Michael Lewis
Author
of Moneyball
talks with Robert Birnbaum
Michael Lewis is the author of Liar's Poker,
The Money Culture, Pacific Rift, Losers, The New New Thing, Next
and now Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. He
attended Princeton University and The London School of Economics
and has been an investment banker for Salomon Brothers. That experience
led to his first book, Liar's Poker. He is a contributing
writer to the New York Times Magazine, a contributor to
Slate and a columnist for Bloomberg News, and
he has also done work for "Nightline" and "This American
Life." Michael Lewis lives in Berkeley, California with his
family.
Moneyball is a well-researched, well-written look at the
methodology and the people (mainly general manager Billy Beane)
who help make a small-budget baseball team (the Oakland Athletics)
extremely competitive in the big money world of Major League baseball.
It is greatly to Lewis' credit that he has put together a book about
baseball that is appealing to long-time fans as well as those recently
attracted by the game's charms. As he asks (and answers) in what
follows, “How many truly original stories does baseball produce?”
Moneyball is certainly that and more.
Robert Birnbaum: As long as we are in the belly
of the beast, let's talk about Billy Beane's courtship by the Red
Sox. Were you suggesting he was not really serious about taking
the general manager position?
Michael Lewis: I never meant to suggest that.
He took the job for a day. He was obviously serious about it. I
don't think he ever really wanted the job, is what I said. There
was no reason for him to want the job other than the money. He doesn't
like the East Coast or living on the East Coast. He has a daughter
from a first marriage out in San Diego, who is thirteen years old,
and he spends a lot of time with her. And the media here around
the baseball team [Boston Red Sox] is rabid.
RB: (laughs)
ML: And the media drives Billy Beane crazy. He
gets no pleasure from it. He doesn't like seeing his name in print.
It seems odd to say from someone who has just written a book that
has him as a main character. The curious thing to me was that he
got as close as he did to taking the job. I think what happened
was he was just very frustrated. For years they [the Oakland Athletics]
have been putting together these ball clubs on a shoestring that
have done extremely well, and no one has paid much attention to
the fact that it is done on a shoestring. The A's are held to the
standard of the Yankees in a funny kind of way. That if they don't
win the World Series it is regarded as a failure. And so he was
feeling a little unappreciated and when John Henry offered him twelve
and a half million dollars to come and work for the Red Sox. I think
he thought that was a validation--that it would demonstrate to the
world that someone understood that he knows what he is doing. I
watched it very closely and it was funny what happened. The minute
the news got out that he was offered this money, he lost interest.
Because that's all that he cared about, that the news was out. Also,
he has this superstition about money. It goes back to his boyhood.
He took money from the New York Mets to be their first-round draft
choice instead of going to Stanford —which is what he should
have done —on a scholarship. He attributes that to a decision
he made because of money. He's promised himself ever since that
he is not going to let money influence his life that way. When he
looked at the decision that he made to take the Red Sox job he couldn't
think of any reason he was taking it other than the money. And it
made him very nervous.
RB: In the New Yorker mention of your
book, there was an interesting take on Beane's decision. Which was
that taking the Red Sox job would no longer be challenging since
they have a big budget.
ML: (laughs) It’s true there is more long-term
glory for him to operate with a smaller budget because what they
do that is so extraordinary is find value where no one else can
find value. If you have a hundred-million-dollar payroll, you don't
need to do it as much. So in a way it would be a waste to put him
with a big-budget team. On the other hand he would be very, very
effective because he would have all the benefit of the knowledge
and insights that they have at the Oakland A's and his own natural
aptitude for horse swapping and running a ball club harnessed to
this big payroll. He would make different kinds of decisions that
he can't make in Oakland. But yes, I don't think that's completely
unfair. There is in some sense his use value is maximized if he
is with small-budget team.
RB: Was the reason you wrote this book this charismatic
colorful personality, Billy Beane?
ML: No, I drifted into it because I was curious
how they won all these games with no money. I realized it was a
book when the assistant GM of the A's, Paul Podesta, said to me,
"You have to understand that for someone to become an Oakland
A, he has to have something wrong with him."
RB: [laughs]
ML: "Because if he doesn't have something
wrong with him, he gets valued properly by the marketplace, and
we can't afford him anymore." [Paul Podesta speaking]
RB: You met Paul Podesta before you met Billy
Beane?
ML: No, I was already in there and when I realized
that this juggernaut that they put on the field was an assemblage
of defective parts, I thought, "This is a great story."
