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)

You've seen the movie, now hear the full story

Would you consider the audio edition of Moneyball to be better than the print version?

No, not better, but clearly complementary.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Billy Beane. He's what holds it all together. While I enjoyed the forays with the players, Beane is fascinating.

Which character – as performed by Scott Brick – was your favorite?

All of them. His delivery is excellent.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Already done, and done well. But this is so much better.

Any additional comments?

Enjoyed this so much more than I expected. I was thoroughly entertained and I learned a lot.

BEST BASEBALL BOOK I’VE READ

If you baseball this book is for you it’s talks about the a’s got good and all the moves they made and everything.

More Than Just Baseball

Wow this was a great book! I couldn’t put it down; kept finding reasons to put my headphones in and listen to this book. Yes the subject of the book is about Billy Beane and his, at the time, radical use of data analytics to value a baseball player’s worth rather than using the traditional scouting methods. That is the short view though, Michael Lewis’ research and writing shows how Beane’s approach can be used for so much more than baseball. Challenging the way we have valued a commodity or process and backing it up with objective analytics can show the ineffectiveness and inefficiencies around us everyday. Loved it. Moneyball is one of those non-fiction books I look forward to reading again.

Scott Brick is a wonderful narrator and I thought he was the perfect choice for this book.

We're not selling jeans!!

Inspiring true story about how the poorest team in major league baseball changed the game. Recommend.

Awesome

Best book so far in overall performance, I loved the pace, topic and the way it was written.

The winner is logic! Great book, well told.

This is a story about challenging conventional wisdom and almost pulling it off, the central figure, Billy Beane, was the embodiment of what baseball scouts loved as a player but after a mediocre career Billy clearly has a different perspective on his own failings than his coaches and peers did.

In the meantime, baseball fans both dis-satisfied with conventional statistics and desiring a
deeper knowledge of the game are creating maths and tools to create a "truly objective
understanding of baseball", whilst professional baseball continues with it's traditional methods as wage bills rocket and the gap between rich and poor clubs increases.

Moneyball ties these two stories together into the career of Billy Beane as general manager of the Oakland A's and is kind of a novel, biography and history book rolled into one with a dash of psychology. The clash of culture and cognitive biases against the objective tools employed by Beane and his aides is told in such a manner that you want the cold hearted logicians to win!

The narration is excellent, and although some of the players stories are more interesting than others when the story centers back on Beane the book is very good.

Worth every minute

I have read this book several times over the past decade. I was first drawn to this book because I loved baseball and more specifically the Oakland Athletics. Since the first time I have read it I have been drawn back to this book again and again by the idea of trying to win an unfair game. So much of life and business is this very game of trying to win an unfair game. It reinvegorates my passion again and again to think differently and try to find value in things that others overlook. This is easily one of my favorite books and I would recommend it to anyone who is eager to find a good read.

Interesting chronicle of change.

Showed math, statistics, and sports in a new light. The game is forever changed and better understood.

Great story.

Love a good underdog story. Things in life are unfair, but this book shows you how to overcome.

Great book

Book was great, the narrator did a good job but was a little too fast on 3x speed. 2x was ok for me.