Last Book You Read

[Groggy]

The Golden Turkey Awards - Harry & Michael Medved. More of the same.

[Groggy]

Son of Golden Turkey Awards - Harry & Michael Medved. ibid.

The Haunted Car - R.L. Stine - An existential parable about how far humans fall short of Maslow's concept of self-actualization.

[Groggy]

A Line in the Sand: The Anglo-French Struggle for the Middle East, 1914-1948 - James Barr - A follow-up to Barr's previous book, focusing on England and France's rivalry in the post-WWI Middle East. Barr shows that the two sides, nominally allies, were constantly at each other's throats, hoping to undermine their opposite number's prestige and power in the region. The most shocking information comes in the sections on World War II: Barr documents that De Gaulle's Free French were aiding the Irgun and other Zionist terror groups against the British, at the same time the Allies were liberating France. England's encouragement of Arab nationalism in French-held Syria is explored too, albeit in less depth. An eye-opening account of imperial gamesmanship whose consequences are still being felt.

[titoli]

Read the third novel of this omnibus and it's better than the second, though probably half-a-notch worse than the first. And some politically uncorrect jokes are very effective. 7\10

[Groggy]

Not to steal your thunder but:



Anyway, that's definitely my favorite of the series. I don't think Flashman's ever been such an inveterate bastard as he is here.

[Groggy]

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Michael Lewis - Interesting as an inside look into how baseball teams are run, and how statistics subplanted traditional methods of recruitment and management. I'm still not sure how winning one extra game one year than the year before counts as a great accomplishment, reduced payroll or no. And yeah, more or less ignoring the team's three best players in the rush to prove a point smacks of bad journalism.

[drinkanddestroy]

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game - Michael Lewis - Interesting as an inside look into how baseball teams are run, and how statistics subplanted traditional methods of recruitment and management. I'm still not sure how winning one extra game one year than the year before counts as a great accomplishment, reduced payroll or no. And yeah, more or less ignoring the team's three best players in the rush to prove a point smacks of bad journalism.

There are lots of points you can quibble on; ignoring Hudson, Mulder, and Zito is perhaps the most egregious (and the most cited) one! But this is simply a fascinating book; and you can only truly appreciate it if you had been a long-time serious baseball fan before reading it. It is, in a word, heresy. Baseball is one of the holiest of American institutions, and here this guy is saying that some of its most revered statistics are bullshit -- and converting everyone!

I recently hard of a book that is meant to challenge Moneyball, it's called "The Beauty of Short Hops: How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball," by Sheldon Hirsch and Alan Hirsch. I certainly hope to read it sometime soon.

The list of criticisms of the book and Beane's approach is long. It's interesting to look back on it now. Eg. Jeremy Brown, the player who probably takes up more space in the book than any other one (no pun intended) turned out to be a nobody; 99% of baseball fans only know his name cuz of the book. But Kevin Youkilis, "the Greek god of walks," turned out to have a terrific career. The A's didn't have much success in recent years -- but then again, so many teams are now using the Moneyball approach, so it's no longer a market inefficiency.

The bottom line is that you may be able to quibble with a million and one specific points, both on the book and on Beane's approach. But for me, what's so great is the underlying idea: we have to look at results, not just intentions. Economics, statistical data. And it's great that things have changed, how people are recognizing the important stats, to judge which players truly do the most to help a team win, and to predict future performance, far more successfully. So, Moneyball has IMO been an unmitigated good, even though neglecting to mention Hudson, Mulder, and Zito is absolutely unforgivable. (I guess that Lewis can respond that the  reason the A's had those three great pitchers is because they used their statistics system to draft more successfully, so having those three pitchers actually supports the Moneyball approach rather than cast doubt on it. Nevertheless, it should have been mentioned.

 (and you should have mentioned there are no chapters about Beane's ex-wife or his daughter playing guitar )

[drinkanddestroy]

For any baseball fans, I put together a little comparison of the Cy Young Award voting from a few specific years, to illustrate how, thanks largely to the Moneyball approach, voters are now focusing on a pitcher's actual performance, rather than the nonsensical Wins-Losses stat they used to be obsessed with just a few years ago despite the fact that wins-losses probably the statistic that the pitcher has the LEAST control over!)

Here are the voting results and statistics of the 2004 National Cy Young Award http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_2004.shtml#NLcya

Roger Clemens beat Randy Johnson for the award, despite Johnson having a year that was light years better than Clemens's. Clemens had a very good year, but not nearly as good as Johnson's. But Clemens went 18-4 and beat Johnson for the award; Johnson's record was only 16-14; it's amazing that he was able to win as many as 16 games, on a team that went 51-111, one of the worst records in major league history! Johnson was absolutely robbed in the Cy Young voting that year.

Similarly, here are results and stats of the '05 NL Cy Young Voting http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_2005.shtml#NLcya

That year, Clemens finished 3rd in voting, though he had a far better year than the winner Chris Carpenter and runner-up Dontrelle Willis. However, Clemens's won-loss record was only 13-8, and Carpenter and Willis each won more than 20 games. So, no Cy Young for Clemens.


