Book Description
Freakonomics meets Moneyball in this provocative exposé of baseball's most fiercely debated controversies and some of its oldest, most dearly held myths—explained through the language of numbers and cool cash.
Two hot topics team up in The Baseball Economist, and the result is a refreshing, clear- eyed survey of a playing field that has changed radically in recent years. Utilizing the latest economic methods and statistical analysis, writer, economics professor, and popular blogger J. C. Bradbury dissects burning baseball topics with his original Sabernomic perspective, such as:
• Did steroids have nothing to do with the recent home run records? Incredibly, Bradbury's research, reviewed by Stanford economists, reveals steroids had little statistical significance.
• Is the big-city versus small-city competition really lopsided? Bradbury shows why the Marlins and Indians are likely to dominate big-city franchises in the coming years.
• Which players are ridiculously overvalued? Bradbury lists all players by team with their revenue value to the team listed in dollars—including a dishonor role of those players with negative values.
• Is major league baseball a monopoly that can't govern itself? Bradbury sets out what rules the owners really need to play by, and what the players' union should be doing.
• Does it help to lobby for balls and strikes? How would Babe Ruth perform in today's game? And who killed all the left-handed catchers, anyway? The Baseball Economist knows.
Providing far more than a mere collection of numbers, Bradbury shines the light of his economic thinking on baseball, exposing the power of tradeoffs, competition, and incentives. Statistics alone aren't enough anymore. Fans, fantasy buffs, and players, as well as coaches at all levels who want to grasp what is really happening on the field today and in the coming years, will use and enjoy Bradbury's brilliant new understanding of the national pastime.
Customer Reviews:
Inquiring Minds Wander from This Book.......2007-08-26
I work with economic theorists all the time, but I am not going to tell you this is a good book. Pieces of it are. Bradbury dwells on the steriods issue, prattling on and on about the lack of evidence. Yet, no where does he accept the challenge of studying the relative performances of the individuals to determine the effect of steriods. Rather, he just says it has never been proven. He even blurs the distinction of taking steriods for performance reasons vs. health reasons (and he never considers the differences in the steriods themselves!)
Some of his economic observations are interesting, those where he really studies the game and statistics. I, for one, can find other, more rewarding but boring books to give me a Saturday afternoon snooze. And Bradbury should stick to his statistical analysis of the game (where he excels), not the policy points (where he only debates under the ruse of economic theories).
Didn't care for the book.......2007-08-14
I'm a rabid baseball fan and have read most of the sabermetrics books and have enjoyed most of them. I bought and read all the Elias Baseball Analysts books (if you have to ask you're not a hard core fan) in the series. That said, I didn't care for the subjects or writing in this book. The books needs more punch to make it enjoyable and interesting. I got through the first couple of chapters, then rapidly skimmed parts of the rest of the book.
If you thinking about buying the book for a friend don't. If I didn't care for the book, I can't imagine casual fans even going past its cover.
"Good things tend to be scarce, ...".......2007-07-01
This quote starts chapter 13, and applies to this book as well. The Baseball Economist holds its own and then some when compared to most sabermetric stats books out there. It contains an ecletic but interesting collection of subjects like Freakanomics, presented within a baseball/economic context like MoneyBall. This isn't a book specifically about the economics of baseball, it is more about how the author applies economic methods to answer certain baseball related questions.
That sounds kind of dry, but the author is a better writer than I am, so the book is quite interesting. The first section I found particularly convincing, as it applies principles of economics to identifying why the DH promotes more hit batsmen, why there are almost no lefty catchers, and the over-ratedness of the protection afforded by the on deck hitter. Latter chapters discuss how baseball differs from a true monopoly, and how this has worked to the benefit of the fans.
In the Epilogue, the author writes that he considered calling this book, "An Economist Ruins Baseball", which I'm glad he didn't. That would have done a disservice to this book. Very interesting book to the general baseball fan, and not just a number cruncher book. Probably the best baseball book I have read since MoneyBall.
An economist writes about baseball.......2007-06-02
Bradbury is an associate professor of Economics. He wrote this book with an economists' viewpoint on baseball. He may have gone too in-depths in economics for some people's taste, but being an economics major in college, I enjoyed it and re-learned a few concepts. He covers some topics that have were previously discussed by folks like Bill James, Voros McCracken, Michael Lewis and Jay Gould (and gives them due credit). Topics that were new to me that I found interesting included the effect of "protection" by the on-deck hitter, managers lobbying for balls and strikes, and the baseball monopoly.
I enjoyed this book and I recommend it to baseball fans that are not afraid of charts, numbers and economic concepts. I would be the first in line to buy his second book if Bradbury expands his economic analysis and writing into other sports.
