Having personally been rejected from the big leagues for a reason that had nothing to do with his actual performance, Billy already had every incentive to fight both for himself and for guys just like him. Billy had to run his team on a shoestring and just find a way to make it work. That new ownership made him make due with about a third of what other teams had to spend on players. He became General Manager for a previously well funded team brought under new ownership. Billy made his way to the Oakland A's team as a player in 1989. Billy knew that he and so many people just like him were exceptionally talented, but somehow different. They had no recourse for their rejections either.

Seriously talented people who differed in any way from even just one the subjective ideals held by these major league scouts were written off and cast away as not worth their time. The stakes were sky high, with scouts spending tens of millions of dollars to snag players to major league teams. The scouts would look at potential recruits and size them up based on what they could see with their eyes: physical attributes, emotional stability, where or if they went to college, their age, and how they played baseball as observed on the field. Back then, well-to-do baseball scouts were gatekeepers for who got picked and whose chances were dashed based on an entirely subjective set of criteria. That 'thinking through' process has significantly evolved since Billy Beane started, and was subsequently rejected from, his professional baseball career in the 1980s. I went into this book not knowing much about baseball and learned a whole lot more than I imagined possible! This is a sport with a devoted fan base of 'baseball nuts' who make thinking through every move in the game a mental sport unto itself. This is my review of Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. By rethinking convention, he turned the tables and beat the well off baseball owners that once rejected him at their own game. And how he managed to return the favor - by throwing out conventional wisdom, recruiting undervalued players just like himself, and creating one of the most successful baseball franchises in history. Get the story of how Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane's shot at a professional baseball career was turned upside down. If there's anyone thinking of drafting me to their team, their first question should be: 'What's wrong with her that we can get her for anything less than a million dollars?'.

Moneyball art