I have to admit that when Michael DeLuca called me earlier this year, saying he was finally going to get “Moneyball” made into a movie, I figured he must’ve been smoking the proverbial Hollywood crack pipe.
Anyone who loves baseball has read Michael Lewis’ bestseller about how Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane almost single-handedly upended the traditional way baseball evaluates athletic talent. Beane was a prized young baseball player who ended up being picked by the New York Mets in the 1980 major league draft. To the old scouts, Beane was considered a phenom because, well, he looked like a phenom. With his slim, muscular athletic physique, he ran, threw the ball and swung the bat the way great baseball players were supposed to.
But Beane was a bust. He ended up playing only 148 games in the majors, hitting a pathetic .219. So when Beane became a talent evaluator, eventually emerging as the general manager of the Oakland A’s, he spent far more time studying arcane statistics like on-base percentage than he did worrying about whether a prospect was tall or lean or chiseled. Beane’s shrewd wheeling and dealing and his embrace of the stats-driven science of sabermetrics helped the under-financed A’s become a perennial contender in the American League West. Read more. Thanks Intothegrinder. Moneyball is set to start shooting June 11th.