However, by 2010, the Moneyball approach had fully taken hold. Voters were now focusing on the important statistics rather than the "traditional" ones, and this was evident in the American League Cy Young voting, in which Felix Hernandez beat David Price and CC Sabathia; results and stats here http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_2010.shtml#ALcya

As you see, Hernandez's record was only 13-12; while Price and Sabathia won 19 and 21 games respectively. However, Price's  team, the Tampa Bay Rays  won 84 games, Sabathia's Yankees 95, while Hernandez's Mariners went an abysmal  61-101.  But Hernandez clearly had the better season pitching, and it was a great day when he won the award -- even though I am a Yankee fan and was rooting for Sabathia -- because it showed that voters are finally focusing on what matters.

[Groggy]

Well, certainly after reading things like this, and realizing phrenology used to be (still is?) a valid criteria for selecting baseball players:

http://firejaymariotti.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-was-moneyball-written-among-other.html

You aren't apt to defend the old system. But its original purpose - eg., to help small market teams stay competitive - has undoubtedly been subverted by the Yankees/Red Sox/etc. copying it.

Anyway, as stated before I'm a casual baseball fan at best, so my expertise is limited. Mostly I'm going to a Pirates game this weekend and want to have some trivia to bore my friends with between innings.

[cigar joe]

re-reading "The Big Nowhere" along with two other books "Rod Serling & The Twilight Zone" and "Crime Films".

[Groggy]

Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II - George Macdonald Fraser - Mr. Fraser recounts his experiences as a infantryman in the 17th Indian Division, fighting the Japanese in Burma. Not surprisingly, this work is much more sober than Fraser's fiction, being an intense grunt's-eye view of a nasty conflict. In style and attitude, it's much closer to his McAuslan stories than Flashman. Still, fans will easily recognize his ear for dialect (indiscernable Cumbrian accents abound) and eye for the absurd (battling a foot-long centipede during a mortar barrage!). Its only demerit is Fraser's compulsion to defend his generation's political and racial attitudes; the occasional use of Jap would likely have passed without comment by most, given its context. (Concededly, it's not nearly as bad as his next volume of memoirs.) Still a gripping read.

[drinkanddestroy]

Well, certainly after reading things like this, and realizing phrenology used to be (still is?) a valid criteria for selecting baseball players:

http://firejaymariotti.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-was-moneyball-written-among-other.html

You aren't apt to defend the old system. But its original purpose - eg., to help small market teams stay competitive - has undoubtedly been subverted by the Yankees/Red Sox/etc. copying it.

Anyway, as stated before I'm a casual baseball fan at best, so my expertise is limited. Mostly I'm going to a Pirates game this weekend and want to have some trivia to bore my friends with between innings.

I found that blog post to be terribly annoying to read (and I didn't make it very far). That blogger kept cutting in with his repetitious and unfunny criticisms which I found to be far less funny than the actual conversation he was transcribing. Not that I disagree with his substantive points. But he shouldn't feel the need to interrupt the narrative every two seconds with his own very unfunny lines.

And btw, his comment about Showalter choosing A-Rod's legs simply because he is a great player and then supposedly making a way too easy causation-correlation argument is unfair. I mean, it is possible that A-Rod does have great legs. I know it sounds creepy (but hey, not half as bad as the rest of that conversation); I never analyzed bis legs or anyone else's, but if A-Rod does have great legs then it's unfair for him to criticize Showalter for using A-Rod as an example; of course he is gonna use a successful player as an example! Yeah, if he's talking about who has great legs, he is gonna pick the best player who has great legs! So I find this blogger very uninteresting.

But yeah, there's no doubt that Moneyball was great for largely doing away with that sort of nonsensical thinking. As Billy Beane frequently said, we're trying to win baseball games, not sell jeans! (which reminds me, what ever happened to Jeremy Brown, the poster boy for the great-player-but-undervalued-due-to-a-terrible-body?  )

[Groggy]

The Fleet that Had to Die - Richard Hough - Concise, harrowing account of the Russian Baltic Fleet and its ill-fated voyage to Tsushima Straits in the Russo-Japanese War. Hough writes a book worthy of this strange, fascinating episode; it's certainly much better than the recent Tsar's Last Armada.

[titoli]

A good survey of some of the '50's (and '60's) lesser known (well, 20 years ago, at least) crime writers' work. Of course, only for those interested in the subject. 8\10   

[Groggy]

The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Mythmaker from the Crimea to Vietnam - Phillip Knightley - Knightley (erstwhile biographer of T.E. Lawrence and Kim Philby) provides a polemical history of war correspondents, analyzing their general failure to provide accurate reporting. In broad strokes it's an effective argument, showing how easily journalists are influenced by government pressure and personal beliefs. But Knightley is extremely inconsistent in his criticisms. He excoriates anti-Bolshevik reporters during the Russian Revolution but upholds John Reed as a paragon of integrity (!). He similarly praises Herbert Matthews' pro-Fascist writing during Italy's invasion of Abyssinia. Then when discussing the Spanish Civil War he smugly criticizes everyone for allowing bias to overcome reason. It's hard to sense what Knightley's point is with this sort of contradiction.

PS: There are more recent editions available, the last published in 2004.