And the fact that Billy Beane had dimensions as a character was
very important because I knew he could carry the story. That's when
I committed to the book and then I realized that the players were
central to this thing, that they were the undervalued assets, and
I was curious how they coped with that.
RB: Is it the case that you were surprised by
the fullness of Billy Beane as a personality? As you said, he seems
to be media shy, but it really seems that you were sitting on his
shoulder for so much of this story.
ML: It's because I wasn't the media. I was this
guy who was saying I was going to write this book. After a couple
of months, nothing is appearing in print, I am just kind of there
all the time, and I became a kind of sidekick, almost. There has
been so much noise about this book in baseball and so much noise
about this book in his life and it has just been out three weeks.
I think if you asked him now, "Would you do it all over again?"
I think he would have second thoughts.
RB: You do mention that a couple of general managers
are wary of dealing with him because he snookers them in their dealings,
continuously. Is the jig up for him with everyone?
…people
who think they know what they are talking about when they
talk about baseball include the announcers and all of the
sports press—no matter how much evidence you present
them to the contrary they will continue to think that what
they think is right. |
ML: You would have thought so. Apparently not.
There are some general managers, who because he has gotten the better
end of the deal, so many times—they are scared of him. They
don't know why. They think he is a witch. Those people won't do
business with him anyway. I know, because I have been in touch with
him since the book has come out, that several general mangers have
reassured him that they would still do business. [But] It can't
help his life. It can't make it easier for him to deal with other
baseball teams.
RB: How long are their memories?
ML: Also this question of how long this advantage
that Billy Beane has can last. These insights and this knowledge
that he is working with isn't original to him. A lot of it is in
the public domain. It's just a question of baseball teams being
willing to understand it. If that happens he is in a little trouble.
You can't put $40 million worth of players against $120 million
and compete if you don't have some kind of advantage. So I think
in the long term it's probably not good for that franchise, but
in the short term it creates a lot of interest around him.
RB: Will it be better for baseball?
ML: There are several insights at the heart of
the A's system that I think are wonderful for baseball. One, that
it's a team game. That no one player is going to make that much
of a difference to your team, so for god's sake don't go blow a
quarter of your budget on one guy. And that's something a lot of
owners and general managers don't understand. They go and spend
ungodly amounts for some superstar and my god they are still at
the bottom of their division. And baseball is more fun to watch,
if it is understood as a team game, to me. The second thing, one
of the broad insights that is important to the A's is that there
are guys whose value is not on the surface. It's difficult to see.
This leads to them having a particular affection for pitchers who
don't throw very hard but have crafty stuff. For hitters who don't
hit huge numbers of home runs and have high batting averages but
have crafty stuff at the plate. If you like crafty stuff they are
going to open the market for crafty people. When Jaime Moyer of
the Seattle Mariners pitches, I love watching him. In a way it is
a much more interesting game than watching Randy Johnson pitch.
You are not only watching a game you are watching a thought process.
So to the extent that they open up the game to that, I think that's
kind of neat. On the other hand if baseball doesn't correct its
revenue discrepancies—it's still 40 million against a 150
million or whatever it is and the intellectual discrepancies vanish--then
it's just going to be rich guys beating up on poor guys, and that
won't be fun to watch.
RB: There are a couple of people besides Beane
who understand this Sabremetric approach to baseball—Ricciardi…
ML: Who came out of the Oakland organization who
is now in Toronto.
RB: And to some degree, Theo Epstein of the Red
Sox.
ML: He more than understands it. Theo Epstein
would have preferred that Billy Beane become the GM of the Boston
Red Sox and that Theo be his assistant. That's what Theo wanted.
And the Red Sox have gone and hired Bill James who is —in
some ways the father of this whole movement. My favorite hire--and
it gets no attention in the Boston press--is this fellow Voros McCracken,
who is an analyst of pitchers. He is this kid who lives out in Phoenix
with his parents because he couldn't stand his paralegal job, he
quit it. He started playing fantasy baseball and asked a very simple
question because he wanted to evaluate pitchers for his fantasy
baseball team. The question was, "How do you distinguish pitching
from defense? What part of what happens on the defensive end is
the pitcher’s responsibility?" And he devised this very
clever way of looking at pitchers and that in fact that the A's
had come up with. The Red Sox have now embraced it. And he's a great
story because he would seem otherwise unemployable, but he has a
gift as a baseball analyst.