Very interesting look at baseball from a unique perspective.......2007-04-11
Very accessible, very interesting look at baseball. Bradbury tackles both high-profile issues in baseball (steroids, spending disparity amongst teams) as well as ideas you might not have even considered. (What can we learn from trends in hit batsmen?) I recommend this book to baseball fans with an interest in learning more about the inner-workings of the game as well as economists with even a passing interest in the sport.
Amazon.com
Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.
Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe
Book Description
"One of the best baseball—and management—books out....Deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame."—Forbes
Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best book ever written on business" (Weekly Standard).
I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?
With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since Liar's Poker. Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities—his intimate and original portraits of big league ballplayers are alone worth the price of admission—but the real jackpot is a cache of numbers—numbers!—collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers and physics professors.
What these geek numbers show—no, prove—is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.
Billy paid attention to those numbers —with the second lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to—and this book records his astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. Moneyball is a roller coaster ride: before the 2002 season opens, Oakland must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players, is written off by just about everyone, and then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins.
In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win...how can we not cheer for David?
Customer Reviews:
Thorough and prescient.......2007-10-25
Not much I can add that has not already been mentioned about this revolutionary book. It does get a tad repetitive and wordy in the economic theory portions, but the fact that pro baseball teams, their scouts, and other top brass utilize Lewis and Beane's theories prove this book has merit. Moneyball is an indictment of all the socialist baseball haters who think money wins baseball games. This is clearly proven false each year, starting with the Athletics nearly a decade ago.
Moneyball.......2007-10-16
If you love baseball and have any kind of appreciation for statistics, you'll love this book.
Moneyball as antidote to stupidity.......2007-10-05
Read Michael Lewis' Moneyball before the playoffs get too far along. As Lewis quotes someone in the book "Up till I was 14 years old, everything I learned about baseball came from broadcasters. And it was all b------t!" So before Joe Morgan et al start waxing eloquently about "manufacturing runs, etc." (which means abandoning the game that got you to the playoffs), you better immunize yourself with this book. It's simply the best baseball book ever.
Amazing Insight.......2007-10-03
Provides intriguing insight into the real skills that are required by a major leaguer and those coaching decisions that do and don't make sense.
A Must for Baseball Fans.......2007-09-28
Anyone who considers themselves a die-hard baseball fan must read this book.... but you knew that already.
Book Description
Baseline Selling - How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know About the Game of Baseball, will dramatically change the way we approach the sales process, replacing the gratuitous complexity advocated by today's sales "experts" with an elegant and very effective simplicity. Studies have shown that the selling techniques of the last two decades have had very little impact on most of the sales population-less than 75 percent of all salespeople, to be exact. Why? Because of the complexity, learning curve and difficulty in applying the concepts in these systems. In response to the urgent need for a flexible, innovative process that will enable people to grasp the essential skills necessary to close a sale in any situation, Baseline Selling reemphasizes the fundamentals of selling in a fresh, memorable way that modern sales professionals can relate to and utilize, and above all, one that complements and enriches advanced sales methodologies. Salespeople who read this book and put its wisdom to work will succeed at acquiring more opportunities as they learn to get appointments more easily. They will excel at creating opportunities with prospects who are "not interested". They'll sell at higher margins by using the "Rule of Ratios". Their closing percentages will improve dramatically as they implement the simple Inoffensive Close". Salespeople selling commodities, struggling to differentiate themselves, will love "Commodity Busters" and every salesperson will be able to shorten their sell cycle by "Taking a Lead". Quite simply, Baseline Selling introduces a way for salespeople to visualize and touch all the "sales bases" without over-complicating the process.
Customer Reviews:
Best Selling Process.......2007-09-27
I have been selling for 20 years, and have been exposed to a very large number of selling systems. The vast majority of selling systems are extremely complex, and difficult to remember. Baseline Selling includes all of the vital direction of the more complicated systems, without being complicated. I have read the book 5 times, and use it for training new salespeople. You lose nothing and gain everything by switching from S.P.I.N., Customer Centric, or Solution Selling to Baseline Selling. Great work Dave!
Straight-forward, universal strategy for tracking the sale!.......2007-09-13
Kurlan has created a universally adaptable flow allowing a fill-in-the-blanks mentality for tracking the sale of ANY product or service REGARDLESS OF the length of THE SALES CYCLE, COMPLEXITY of the decision hierarchy or DEPTH of the decision team! It works whether you use his easy-to-execute tactics or your own!
Must have for anyone looking to succeed in sales!.......2007-08-31
This book does a very good job of simplifying the sales process to one in which if you follow the steps...you will close the sale. A must have, it is always in my briefcase. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to succeed in sales. This book really "covers the bases"!!
