Nerds

There's just something about those revenge of the nerds stories that's so satisfying. Especially for nerds.

I finished reading Moneyball, the book I mentioned a few weeks ago. It's pretty rare for me to whiz through a book that quickly, but this one really kept me interested. I discovered how much I can read just during my travels from place to place. I read this book almost exclusively while on public transportation or while walking.

It's a great story of the how Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A's, used statistical analysis techniques to make player choices for his team. Choices that allowed the A's, one of the poorest, lowest-payroll teams to compete on par with the richest, highest-payroll teams. A true David and Goliath story.

One would think that, given the amount of money spent in Major League Baseball, careful analysis would already be prevalent in the sport's front offices. One would be wrong.

The book uncovers the reality that baseball is more of a culture than a business in the US. The normal checks and balances for ensuring that sound decisions are made aren't present in the sport. In my estimation, this is because baseball teams don't go out of business if they make poor choices like real world enterprises do.

There is no Darwin in baseball.

Those parts of our culture that are there out of love rather than for economics, like religion and sports, are subject to gross deviations from reality since their existence is guaranteed by tradition. This book shows how this denial can be used to one's advantage just by being smart rather than loving blindly.

I love stories like that.