RB: One of my favorite moments in your book is
when you are describing some theory and then Joe Morgan is not only
contradicting it but it is actually happening in the game he is
announcing and he just doesn't acknowledge it.
ML: Right. It's in the playoffs and this is what
happens. When the A's get to the playoffs—one of the things
that it has been very interesting for me to watch up close is the
way vested baseball interests don't want the A's to succeed. Or
are looking for reasons, whatever they are doing—and they
don't understand what they are doing—doesn't make sense. It
is implicitly very condemnatory of traditional baseball. It's saying,
"Look, you must be a moron if you have a $120 million and you
are the underdog when you come up against us with $40 million. And
you are doing it the traditional way." One of the many things
they say is that, "All right, maybe it works during the regular
season and whatever they do it gets them to the playoffs, but once
they get to the playoffs they can't compete." Joe Morgan says
this. What he was saying in that case was they don't manufacture
runs. They don't bunt. They don't steal. There are reasons for that.
They figured out what an out is worth and it is worth much more
than people who risk it by stealing bases and sacrificing know.
So Joe Morgan says they play for the three-run homer and if you
play for the three-run homer you are going to lose in the playoffs
and as he is saying it, Eric Chavez of the Oakland A's hits a three-run
homer. And no one says anything. The game keeps plugging right along.
It's like the soundtrack and the action are completely out of sync.
The fact is they score more runs in the playoffs than during the
regular season, but everyone says well they lose because they don't
score runs in the playoffs. I'm telling you people who think they
know what they are talking about when they talk about baseball include
the announcers and all of the sports press—no matter how much
evidence you present them to the contrary they will continue to
think that what they think is right. I have done a number of interviews
with sports radio types, and that's the part of the book where they
get very upset. The idea that the playoffs has a large crapshoot
component, there is a limit to what management can do in the playoffs
because it's a short series and there is a lot of luck in baseball.
The point is that what the A's are trying to do is eliminate the
chance and you can do it over a long season because in a large sample,
luck evens out. But in the playoffs luck doesn't even out. One of
the sacred truths of baseball is that are some secrets to winning
in the postseason that some people mysteriously know. And that the
A's have not had success in the postseason shows that they don't
know something.
RB: Tell me about the subtitle of the book, The
art of winning an unfair game.
ML: It's a patently unfair game that $40 million
has to play against $120 million. It just violates all of our notions
of fairness that money is one of the determining factors in the
outcome of a sporting contest. But there is a double meaning because
it is really unfair the A's know all this stuff about baseball and
nobody else does. [laughs] In some cases it’s unfair for the
other side, even though they have the money. There is a chapter
called “The Science of Winning an Unfair Game,” but
I wanted to make it clear with the subtitle it wasn't just science.
Part of what their success is that they had applied the scientific
method to baseball and had found these insights and the knowledge
that was really valid and objective, but another part of it was
how they applied it. And what Billy Beane's real gift is, and it's
hard to replicate, is imposing it in a big-league clubhouse. If
you took some nerd with a computer who knew these things and told
him to run a big-league team, he would have no effect. They would
just not listen to him.
RB: Does Harvard boy Paul Podesta fit that nerd
description?
ML: No, it's funny. He would count as a jock at
Harvard. He played football and baseball. But in the Oakland organization
since he went to Harvard he would count as a nerd. But he has kind
of the street cred. He'll probably be running a baseball team. But
there are plenty of people who fit that description. If you put
Bill James on top of a big league team no one would listen to him.
In addition, there is this whole business of how you trade. This
guy Billy Beane is a born Wall Street trader. I have seen this.
I worked at Salomon Brothers; I worked on Wall Street. If Billy
Beane has been at Salomon Brothers he would be a managing partner.
He is excellent at walking into a jungle, seeing the opportunities
and seeing the threats, and adapting accordingly. He has wonderful
antennae. He knows what you want and he is going to give it to you.
RB: Those times you mention when he is calling
[Mets GM] Steve Phillips are hilarious—with him joking and
talking to his Phillips' secretary.
ML: [both laugh] It's very funny. The way he insinuates
himself into the minds of other general mangers was fun to watch.
This is something you can't teach. So, that's the art.
RB: It was impressive that even if he is not looking
to make a trade he involves himself in all the talks and he is very
aware that something might shake loose. He doesn't wait until an
urgent need appears.