A must read for sales people.......2007-06-12
A must for anyone that is in sales! The method Dave teaches is excellent and allows you to learn a different style that will produce great results.
First Time Sales Manager.......2007-06-12
At one time in my company I was the only sales person. As the company has grown so have my sales management responsibilities. I now have a team of sales people that I have never managed before this time. My sales coach - John Moore told me to read Baseline Selling and it has really helped me and my team. My thanks to John Moore and Dave Kurlan.
Book Description
Diamond Dollars is a fresh, provocative, insightful, and analytical look at the business of baseball. Using the win-revenue relationship as a foundation, author Vince Gennaro delves deeply to explain how a team’s level of competitiveness impacts the “value” of its players, to explore how a well-developed farm system contributes to a team’s economic value, and to discuss some recent business trends, such as team-owned regional sports television networks.
In doing so, Gennaro answers a number of questions that speak to baseball’s bottom line. How does winning affect revenues for each team? What is a player’s economic value to his team? Why does a berth in the postseason have great economic value? What is the economic value of a productive farm system? Does competitive balance exist in baseball today? He also examines the differences in small-market and large-market teams, discussing how economic and revenue opportunities vary, and highlighting the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox and their methods.
The book Moneyball was a breakthrough for baseball because it unveiled inefficiences in the way talent was evaluated. In a similar fashion, Diamond Dollars addresses the inefficiency in the way players are compensated and delivers an unparalleled inside look at the economics of baseball today.
A publication of Maple Street Press, distributed by Potomac Books, Inc.
Customer Reviews:
Just Like Advertised.......2007-10-10
I received the book in brand new condition and it was actually mailed to me way before the expected date!
Heavy Duty Baseball Explanations.......2007-08-27
The most confusing, yet insightfull baseball book I've read. Now I know why teams make the decisions and player moves they make. They MUST. Baseball is a business and this book explains why.
Very good, but not for everyone.......2007-08-18
This is a very interesting book that I enjoyed, but there are certainly caveats to those who may be interested in reading this. This book isn't for everyone and there are a couple of recommended prerequisites from my vantage point.
For one, if you're just a casual baseball fan, this book is not for you. It goes into a lot of detail about the business side of baseball and on all levels, and many times I thought to myself that if I didn't know the game and players as I do, I'd probably be lost. It helped me greatly that I have played and coached in addition to having been a serious fan for many years.
Second, it doesn't hurt to understand a little about the business side of anything, as this book is very business-oriented. If you have no business intuition at all, the material in this book will just fly over your head. You don't have to be a Fortune 500 CEO, but at least know a little about how businesses are run and some of the terminology.
In short, while a very good book, it's not light reading and not for everyone. Officials of baseball teams are a primary audience, and this is a must-read for such people. If you're a baseball fan and know a little about business, you'll enjoy it, although even then there will be parts that aren't easy to digest. Early on, I had a little trouble keeping up with all the information being thrown at me, from pure numbers to other facts, and it's almost too much right away. But once I got past that, the rest of the book came much more easily for me.
Must- buy for baseball guys.......2007-05-13
Best baseball book for real baseball guys since George Will's "Men at Work."
Hot like yellowcake.......2007-04-21
I'm a big Mets' fan living in LA and found this to be a great read. The author gets into some pretty interesting ways for Major league teams to run their business. He talks about a way to put a dollar value on players that I hadn't seen before, since most methods use comparables for what similar players are paid in the free agent market, but this book talks about how much a player is worth to different teams at different level of competitiveness. He shows that the Carlos Beltran signing (which so many experts were criticizing) really paid off financially for the Mets in 2006. There's a lot more to the book than player value, but that was the highlight for me.
Book Description
An inspirational real world practical handbook for nayone seeking a career in the highly lucrative field of voice-over acting.
Customer Reviews:
Genius!!.......2007-07-26
Like a good song that make you get up and move, this book is pure inspiration! The stories are told in a way that gives you the experience of discovering the truth of your own heart. I appreciate the contributors' honest accounts of their setbacks, and discomforts. I also wanted to know what the professionals learned on their way to reaching the pinnacle of their success. Most of all, it delivers a powerful message of having the nerve to turn out the odds. It stimulated my conscience in a way that even my understanding of passion elevated to another level.
Even though I'm not a voice over actor, I'm still an actor who audition on a regular basis. The principles are the same and I've had to refer to the lessons more than a few times. Needless to say, this book has served me very well. I applied the lessons to my line of work and have gotten amazing results.
