I had to go check out Moneyball last night. The Redskins – Cowboys field goal fest didn’t hold my attention. Even the Red Sox pending collapse gets tiresome at some point. Moneyball is one of the most talked about sports books of my adult life. When the book was published in 2003, I was a senior in high school. By the time it reached mythical status, I was a freshman in college. The Michael Lewis book was the official mainstreaming of the principles behind the Bill James Baseball Handbook.
This new thought process prompted me to purchase my first Bill James Handbook in 2005. I still have it on a shelf with some of the books from my college classes.
I’m not sure I grasped how big the idea of “moneyball” really was at the time. That said, there is no way I knew I was reading a hollywood script when I picked up the Bill James Handbook.