 ML:
He needs the market information. He is always trying to find who
might be shaken loose. Here's an example. He wanted a pitcher from
the Yankees, Ted Lilly, who fit the A's profile. He was cheap and
going to be cheap for a while. He was in the beginning of his major
league career. He was not flashy, didn't throw real hard. But he
was very effective in the way they measured pitchers. He found out
because he had been constantly rapping with other GMs that the Detroit
Tigers were willing to part with their fireballer Jeff Weaver. He
had no interest in Weaver. He would cost him ten times what Lilly
would cost him. Everybody knew that Weaver was good. He knew that
the Yankees would like Weaver. So he baits his hook with Weaver
and goes to the Yankees organization and by the time he is done
he got Weaver as a Yankee and Billy has Ted Lilly plus 600 grand
from the Tigers, in his pocket. And if the Tigers and the Yankees
stepped back and asked why was Billy Beane in this at all. This
was really a trade between the Tigers and the Yankees; there is
no particular reason except that he made it happen. So for that
to happen you have to be relentless and you have to be very good
at acquiring market information.
RB: The information that you relay in the book
implies an impressive and almost intimate kind of access.
ML: I think it is a credit to him the way he handled
this. I got in to his offices on the pretext of writing a piece
for the New York Times Magazine, and that would have implied
a much shorter-term commitment from him. After a few weeks it was
clear that it was just a wonderful story. How many original stories
about baseball are there? One after the other books about nostalgia.
Something very interesting and innovative was happening in baseball
and it was right here in that office. And I was particularly equipped
to see it because so much of it came out of Wall Street. So many
natural analogies with Wall Street —and I had that background.
He knew that. He didn't particularly want a book written about him.
In fact, he was resistant at first. He knew how enthusiastic I was.
He knew I understood the spirit of it and he just said, "Look,
you’re invested. I don't mind having you around. Don't make
yourself too much of a nuisance. And just tell me what you need
to see." I wanted to be a fly on the wall and he let me. He
never once said, “Don't put that on” or “I want
to see what you are going to write.” Or any of that stuff.
And then the book comes out and he is paying a price. He got a lot
of grief in the sports press for letting me in. But it will pass.
He has a lot of guts to let it happen, deal with the fallout and
move on.
RB: Well, this is clearly a book that even if
you are not a baseball person is readable and enjoyable. Janet Maslin
[in the NYT] who may never have been to a ballgame made
that the thrust of her review.
| It's
knuckle-headed stuff. The sports world is an echo chamber.
All it takes is one quote from a general manager and a thousand
sports columns bloom. |
ML: [laughs]
RB: Certainly a few lines in her review give you
that impression. You're right, there aren't very many original baseball
stories.
ML: I think that's why he let me in. He understood
that I thought of it that way. I thought of it as anybody who wants
to see someone walk into a hidebound world and think about the problems
differently that's the story and it could happen in any walk of
life—the trials and tribulations of originality. He saw that
and he participated in the spirit of the thing.
RB: What is the criticism from the sports press?
ML: It's easy to summarize. First he was indiscreet.
And this is weird coming from reporters.
RB: Right. He was indiscreet to you, not to them.
ML: Yeah, that's right, so that's a silly one.
What happens is the way they write that is, they get Steve Phillips
from the Mets to say, "Books like this are bad ideas."
"It's going to hurt Billy." "This is bad for Billy."
"Billy was stupid to do this."
RB: What reasons are given?
ML: Then they go, "Why would he do this?"
And it's because he is arrogant or has a big ego and wants that
ego fed. I know the guy better than those guys do and I know, yes,
he has a big ego, but this isn't the way it gets fed. It gets fed
when he wins. So, they mistake his motive. It's more complicated.
In fact, if his name was never in the newspapers again for the rest
of his life he'd be happy—as long as he was winning. [chuckles]
And then what they do is, “Oh this guy has the arrogance to
have book written about him.” They don't actually read the
book. What they do is say, "It’s Billy Beane's book."
As if he wrote the book. In it he is set up to be the smartest general
manager in the game. "Well, who is this guy to say he is the
smartest general manager? He's never won a World Series." It's
knuckle-headed stuff. The sports world is an echo chamber. All it
takes is one quote from a general manager and a thousand sports
columns bloom. So that's the nature of the grief. That's transitory.
There is nothing real about it.
RB: When I talked to Roger Angell, he did say
that the baseball people don't want anyone to shine any light in
the darkness of baseball.
ML: [both laugh]
RB: This nostalgia-mongering Field of Dreams
stuff is bullshit especially in the face of the baseball business
marketing everything from luxury suites to who knows what in the
world.
