Comparing Moneyball And The Battered Bastards Of Baseball

Thus is the nature of baseball, a fickle game wrought with tradition, the foremost of which is the iron clad law mandating that the game is cruel and will take away as freely as it gives. My father always told me, “Baseball is a game of errors - the best hitters fail seven out of ten times - the key to success is knowing how to deal with the failure.” It is this aspect of the game, its want to frustrate and demoralize the player, that I think has driven most of my

The book Moneyball by Michael Lewis is about a former major league baseball player who became the manager of the Oakland A’s. It tells the story of how he led the team to success despite their low budget by using computer based analytics to draft players. With the help of Bill James, the Oakland A’s came up with a new plan based on statistics to draft players. He went after players nobody wanted due to their low budget and his new plan. Billy led the Oakland Athletics to a successive win seasons by changing the way he measured players. He abandoned the traditional 5 “tool” the other scouts used and adopted empirical analytics. The abandonment of the traditional assessment of

I remember the struggles I went through at the beginning of the season. I only had 4 hits in 10 games. I worked on my leg lift, my load, everything I could think of until something worked. Then, something clicked. I was reading a book on common problems hitters have and I realized I wasn’t seeing the ball. So, I went to the cage and just stood there for hours upon hours, observing baseball's go by, but not hitting them. Then, out of nowhere, I got two hits.

Bernard Malamud was brought up in the mid 1900s, a time period when baseball played a huge role in the lives of many Americans. Americans loved baseball because it gave them a chance to stop working and simply relax while they cheered on their favorite team. It was a time when people played baseball solely for the love of the game and the thrill of hearing the fans cheer for them. Today, however, baseball is much more corrupt, and many athletes are only in it due to their own greed and selfishness. This strong desire for money stems from some important players in the past, such as Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, who were outstanding athletes and grew very overconfident in their abilities. They became so confident that they began to demand

He was not going by the proper way to scout players. Other scouts were getting mad he was not doing this. Billy believed in the statistics. As the 2002 Oakland Athletic team started off strong with three straight wins in the beginning. As the season started going, the A’s started a 20 game winning streak. Billy was praised for finding these players that were all pulling in the same direction. Not one player had an ego that would set back the team. Just like Billy, the players were focused on one thing winning, winning the World Series. Billy lived by this quote, “The problem,”‘ wrote James, “is that baseball statistics are not pure accomplishments of men against other men, which is what we are in the habit of seeing them as. They are accomplishments of men in combination with their circumstances” (Lewis 71). Billy just did not focus on the stats rather he also focused on what the player actually accomplished throughout their years of playing baseball. This is what made him one of the best general managers in the league at the time. After the A’s did not make it past the first round of the playoffs all of the criticism waiting for the Billy to fail for the first time started to pour in. Billy simply responded “We’ll be back.” Billy was not viewed as a real general manager in the beginning, but after he succeeded he gained

Baseball remains today one of America’s most popular sports, and furthermore, baseball is one of America’s most successful forms of entertainment. As a result, Baseball is an economic being of its own. However, the sustainability of any professional sport organization depends directly on its economic capabilities. For example, in Baseball, all revenue is a product of the fans reaction to ticket prices, advertisements, television contracts, etc. During the devastating Great Depression in 1929, the fans of baseball experienced fiscal suffering. The appeal of baseball declined as more and more people were trying to make enough money to live. There was a significant drop in attention, attendance, and enjoyment. Although baseball’s vitality

For a while, the national pastime, seen on television and from rump-punishing bleachers far from the bright lights of the major leagues, becomes a complex metaphor for all that Papa Chance and his sons hold sacred. Everett, the eldest, even goes so far as to mark the beginning of the turbulent 60's not with the Kennedy assassination or the arrival of the Beatles but with the day Roger Maris became "the assassin of a legend," hitting 61 home runs and breaking Babe

