Moneyball - Quarter 3 Blog 2

After finishing up The Diary of Anne Frank before winter break, I decided to read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. Baseball is my passion and it has been for a while and this is a story of the game that interested me after watching the movie a couple years ago. The book and movie are somewhat relatable but it has its differences. In the movie, Brad Pitt plays the roll of Billy Beane, the General Manger for the Oakland A's. His team is one of the poorest in baseball and he believes that the game is unfair based on what kind of players teams can or can't buy with what money they have. Billy looks to turn the tables on Major League Baseball by following an old theory. The theory came from a baseball analyzer 15 years ago named Bill James as I learned in the book.

Also in the movie, Jonah Hill plays as Peter Brand (really is Paul DePodesta in reality but didn't want his name revealed in the movie) who is Billy's right hand man and the brains of the operation. He has the inside scoop on the players that make a bigger impact on the game, specifically for OPS (On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage). The OPS statistic was first introduced after Bill James was analyzing baseball's statistics and trying to expand them as the text explains.

The book is more of an expansion of the main parts of the movie. For example, Billy Beane was originally expected to be one of the greatest baseball players ever when he was barely in high school as scouts predicted. It was until he was given the option for a $250,000 chance to play in the Majors with the New York Mets or go to college. Of course, being an overwhelmed high school senior and not to mention being brainwashed by Major League scouts, he took the deal. Billy got his chance in the majors after he made his way throughout the Mets' farm system. It was until he went in a deep slump caused by being in such a big spotlight every night. He was dropped by many teams and eventually in 1992, he became a scout until 1997 when he took the seat of the Oakland A's GM. In the movie it doesn't explain all that, it only explains parts of it that you have to put together. But besides that, this book is GREAT.