ML: Very cynical. The sentimentality of baseball
is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one
sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons. What do you do when
you have a boy or a girl? You throw a ball with them. And you take
them to a ball game. Football and basketball is not quite that way.
We learn baseball from our parents, from our fathers. And people
get very emotional. I think that's what is going on when people
get caught up in the sentiment of the game. It's their personal
memories of childhood.
RB: Let me ask you what I asked Roger Angell,
"Is baseball still the national past time?"
ML: I think it's too complicated a society to
have a national past time. I don't think there is a national past
time. Watching TV is a national past time. Really. If there is a
national past time it is watching TV.
RB: A national waste of time.
ML: Watching TV and eating.
RB: And…shopping.
ML: So baseball is well behind all of those things.
As a sport it is obviously not as popular as football is now. It
certainly doesn't hit the highs of football even basketball. There
are a162 bloody games for each team each season. There is a steadiness
about it that is —it's in better shape now than it has been
many times in its past. There have been periods in its history where
the stands have been empty. I don't think it's in any kind of crisis
but it should be in a more of a crisis than it is, given how badly
it is run. When you ask the question, "How's baseball doing?"
The first thing I think to look at is how is little league doing.
That kind of thing. I think they are doing pretty well.
RB: There is a concern about getting kids in —what's
the euphemism?—urban areas.
ML: [laughs]
RB: To play baseball.
ML: Yeah poor black kids don't think, "I'm
going to be a baseball player." There's lots of reasons for
that. The first is that all you need is a ball, a hoop and crummy
piece of asphalt to start developing into a basketball player. Baseball
requires a social infrastructure. In a way that basketball doesn't.
That explains that, partly. But Michael Jordan wanted to be a baseball
player. [laughs]
RB: Will the next big step be the internationalization,
that there will be a major American league in Japan? Play in the
Caribbean basin beyond a few games in San Juan?
ML: Until they invent a faster method of air travel,
the idea of routinely flying to Japan for games would be just be
too much. It is happening. The Minnesota Twins very cleverly figured
out that Australia has a pretty thriving baseball culture now. And
they have picked up a lot of pretty cheap talent by going there
in the way that teams went to the Dominican Republic twenty years
ago. The Europeans don't have any particular interest in the game
and they have a substitute, the English do in cricket and in the
Asian subcontinent that's true too. I do think there is a future
in—you can see this in the Olympics—in international
competition. And how that manifests itself I don't know. It would
make complete sense if Major League Baseball could find a city that
could sustain it to put a team in Latin America somewhere.
RB: Havana
 ML:
Really that's not hard to see. Cuba becomes a democracy. Havana
is a natural place to put it.
RB: How are the A's doing this year?
ML: They are doing well. The A's have the second
or third best record depending on what the Yankees did last night.
But they would be in the playoffs right now if the season ended.
For them that is extraordinary because all they try to do, all they
hope to do is struggle into the All Star break at .500. —
what Billy Beane does is start buying players on the cheap in the
middle of the season. They will be a different team at the back
end than the front end.
RB: And what about poor Art Howe [New York Mets
manager]?
ML: He's not doing so well. He's doing well only
in one way.
RB: He can't be blamed.
ML: No one can blame him for it but they do. The
real way he is doing well is that he got a big contract. He got
a 10-million-dollar contract or something.
RB: He shouldn't have gotten the credit in Oakland
and he shouldn't get the blame in New York.
ML: That's absolutely right.
RB: Which is one of your theses—that middle
managers aren't really affecting the game anymore.
ML: I don't think anyone could have done anything
with that organization. What they need is new front office management.
RB: That would be why Steve Phillips is…
ML: Upset. He's probably going to lose his job.
[Steve Phillips was. before we posted this, fired by the New York
Mets] Why shouldn't he be upset? The thing is that there is a difference
between an environment in which people are saying, "Aw, things
aren't going so well with the Mets and they have had some bad breaks
and all those guys on the DL, poor Steve Phillips" to an environment
in which, here is how you run a baseball team. A fine point has
been put on his predicament, so no wonder he is upset. If they clean
house and they fire Art, they have to pay him ten million dollars.
He has to be happy about that.
RB: This weekend’s deal with Shea Hillenbrand
going to Arizona and Byung-Hyun Kim coming here seems like it makes
sense for Arizona but is a high risk for the Red Sox.
