Moneyball

A baseball team, of all things, was at the centre of a story about the possibilities – and the limits – of human affairs. A story of winning big against the odds Moneyball is the story of the Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane. He has an epiphany: all conventional baseball wisdom is wrong. Reinventing his team on a budget, he needs to outsmart the richer teams. Joining with Ivy Leaguer Peter Brand, they recruit bargain players whom the scouts consider flawed but who have a knack for getting on base, scoring runs and winning games. They'll either be the laughing stock of baseball or its vindicated underdogs. Author of the bestsellers Flash Boys and The Big Short, award-winning author Michael Lewis began the journey to write Moneyball with a curiosity – a curiosity about how one of the poorest teams in baseball could win so many games. From there came a story he fell in love with, a story of success against the odds that demanded to be told. Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball, the search for new baseball knowledge-insights that will give the little guy who is willing to discard old wisdom the edge over big money. ‘Just how Oakland succeeded is a fascinating story: part thriller, part-family saga, brilliantly told. You do not need to know or care about baseball – though I defy you not to be smitten after reading the book – because like all good sports books, it is not really about sport, or even in this case about applied statistics. It is about people.’ – The Guardian