In 1919, the Chicago white coach Charles Comiskey was the main cause of The Black Sox Scandal. If coach Comiskey didn’t treat and under paid his players they would have never agreed to throw the World Series. (Society) With money problems the team was willing to do things to get more money because of the way they were being underpaid. The Chicago White Sox were together the best team in baseball perhaps one of the best teams that had ever played the game, yet they like all ball players of the time were paid a fraction of what they were worth. (Linder, The Black Sox Trial: An Account) Two of the biggest stars in baseball played for the Chicago White Sox. The owner of the White Sox only paid his two biggest stars outfield “shoeless” Joe Jackson and third basemen Buck Weaver six thousand a year. Charles Risberg and Claude Williams made less than $3,000 a year. (Linder, The Black Sox Trial: An Account) While most teams gave their players $4 a day for meals, Comiskey would pay only $3. (Linder, CHARLES "THE OLD ROMAN" COMISKEY). The players did not like the way they are treated. The

In 1919, the Chicago white coach Charles Comiskey was the main cause of The Black Sox Scandal. If coach Comiskey didn’t treat and under paid his players they would have never agreed to throw the World Series. (Society) With money problems the team was willing to do things to get more money because of the way they were being underpaid. The Chicago White Sox were together the best team in baseball perhaps one of the best teams that had ever played the game, yet they like all ball players of the time were paid a fraction of what they were worth. (Linder, The Black Sox Trial: An Account) Two of the biggest stars in baseball played for the Chicago White Sox. The owner of the White Sox only paid his two biggest stars outfield “shoeless” Joe Jackson and third basemen Buck Weaver six thousand a year. Charles Risberg and Claude Williams made less than $3,000 a year. (Linder, The Black Sox Trial: An Account) While most teams gave their players $4 a day for meals, Comiskey would pay only $3. (Linder, CHARLES "THE OLD ROMAN" COMISKEY). The players did not like the way they are treated. The

Race has always been an issue long deep rooted in American history. The film 42, reflects its own issue of race within sports. It was directed by Brian Helgeland and was released on April 12, 2013. To begin, the film 42 starts off with an idea from the owner of the Dodgers, Branch Rickey. In the year 1946, he decides to search and recruit the first African-American baseball player to participate in the Major League of baseball. A young man by the name of Jackie Robinson who never backs down from racism, although he plays for the “Negro League”. Rickey chooses Jackie to break down the unspoken rule of not allowing black players play in Baseball with the current Major league of Baseball that is only “for” white men. The idea is not easily accepted by the rest of baseball. Jackie, along with his wife receive major ridicule and relentless racism from stadium crowds to teammates. Robinson learns to overcome his urges to fight back against racism and let the owners or teammates assist him when he leasts expects it. The movie accomplishes the criteria for depicting race within baseball because the film should accurately describe history in baseball within racial differences; and the film should bring forth a breakthrough in racial barriers.

There have been many famous figures that have made a significant impact in the sport industry. One person, who was hired in 2002 at the age of 28, is one of those people. Theo Epstein has made monumental waves in the sport industry since he became the general manager of the Boston Red Sox in 2002. Since then, Epstein has gone on to revolutionize baseball in hiring young, educated, talented minds with knowledge and understanding of sabermetrics to lead their organizations. Epstein was one of the first general managers to receive the title who had no professional baseball playing experience. As a model of success, other Major League Baseball franchises have begun hiring young intellectuals like Epstein to run their teams.

1. Based on the “Billy Beane: Changing the Game” case, explain how and why the Oakland A’s economic situation after 1995 shaped its:

The A's recent success is attributed to the innovative approach taken by Billy Beane in assembling a baseball team with a very limited amount of financial resources. Billy Beane has built a successful ball club because he has found an efficient and cost effective way of measuring baseball talent thus essentially creating a loophole in this unfair game because winning percentage is a result of talent not

How did Beane’s approach to baseball change the game? A: He changed the way Teams looked at people. He looked at people’s potential, instead of just looking at the qualities they had, he looked at the qualities they could develop.

George et al.,(2007) provide the importance of an authentic leadership. A key focus of the article is that the leader should not only understand his values, but practice them as well. One of the most interesting values described by Billy Beane is his value of education. Major League Baseball would recognize him as one of the top high school talents in the country during his youth. He valued education so much, that he informed all Major League Baseball teams that he would not sign any professional contract so that he could attend Stanford. Even upon being convinced to sign with the New York Mets, he made his intentions of taking classes in the off season quite clear. This may have been his undoing as a player, as he did not value where his natural talents could take him in baseball. This would lead him to develop values regarding life decisions. He swore after that sequence of events he would never make a decision based on money ever again. This is a value he has stayed true to, as he turned down the opportunity to be the highest paid