ML: Hillenbrand is the classic player who Billy
Beane would trade. The reason is that he has the attributes that
the market values highly. But when it comes to his actual contribution
to the offense it's not as important. He has r.b.i.s and a pretty
good batting average and hits with some power. He has poor plate
discipline. He doesn't walk a lot, so his on-base percentage is
not so great. That's the most important thing when you look at how
runs are created.
RB: And traditionally he performs worse in the
second half of the season.
ML: I didn't know that. When Bill James was hired
by Boston one of the first things he was asked to do was answer
this question—which my book deals with—can plate discipline
be learned at the major league level? If a guy like Shea Hillenbrand,
a young guy has no plate discipline, will he develop it? Any chance?
James went and did a study. It was easy. He said basically, "No."
The A's have answered this more fundamentally. They think you can't
even teach it at the minor league level. This is something that
it is almost an innate trait in a hitter. The minute they got that
answer they sort of thought they want all their hitters to have
this quality. He [Hillenbrand] is not going to have it. Other people
think he is worth a lot. The Sox think that moving him they lose
very little on the offense. And that Kim is a really good pitcher.
It's easy to have opinions about ballplayers, harder to test them
against the evidence. Let's see how he does. They are wheeling him
out as a starter aren't they? That's interesting.
RB: Yeah, in Pittsburgh.
ML: He was pretty great as a closer for the Diamondbacks
except in that World Series.
RB: Sure out in the benign precincts of baseball
in the Sonora Desert. Now he is in Boston, which is a shark pool.
ML: Well, that's another issue. Does it change
your performance …maybe one thing he has going, does he read
English? If he can't read the newspapers…
RB: 'Boo' is international.
ML: [laughs]
RB: And bum. [laughs] The bad vibes are palpable
at Fenway Park when they don't like a player.
ML: Is it possible that part of the Boston Red
Sox problem is its fans?
RB: Yes. New England is an evil place. Starting
with those so-called seekers of religious freedom and it hasn't
let up. Unforgiving and mean spirited.
ML: And you live here.
The
sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American
baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from
fathers to sons. |
RB: And I live here. I grew up in Chicago, but
to quote Johnny Guitar, "I'm a stranger here myself."
ML: I think that fans are always looking for someone
to blame. Wouldn't it be nice if they looked in the mirror? Because
baseball is a game of failure, if you treat it like football you
are going to get bad results. Even great, well-performing guys are
going to have bad stretches. It does not help them in those bad
stretches to tell them that they suck. You make a head case out
of them. And why the fans do that here—I mean you can explain.
I can't. If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely
that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was
those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then
the media around it.
RB: Last year one of the sports writers called
Jose Offerman, "a piece of junk or garbage." And then
came back a few weeks later and did it again.
ML: That's awful. In addition the game is hard
to play. It's hard to play.
RB: The American fan …the people who go
shirtless in 10-degree temperatures with painted faces…
ML: [laughs]
RB: …who can't play any game at all. Where
does that come from?
ML: People get on TV for looking like that, so
they look like that.
RB: Talking about creating head cases, can you
imagine what Pedro Martinez may think when has one bad outing every…
ML: Twenty years. That's out of control. I would
think that the sophisticated way to respond to a bad outing, a guy
struggling is to cheer him. Because that's when he needs to be lifted
up. That's when you as a fan can do some good. And when a guy like
Pedro Martinez, who is maybe one of the best pitchers to ever pitch,
has a bad outing, you acknowledge that this is one time…
RB: Okay, let's say the Red Sox actually won a
World Series?
ML: What would these people do?
RB: And what would actually accrue to them? What
would they have?
ML: [both laugh] Well they would lose something.
Clearly a lot of the meaning of their lives is premised being able
to blame the Red Sox for what ails them. The Red Sox are the local
scapegoats. It's hard enough to play baseball without being the
local scapegoat too.
RB: Any sense of the reception of Moneyball
beyond the sports press?
ML: It's hard to know at this point. It hit the
bestseller list, so you know it's out there. I've had two interesting
institutional responses outside of baseball. One is from the NFL.
I gave speech in New York a week before last and someone from the
Commissioner's office came and he said this thing is spreading in
the NFL. Bill Parcells is giving it out to the Dallas Cowboy's organization.
Some guy I never heard of who is the GM of the New York Giants is
handing it out to his scouts. I thought, "That's extraordinary."
