So, about that Moneyball thing…
Silver isn’t quite as good a storyteller as Michael Lewis, whose Frequent Flyer Hall of Fame book Moneyball offers the charming story about how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane wrestled his underfinanced baseball team into the playoffs by using advanced statistics to find undervalued players.
Lewis, however, left out the less-appealing news that Oakland had been Ground Zero of baseball’s steroids epidemic ever since Beane’s mentor Sandy Alderson had brought together Jose Cansecoand Mark McGwire in the 1980s.
