in Portland, we stopped in the famous Powell’s Books. I was actually feeling kind of awful at the time due to my allergic reaction to Portland, so I wasn’t looking very hard or planning to buy anything. But, I came upon a display of sports books. Sports book on sale. And they had Moneyball.
Moneyball is a book about the Oakland A’s, their general manager Billy Beane and how they managed to win so may games in the early 2000s on such a small budget using sabermetrics. I’ve been wanting to read it for a while, and I wasn’t disappointed. I freaking loved reading this book. Sure, there’s the very interesting story about Beane and some selected players and the paths they took to get where they are in the book. Michael Lewis explores and explains the statistics they used to pick players during the draft (primarily OBP).
However, the thing I enjoyed most about this book was it is full of players still playing today, players you probably have heard of. I was freaking beside myself when Lewis described the 2002 draft and how much Billy Bean wanted Nick Swisher. At the end of June, when the Yankees were visiting the Braves, I decided I kind of loved Nick Swisher after reading his Wikipedia bio because (a) he initiated a brawl (love) and (b) he pitched an inning of relief, for kicks, in April of this year. He didn’t have a very good series against us, leading me to believe he didn’t have a long career as a Yankee, but he proved me wrong by being quite the valued player this year.
But, I digress. When I was finishing up the book, I was sitting on the couch and was just announcing players mentioned in the book to Shaun. “Barry Zito.” “Tim Hudson.” “Joe Blanton.” “Mark Teixeira.” “Prince Fielder.” “Kevin Youkilis.” (Euclis, the Greek God of walks.) “Zack Greinke.” “Barry Bonds.” “Jamie Moyer.” “David Justice.” Okay, you get the idea. I freaking loved reading this book. If you like baseball, you can’t do much better.
P.S. Hopefully the movie will get made!
