Baseball

I like to read the free weekly papers during my lunch break. Some of the writers are at least entertaining, if not entirely agreeable to me.

This week's cover story in the SF Weekly is about some controversy surrounding the book, Moneyball. It's a pretty interesting story about a new way of managing a baseball team using statistical analysis, but the magazine article mainly focuses on Joe Morgan, who is a spirited opponent of the book and its ideas.

The article spends quite a number of words painting Morgan like a total idiot, which may or may not be deserved. It smells like a revenge piece to me. But it got me thinking about the two sides of the controversy - at least as well as I could think about it without actually reading the book (yet).

The book is about using a series of mathematical techniques to place a money value on players' skills in a fashion historically more suited to valuing financial securities. It's a very scientific method, and, arguably, seems to have had some success with the Oakland A's in recent years. This is in stark contrast to the age old method of valuing people based primarily on popularity and egotistical opinion.

The part that interests me is that, although baseball is a competitive sport that places a great deal of importance on winning, it is also a game that people love for other, less quantitative reasons such as family entertainment, excitement, loyalty, etc.

It strikes me that, in these times when science and money can influence the outcomes of many sports, America is beginning to lose sight of the reasons why people play games in the first place. Is our national pastime having fun or winning at all costs? And why attempt to be entertained by sports that aren't about having fun? It seems a little like watching a stock ticker for casual enjoyment.