Because the NFL is actually well run. The guy was saying, "The
descriptions that you have in the book of the discussions between
the scouts and the GM, that was something that died in the NFL thirty
years ago. We have become more rigorous the way we think about amateur
players and baseball is way behind. The spirit of enterprise is
clearly alive in the NFL. People are still looking for a way to
get an edge.” The other interesting institutional response
has been from Wall Street. The lead investment strategist for Credit
Suisse/First Boston, the investment bank, devoted his whole research
report a week or two ago to this book. The gist of it was if you
want to know how to manage money the Oakland A's are a good example—if
you want to look at allocation of resources and how you think about
it.
RB: I thought what you did was to bring your Wall
Street experience to bear on the baseball management tactics. So
it's come full circle.
ML: It's going back into Wall Street. Very funny.
It's gotten around Wall Street in this way. I would expect there
is one other natural institutional response and it's from anybody
who is in a business where the employees are talent with a capitol
T. Hollywood, music, publishing and just how you manage people who
are prima donnas. And how you think about how bad is it if you lose
one guy or one band or one star or actor? Do you actually have to
lay out all this money up front?
RB: Well, the answer probably should be no in
book publishing. As far as I know the mega advances don't pay out.
ML: Absolutely right.
RB: I'm told the big authors are loss leaders.
ML: Yeah, I don't know. The movie stars, why pay
twenty million dollars to Harrison Ford? I don't even understand
that. They think they have to do it. The broad spirit of what the
A's do is say, "Nobody is irreplaceable." It's all a team.
If someone puts a price on himself that suggests he is irreplaceable,
then he better find somewhere else to work.
RB: Football seems to have good access and make
use of the parametrics. Understanding the personnel for a third-down
play and so forth.
ML: You see baseball —endlessly in the dugouts—[guys
like] Tony Larussa numbers crunching and making little notes. What
baseball does is use statistics badly. So there this guy is 1 for
6 against this pitcher. But 1 for 6 is just six examples. It’s
statistically insignificant.
RB: Especially if you don't consider other variables.
 ML:
Maybe he hit six screaming line drives and five of them were caught?
There has been this—and it's reflected in the broadcasts—this
moronic use of statistics. Which has suggested to everyone who is
intelligent the use of statistics is moronic. There is a whole other
way to approach this where it isn't so moronic. That's what drove
Bill James out of his business. He couldn't believe the way people
misunderstood what he was trying to say.
RB: How widely did you talk to baseball people
outside the A's organization?
ML: I spent a lot more time with other baseball
people than Moneyball indicates. I had to get perspective.
I spent time in Toronto with the Blue Jays. I spent some time here
in Boston with the Red Sox owner, Theo Epstein, Larry Lucchino.
Some time in Texas with people in the Rangers organization. I talked
to people in the Seattle organization and scouts from the Mets and
the Astros and I spent some time talking to the Cleveland GM Mark
Shapiro. I got around a lot. Enough to know that what I was seeing
was indeed unusual and special. That's what I needed to know.
RB: Were the others as open as Beane was?
ML: It depended on the circumstance. There were
few cases where people said, "Can we have an off-the-record
conversation?" Most of the time it was on the record. A lot
of it I just didn't have use for. There is some wonderful material
that ended up on the cutting-room floor because the story is a very
focused story. There wasn't room to go into digressions with the
Red Sox and the Blue Jays.
RB: What happened to the bad-bodied catcher from
Alabama that you mentioned in the book?
ML: Jeremy Brown started his life in rookie ball
in Vancouver. Was bounced very quickly to the high Single A team
because he was successful and so successful there that Billy Beane
had him to the big league Spring training camp and he made it to
last the cut before they sent him down. They sent him to Double
A. Two kids they drafted in 2002 have gotten as far as Double A,
he is one of them. The other one is Steve Stanley who was so small
that when he got to the Single A team they didn't have a uniform
that fit him and he had to use the batboy's uniform.
RB: [laughs]
ML: And the two guys whose bodies were considered
by the scouts to be the least well suited to play pro baseball are
moving the fastest through the organization. Brown got off to a
slow start and now he is doing real well. Stanley has been doing
real well from the beginning. The front office of the A's think
they are going to be in the Oakland Coliseum in the next few years.
They are both going to be big league baseball players.
RB: Given these two examples of scouting ineptitude
what's going to happen to the scouting part of baseball?
ML: It’s going to change but slowly. If
you want to see how—the Red Sox are a curious thing because
so much here is media driven. You can't go fire half your scouts
here because they are all friends with the local reporters. Your
life is going to hell in the papers. In Toronto JP Ricciardi went
in and identified what he called malpractice in the scouting department.
