In Michael Lewis’s Money Ball, focuses on the Oakland Athletics baseball club during the 2002 season. For the past three seasons, the team had made the playoffs. During the 2002 season, the franchise had a payroll that was one-third of what the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees had as a team. However, the A’s were able to overcome this feat and return to October baseball.
During this particular season, it seems as if the team was at a great disadvantage with a low salary cap, compared to the Red Sox and Yankees. Lewis takes an in-depth look at how GM and former player Billy Beane “runs” or manages the team. People think that running a sports franchise is easy, but it is not. Billy had to survive losing key players due to a higher paying salary, seemingly endless defeat, and a decline in attendance. Yet, despite these problems, the A’s still had a winning season.
Lewis writes the book from a third person’s point of view, as if he was working for the Oakland newspaper. The language used was simply baseball and business/statistics terminology. People must understand what a home run and a strike are, among other elements of the game. They must also bear some knowledge of statistics and business terms such as batting average, attendance rate, and how money the team is earning each night for games.
Throughout the novel, there were numerous issues. Sports enthusiasts, especially Oakland A’s fans, were disappointed about the team’s low payroll. They were also upset about the fact that Oakland is perceived as a “joke” or the underdog amongst the league’s other teams. At the conclusion of the novel, the team managed to overcome adversity and disbelief in order to return to baseball’s holy grail, the playoffs.
“Moneyball” could be compared to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Hermia is passionate or crazy about Lysander, and they decide to get married without her father knowing, whereas in “Moneyball,” Oakland’s fans are crazy and enthusiastic about the A’s that they support them everywhere they go. However, their love and enthusiasm could lead to irrational actions such as disputes within the organization/family.
In conclusion, this novel would be most recommended specifically for baseball fans and people who would consider a career in sports management. I personally thought that the book could use some improvement if the author could simply clarify or explain the baseball/business terminology for those first time readers in a way that would make good use of footnotes. Overall, the novel was well written and quite informative as to persevering despite setbacks and/or obstacles; most especially financial.
