Moneyball

The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

By: Michael Lewis

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

Moneyball reveals a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of Major League teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win.... How can we not cheer for David?

©2004 Michael Lewis (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

"The single most influential baseball book ever." (Rob Neyer, Slate)

"Another journalistic tour de force." (Wall Street Journal)

"Engaging, informative, and deliciously contrarian." (Washington Post)

Excellent Audiobook

This is a great book and it works great in audio form. The book itself has very few "tables" which don't work well in audiobook form.

Don't like baseball but i like this book!

Now i know why I didn't like watching baseball. loved playing it. Moneyball is a great listen. love the whole story. im smarter after listening to this audiobook. was fantastic and already recommended to a buddy.

Not a baseball fan? No problem.

I don’t consider myself a professional baseball fan. I doubt I even average watching a single game a year.

This story so wonderfully combines human interest stories with data and explains the irrationally rationale way people behave. I’ve already recommended this book several times.

Also, a great reading performance by the voice actor!

Loved it

Awesome read for any baseball fan. The narrator did a great job, and the book is fantastically written. Highly recommended.

Very entertaining

Really enjoyed this listen. The narrator had great tone and inflection in his voice to keep you interested and entertained.

Great reader and great story

This was a great book that I loved. The era of baseball that is talked about is a time I remember very well and I enjoyed listening to this story about it.

Great book that will open your eyes

I am what I consider a pretty intelligent "student of the game", but this book opened my eyes and made me realize what I was really missing! I have followed and used the conventional baseball statistics without fully understanding how limited the typical stats are. Even if you are a casual fan, this book is a great read. It not only explores the raw data that proves a baseball player's true worth, but it is also an insight into the brilliant minds of the people who changed the game.

As a Tampa Bay Rays fan for the last 12 years, I can truly appreciate what Billy Beane, Paul DePodesta, and the non-traditional baseball guys have done for small market teams!

Great incite into the inner workings of baseball

Michael Lewis is one of our great non-fiction writers. He has this amazing ability to take complex problems and make it understandable to the ordinary person. Moneyball joins his other books like "The Big Short" and "Liars Poker" that digs into the baseball industry, turns over the rocks and watches the insects scatter. Unlike the movie, which turned the book into a maudlin story of giving up money for being with his daughter, the book is a hard edge, no BS look at how his system of baseball team construction could be based on statistical analysis of player value. Although he was successful at portraying the success from the financial aspect, Lewis never really explores the consequential loss of the fun side of baseball. That is, some of the most enjoyable aspects of baseball like base stealing, sacrificing, hit and runs, squeeze plays etc. are virtually eliminated from ordinary play. Basically, Billy Beane turned his teams into no risk, maximum value only decisions that are really boring.

Thoroughly enjoyed it!!

I love baseball, but I really was initially drawn to the book looking for the very geeky discussion of the application of "big data" mining and the development of the algorithms used as a tool in the organizational design and management of a team. It was also instructive to look at the resistance to the use of this information and the concepts around it by baseball insiders / management for 20+ years. I got all that I was looking for and have lots of follow-up homework to do, but I also really enjoyed the story. The presentation was outstanding! I might need to go take up fantasy baseball now.

Michael Lewis is Amazing...

I don't care about statistics and I don't care about baseball, but Micheal Lewis wrote a book about the statistics of baseball that I devoured. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey that Mr. Lewis took me on through the innovative recruiting method employed by Billy Beane's Oakland A's, especially in the context of the distain the rest of the MLB "Old Schooler's" had for him and his methods. Mr. Lewis manages to take a potentially dry topic and detail it with completely human stories that has you laughing and cheering for the severly underrated underdogs at every turn. And I am a huge fan of Scott Brick. You can never go wrong with him as a narrator.