Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Bought: March 2010
Read: March 2010

I really enjoyed Home Game, so despite my assertion long ago that I didn't want to read Moneyball for fear that it would hinder my enjoyment of the game. This, I think was founded more in a misunderstanding of what the book was all about. The way Michael Lewis writes can make a dull subject interesting, but this wasn't a dull story. The characters involved are well fleshed out and their motivation is clear. Lewis allows you to really feel like you're in the room with Billy Beane and in his head in a lot of ways. Reading it eight years after the primary draft that the book discusses (2002) also helped, as names like Swisher, Teahan, Span, Kazmir, Fielder, Blanton, Papelbon and Youkilis have a different meaning now than they did at the time of the draft (also drafted by the Twins that year: Neshek, Crain, Peterson.)

I raced through this book and really had a good time doing it. A lot of economic talk is there, but it's really about baseball. A useful way to discuss at least on a very superficial level the economic concepts involved. I think I'm going to pick up Liar's Poker as well based on this reading, but I'm not certain when I'll get around to reading it. We'll see. I do a lot better with books that have audiobook versions, since I can listen to them while watching Nathaniel, but the other problem is that I can usually read a book faster than I can listen to an audiobook. But that requires time to read.