It is your soul that will find food here. Unless you put the suggestions to practice, the secrets will pass you by leaving you once again with frustration and doubt. In other words, this book will point you into the direction of your hearts' desire. If you follow your heart, "Secrets" will find and move you in some way. Only when ready to receive new information will your thirst for knowledge and a new point of view expand. After reading, I asked myself, do I dare? The stories in this book tells me the answer is a question of courage and effort; a question of desire. We either love/enjoy our labor or not. It's for each us to decide.
Certainly, you'll get a second wind after reading this gem of a book called, Secrets of Voice Over Success.
Joan:
You and the other contributors' courage have encouraged me. If just one soul is empowered, that's valid enough. And, you've even managed to find a creative way to enlarge the vision of humanity by contributing to a good cause such as the Alzheimer's Association. Bravo!!! Your work is a perfect expression of love in action! Now suddenly the impossible seems possible!
A Bible for VO artists.......2007-07-23
This book does what no other VO book has. It puts aspiring VO talent into the world of successful VO talent. Every other book I've looked at is a technical guide...dry and dull. Training is important and I've had my share but this book answers all the FAQ's the other books miss. If you want to make a living at VO this is a must have.
GREAT INSIGHTS FROM SUCCESSFUL VO PROS!.......2007-07-21
One of the most common question questions I hear in the Los Angeles voice over world is how did the big guns get to the top. Well, this book uses standardized interview questions to 19 of the top vo talent in the U.S., Joan herself being one of them. You couldn't wish for a better one on one interview with each one.
Everyone interviewed certainly had distinct things to say, but some common threads were "just fell into it", battled racism on the way and hard work and persistence really pays off.
A note to the wise: if you're in this business for quick profit forget about it. This career path has alot of competition, and only those with stamina and passion for voice work will stand the test of time and make a full-time living at it.
The Alzheimer aspect was valuable in today's society where it is estimated that in the coming decades, unless something is done, millions of the aging group of Americans will succumb to this heart-wrenching disease. Go Joan!!
Tansy Alexander
Inspiration is sometimes all that's needed.......2007-06-29
I'm just flummoxed by a previous review of Joan Baker's "Secrets of Voice-Over Success". Ms. Baker is deemed by the reviewer to be irrelevant, obvious and out of date because she neglects to deconstruct the semiotics of the latest manifestations of an ever-changing gamut of voiceover styles. Whazzat? Pretty heavy, I guess, but these quibbles convey nothing of the wonderful and inspiring book I read. What could be more relevant and uplifting than the tales these voice artists relate as to how they reached the high level of success they enjoy today. These are top people, engaging in national level campaigns right now. Their voices are supposed to be irrelevant? I don't think so.
For a newcomer to voiceover like myself it's so encouraging to learn how others overcame pitfalls and obstacles to make it in our chosen field. Joan Baker's nifty volume is like a pat on the back and a helping hand along the way. Kudos to Joan and to all the artists who so generously gave of their time and experience to help make this marvelous book a reality. And what more wonderful theme to tie the volume together than touching on the effects of Alzheimer's on the lives of so many of us? Something tells me that one day, when we've reached the other side of the River Jordan, we'll be surprised to learn just how much good this book will have done to help those poor souls afflicted with Alzheimer's.
Secrets is a gold mine!.......2007-06-26
I orginally met the author Joan Baker at her Learning Annex workshop called "Make Millions With Your Voice" where I was very very impressed but after just finishing her book and meeting more than half the people in the book at her workshop-Iam overwhelmed with inspiration!
Thank you Joan Baker and the Vo Artist's in Secrets for moving me forward in my vo career that I've been navigating for the past 6 years. Thank you!
I would recommend this book to anyone seeking solutions in the Vo industry.
Book Description
Inside the Minds: The Sports Business is an authoritative, insider's perspective on the ins and outs of this dynamic industry and the strategic thinking behind leading an elite athletic workforce. Featuring senior management from the nation's premier teams and leagues, this book provides a broad, yet comprehensive overview of the current shape and future state of professional sports. As they raise critical points around running a business under intense public scrutiny, these authorities offer practical and adaptable strategies for building a strong fan-base and profiting year after year. From revenue and salary management, to player acquisitions and negotiations, these leaders articulate the finer points of an industry driven by talent and fueled by the desire for success. The different niches represented and the breadth of perspectives presented enable readers to get inside some of the great strategic minds of today, as experts explore in detail, what it takes to build and sustain the organizations that win championships.
Customer Reviews:
Very Good Shape.......2006-03-15
The book was brand new and came in earlier than expected couldn't have asked for anything better!!!
