Moneyball

By the time Billy became the A's general manager in 1997, he had read all 12 of Bill James' Abstacts. James had something to say to Billy specifically: You were onthe recieving end of a false idea of what makes u a successful ballplayer.

By June 4, 2002, the day of that years amateur draft, there were still big questins about baseball crying out for answers, a baseball diamond was still a field of ignorance. No ne had established the mostefficient way to use relief pitchers. Someone came to a conclusion that college players were better than high school players by a huge, huge, laughably huge margin.
Billy arrived at the Coliseum earlier than usual and took the place he had held for theprevious seven days. At dawn the room seemed more glaringly impersonal than usualits cinder block walls were the bright white of an asylum cells. The only hint pf reality outside were the four cheaply framed posters of former A's stars. Ricky Henderson, Mark McGwire, Dennis Eckersley, and Walt Weiss.
Its against Major League Baseball rules to negotiate with players before the draft, but every team does it anyway. The scouts trickile in, one by one, to report their savings. It was about an hour before the draft.

Moneyball

Billy found himself with no wife, and out of a baseball uniform. His wife moved back to San Diego with their daughter, Casey. Billy spent his weeks scouting, and his weekends driving from Oakland to San Diego, and back again. Billy couldn't afford plane tickets. His life was filled with anxieties. He now had 2 of them. One was he wouldn't know his own daughter. And the other was he wouldn't cut it in the front office. When he wasn't traveling from Oakland to San Diego, he was speeding around the whole country watching games and listening to other scouts talk about players. But what Billy hadn't lost was his need to win. He just transferred it to a different place from playing to making decisions about players. Except this time he had guidance from someone who went to not 1, but 2 ivy league schools. That man, is Sandy Alderson. Sand py once said that Billy finally figured out he wanted to be Sandy more than he wanted to be Jose Canseco. In 1993, Sandy was impressed by the way Billy attacked every task he was given, so he brought him into the front office and made Billy his assistant. Sandy told him that his job was to find undervalued minor league players.
Billy wasn't one to waste a lot of time worrying about whether he was motivated by a desire to succeed or the pursuit of truth. To his way of thinking, the question was academic, sicnce the pursuit or truth was, suddenly, the key to success.

Moneyball

Billy was changed. He was 27 now and he married his high school girlfriend. She was seven months pregnant with their first child. He felt like he was a man now. He was no longer a boy. He now had reponsibilities and no real future. He went from very promising to disappointing but could never figure out why. He blossomed into the physical shape the scouts dreamed he would be, but somehow the game had shrunk him. Some people thought he would spend the season shuttling from the bunch to Triple-A. But he did something completely different and unexpected. He went to the A's front office and asked for a job as an advance scout. An advance scout is someone who traveled ahead of the MLB team and analyzed future opponets' strengths and weaknesses. He was entering what should be the prime of an MLB players career, and decided he wanted to watch instead of play. He always said he loved playing the game, but wasn't sure if he really did. When he said that to the front office, they didn't know what to make of it. The A's general manager was mad, he said nobody just quits as a player. Nobody says i quit, i want to be an advance scout. But he hired Billy anyway. He didn't think there was much risk because he didn't think advance scouts did anything.

Moneyball

When Billy and Paul were sitting in the room with all the scouts and the draft board, 2 weeks prior to the draft, the scouts thought they were nuts for putting these un-heard of guys in some of the top spaces. One of the scouts said Billy was nuts because they couldn't field. Another said they couldn't even catch. Billy didn't care about that. All he cared about was on-base percentage and hitting. He put these guys who had great on-base percentages but terrible fielding, near the top. The scouts tried to talk him out if it. They thought he was absolutely crazy for not paying attention to the guys they think are good. But Billy and Paul knew what they didn't. They even made a catcher, who blew out his arm and hadn't played in a couple years, play first base! When Billy talked to him first about it, he said he couldn't play first base for his life! He didn't even know if his arm could throw well again. When he first tried it out, he couldn't throw at all. He had too hand the ball to the pitcher when he caught it during spring training. But Billy didn't care about fielding or anything, he just cared about hitting and on-base percentage.

Moneyball

Right now, I’m reading a book called Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It starts out about a baseball prospect named Billy Beane, and it tells the story of being a high school baseball prospect, deciding if you’re going to go to college, or become a MLB player straight out of high school. In Billy’s case, he had already committed to Stanford University on a full baseball and football scholarship. He played baseball all through out high school, but stopped playing football after his sophomore year, deciding not to risk any injuries that could affect his playing baseball. Even though he already committed, scouts still tried to talk him out of it and convince him to skip college and play in the big leagues. The scouts eventually succeeded in talking him out of it, and he was the 23^rd overall pick in the 1980 Major League Baseball Draft, taken by the New York Mets. Beane went to Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, California. Other prospects came out of there, such as Cole Hamels, who is now a starting pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. Hamels was named the MVP of the 2008 World Series. Beane obviously doesn’t go to college, but in the offseasons when he was playing, he took classes at UC San Diego, where he took economics classes. He made his MLB debut on September 13, 1984 for the New York Mets, and his last game in the big leagues was on October 1, 1989 for the Oakland Athletics.  In his 5 years of a big leaguer, he played for 4 teams. When he couldn’t make the team in 1990, he decided he wanted to be an advanced scout. He held that until 1993, when he became the Assistant General Manager. In 1998, he succeeded the General Manager and became the GM himself. He is still the GM now.

The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan

The characters are great. They are Carter and Sadie Kane, who discover something they can never change. The best thing is, there is no boring bits! I think you might like the book because if you like egyptian mythology, you will love this book. Rick has made a second book in the series called The Throne of Fire. The series is called The Kane Chronicles.  I have read a lot of other books written by Rick. I have read the whole series of the Percy Jackson Series, which is 5 books. The first one is called The Lightning Thief, the second one is The Sea of Monsters, the third is The Titan’s Curse, the fourth is The Battle of the Labyrinth, and the fifth is The Last Olympian. He is also making another series, in which 2 books have already been created. The first is called The Lost Hero, and the second is The Son of Neptune. I picked this book up because I love Rick Riordan as an author. I first got started in Rick’s books when I saw something at Borders, and it looked like a weird cover, but yet a good book. I read the back cover, and the instant after I finished reading the back cover, I knew this was the book I wanted to read. I read it, and turns out there was a second one, then a third one, then a fourth one, and by then I knew he couldn’t make much more than 5. So then I figured out that there was a fifth one, and the series ended at the end of the fifth book. The Lightning Thief has also been made into a movie.