February 01, 2005

The Anti-"Moneyball"

There’s a new baseball book coming out in a couple of months that at first glance sounds relatively innocuous, but once you read the promotional materials, it’s not hard to imagine that it’ll become super-controversial.

It’s called “Three Days in August,” and it’s written by H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger, who authored the modern sports classic “Friday Night Lights.” Comprising an in-depth look at a three-game series between the Cardinals and Cubs, the book seems to be billed as the anti-“Moneyball.” At least, that’s what the book jacket makes it sound like:

Three Nights in August shows thrillingly that human nature — not statistics — dictates ballgames" outcomes…for all his intellectual attainments, [Cards manager Tony LaRussa is] also an antidote to the number-crunching mentality that has become so modish in baseball. As this book proves, he has built his success on the conviction that ballgames are won not by the numbers but by the hearts and minds of those who play.
Wow. If you’re a “Moneyball” person, you probably had a heart attack just reading that.

Yes, there is room in the world for a book providing a cogent argument that sabermetrics aren’t the be-all and end-all of everything in baseball. And perhaps LaRussa has always been silently anti-SABR and Bissinger decided to pump up that angle, knowing how successful Michael Lewis’ book was. But why do I get that sense that when this book is released in April, every single baseball blogger will treat it the way the conservative bloggers treated Dan Rather’s bogus documents? It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy who wrote the book jacket copy is out of a job by May.

Posted by Stephen Silver at February 1, 2005 09:55 PM
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