The scouts had been on the record about the players in other minor
league organizations. And he looked through and just laughed. Eric
Hinske, who was their rookie of the year last year, half their scouts
said he wasn't even a minor league player. He went and fired twenty
something scouts. You still need scouts, but they need to do something
different than what they do. They need to have some understanding
of how the numbers work. They need to gather statistics and they
need to get to know the kids. That's what they don't do. They kind
of stare and take the radar gun out and they keep their distance.
You need almost journalists out there. I think that's the way it's
going to go.
RB: How long do you with a book before you move
on to the next project?
ML: It depends how well it does.
RB: I had the sense that all your books have done
well.
ML: I've had one that didn't make the bestseller
list. And a couple that came and went. In this case, five and a
half weeks. And after that there are basically constant demands—if
I wanted to be on the road for four months doing media, I could
do that. I can't do that. It would drive me crazy. I'll stop after
five and a half weeks and I will give the publisher two or three
day windows. A little bit of a mopping-up operation. And then I'll
be done. And then I will try to ignore it, all requests for interviews
and get on with my life. Book tours are almost designed to beat
out of an author any affection he has for his book.
RB: [laughs]
ML: By the end of it you are just sick of it.
And you really don't want to be that way about it. So you have to
cut it short. But there will be a paperback. There is even talk
of a movie. So this sort of stuff lingers. As much as I complain
it is much worse if it isn't a success. It's a joy when it is a
success. And this is a particular joy because baseball is this intense
subculture that actually doesn't speak very much for the larger
culture. It sounds odd to say. People watch their games, but as
Angell said they don't want the light shined on the dark places.
The book is creating a dialogue—it's just happening —between
the larger culture and the subculture. And the larger culture is
saying, "How on earth can you run your affairs that way?"
and that's kind of fun. I get a kick out of Wall Street saying read
this to learn how to manage money. If Hollywood picks up this and
says read this to learn how to put together a movie there's real
pleasure in that.
RB: After every strike, baseball has concerns
about fan loyalty. People suggest that both parties are greedy and
out of touch. Your book certainly makes the owners guilty of not
running their business well.
I
don't think there is a national past time. Watching TV is
a national past time. Really. If there is a national past
time it is watching TV. |
ML: They are not running their business well.
As the same time what drove my interest in it is, it gives you someone
to root for. These guys are great. The Oakland clubhouse is a wonderful
place. A lot of these guys feel like rejects. They were rejects
and they feel —they can tell you how baseball screwed up.
Barry Zito can tell you that he had a workout with the San Diego
Padres when he was at USC and that he wanted to play for them. The
Padres told him that he didn't throw hard enough to pitch in the
big leagues. He throws as hard now as he threw then and he won the
Cy Young Award last year. These guys know this and they aren't over
paid and the reason they play for the A's is they are underpaid.
They are paid well but they are not paid hundreds of millions. They
are undervalued in some way. That makes them very sympathetic. They
are very well run and that side of it is refreshing. To me, that
was the story that wasn't told. Everyone knew there are greedy scoundrels
out there who were running their businesses badly but that there
was this shining example of how to do it well and that the consequences
of how the game was played were kind of wonderful. That's what made
it great to me as a story.
RB: Do you know what you want to do next?
ML: Not really. Not seriously. My judgement is
not good when I am on a book tour. I am not thinking about it that
much. What happens is I will go back home. I have a four year old
and a one year old and a wife who is now taking care of them who
is wondering where her husband is. And I will sort through what
looks like it might be fun to do. Like this started. I will go wander
around and will go see if there is a story. I will do some reporting,
see if there is a story in this or that and see if there is something
worth pursuing. It would be unlikely that I would start another
book for at least six months, maybe a year. I will do some magazine
work. There is a film script I am probably going to write. I have
many things to occupy my time until I find another book subject.
There are enough books in the world. You want to write the ones
that are good. The minute you write books because you need the income
not because you think you have a good subject, you should just stop.
There are sixty thousand books published in this country every year,
and most of them are crap. You are making someone make a serious
commitment. Not the money but the time, to sit down with a book
and enter this world. You want them to be good. You want the book
to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but
at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that
happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.
RB: You are clearly in a special position.
ML: Yes, I am very lucky.
RB: Thank you.
ML: Thank you.
____
|
Posted:
June 16, 2003
