Moneyball; The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Michael Lewis's instant classic may be “the most influential sports book ever written” (People), but “you don't need to know a thing about baseball to appreciate the sharp wit, insight, and economy of [Lewis’s] commentary on it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times).

Ranked among GQ’s 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century

As the 2002 baseball season approaches, the Oakland Athletics are forced to part with their three most prominent (and expensive) players, leading many to write off the team. Yet, against all odds, they surge back to break the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball manage such a remarkable feat?

To uncover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not just “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate), but also “possibly the best business book ever written” (Weekly Standard). While initially exploring the typical sources—front offices, coaches, and brilliant players—Lewis uncovers an unexpected treasure trove of data collected by a group of unlikely baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

These numbers reveal that traditional measures of success for players and teams are deeply flawed. Even the box score, with its emphasis on basic statistics, misses key insights, like the underrated importance of walks. This data had been available for years, yet nobody in Major League Baseball had taken it seriously—until Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics. Faced with the second-lowest payroll in baseball, Beane leveraged these insights to assemble a team that nobody else wanted.

In a narrative filled with unforgettable characters and unexpected twists, Michael Lewis illustrates how and why this new baseball knowledge works. The story also offers a subtle, hilarious moral: Big Money, like Goliath, is supposed to win—so how can we not root for David?