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.