Moneyball
For this Research Paper I read the book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. This book was written in 2003 by Michael Lewis. The book chronicles the Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics 2002 season. Michael Lewis writes in a very different way than other books I have read, in which he goes straight into what matter and leaves out the unimportant details and doesn’t drag it on for too long. In his story I noticed a lot of tension, flashback, and the elimination of unnecessary details to only give the reader information to help understand the story.
The book Moneyball has many different themes and topics, the first them I want to talk about is tension. Michael Lewis uses unique ways of using tension in the story very well. One way of using the tension was to spread it apart. Of the twelve chapters in Moneyball, eleven of them have the main character, Billy Beane, facing an obstacle and rising above it. This element of tension keeps the story interesting by continuously drawing the reader back in. It is similar to an action movie whereby the hero defeats one bad guy then a new villain presents itself, and this happens eleven times.
In the book, Michael Lewis has the main character, Athletics General Manager, Billy Beane, battle through tension and in the end he prevails. Beane took over as the general manager in 1998, with frugal ownership (in 2002, Oakland had the third lowest salary in Major League Baseball, ranking them twenty-seven out of thirty teams). Billy Beane starts using a new scientific system of “Sabermetrics” to assess affordable talent to replace the big name players that Oakland couldn’t afford. The way Michael Lewis writes this story is quite interesting as he admires Billy Beane and how he changed the whole game of baseball, from behind the scenes.
In the story, General Manager Billy Beane, overcomes all the old scouts’ dirty looks and laughs to become a good manager and scout because of his time spent and lessons learned
The book Moneyball has many different themes and topics, the first them I want to talk about is tension. Michael Lewis uses unique ways of using tension in the story very well. One way of using the tension was to spread it apart. Of the twelve chapters in Moneyball, eleven of them have the main character, Billy Beane, facing an obstacle and rising above it. This element of tension keeps the story interesting by continuously drawing the reader back in. It is similar to an action movie whereby the hero defeats one bad guy then a new villain presents itself, and this happens eleven times.
In the book, Michael Lewis has the main character, Athletics General Manager, Billy Beane, battle through tension and in the end he prevails. Beane took over as the general manager in 1998, with frugal ownership (in 2002, Oakland had the third lowest salary in Major League Baseball, ranking them twenty-seven out of thirty teams). Billy Beane starts using a new scientific system of “Sabermetrics” to assess affordable talent to replace the big name players that Oakland couldn’t afford. The way Michael Lewis writes this story is quite interesting as he admires Billy Beane and how he changed the whole game of baseball, from behind the scenes.
In the story, General Manager Billy Beane, overcomes all the old scouts’ dirty looks and laughs to become a good manager and scout because of his time spent and lessons learned