Amazon.com
"The great majority of people are more rational and make fewer mistakes in promoting their own interests than even well-intentioned government officials," writes this impressive couple (Gary won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Economics). The short, column-length essays that make up this volume first appeared in Business Week magazine and show for a popular audience how market incentives influence human behavior in countless ways. The Beckers criticize centralized planning, racial quotas and trade tariffs, and endorse drug legalization, privatized social security and school vouchers. They also veer into unexpected terrain, addressing religion, sports and marriage with keen insight.
Book Description
From economics Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and historian Guity Nashat Becker comes this collection of the economist's popular BusinessWeek columns. These 138 essays have fueled numerous debates, touching on hot-button issues from crime to organization of sports. The Beckers' surprising--and uncompromising--positions on drugs ("legalize them"), immigration ("auction off immigration slots"), welfare ("curtail it sharply"), and other topics provide a provocative commentary on our times.
Customer Reviews:
Easy to read everyday economics.......2007-05-18
Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker published this collection of articles in the mid1990s. Even if dated, the book is a high-quality and straightforward way to understand basic economics and apply economic theory and principles to daily life. Most of the articles are interesting, it is easy to read both in content and length, the writing is consistently fine and the analysis insightful. It also sparked the vast amount of more recent books of the same fashion like Harford's Undercover economist, Landsburg's Armchair economist, Friedman's Hidden order or Leavitt's Freakonomics. Recommended.
Very readable, very practical.......2007-01-10
This book brings economic theories down to earth. The Beckers are excellent writers and the book is easy to read because it is broken down into short segments. The book would be great as supplementary reading for a principles of economics class.
Becker's "Economics of Life".......2006-03-10
This is a great read. Although outdated, it still carries lots of potent articles from the man who mastered bringing economics to the masses. Being a collection of short articles, it sometimes leaves you wishing that Becker had gone into more detail with his arguments, though.
Dated, repetitive, superficial.......2006-01-15
I bought this book with great expectation but this book failed to meet it. The topics are wide ranging but most of the arguments are based on few assumptions such as individuals behave rationally and each person can decide what is good for them independent of family and social influences. I find these assumptions overtly simplistic and both social scientists and later economists question such assumptions. After reading this book, I could not but help wonder author's political leaning. If you want books that are incisive, understandable and readable, The Tipping point, Freakonomics are great books. To a certain extent, the wide breadth of topics itself makes it difficult to avoid repetition but in that case editors should have been more ruthless.
Good, but the columns are getting old.......2005-11-17
Based on Becker's columns in Business Week, the book is starting to suffer from the fact that the columns are dating, and that any book made up of columns is bound to get a bit repetitive and disjointed.
That said, the original columns are well-written and often provocative. It's not the best introduction to Becker's economics, which is more distinctive than this material, but it is a good read.
Book Description
What do Hall of Fame baseball managers like Connie Mack and John McGraw have in common with today's business leaders? Why are baseball managers like Joe Torre and Dusty Baker better role models for business, government, and non–profit management than respected corporate giants like Jack Welch and Bill Gates? And just what does Peter Drucker have to do with Oriole ex–manager Earl Weaver?
Management consultant, baseball writer, and columnist for InformationWeek, Computerworld, and InfoWorld, Jeff Angus shows how anyone can become a better manager by taking lessons from the leaders and nuances of the one game that is the truest test of managerial prowess. As proven by Angus' highly popular blog, Management by Baseball is a fun, story–filled guide that gives managers and anyone in business practical, actionable, understandable tools they can use to improve performance:
How do you start an organization from scratch? Take a page from baseball's 19th century origins.
How do you adapt to changing markets and social conditions? Learn from the man who invented Babe Ruth.
What are the simplest ways to turn around a weak department? Pick up Dick Williams' proven tactics.
How do you redesign corporate strategy in response to your competitors? Learn Joe Torre's secret advantage.
How do you develop emotional intelligence as a leader? Find out how Ichiro Suzuki made his transition from Japan to the Major Leagues a historic success
Customer Reviews:
A Strikeout.......2006-11-08
It seemed like a good idea - try to associate or apply the so-called management skills of baseball managers with managing in the business world. But it just does not work. Management 101 will not make a baseball manager but it might in the business world.
Managing a baseball team and a game is a very visceral enterprise that demands a lot of quick decisions with immediate consequences. Baseball managers are leaders, respected for having been through the battles themselves, not schedulers and planners. They don't break their day down into one-tenth hour segments to see how their time and their employees' time is being utilized; they don't create cross-departmental checklists. Most business managers have mandates to produce a concrete product in a specific time frame. Planning and coordination with other departments and suppliers is usually necessary. The payoff on a business world project may be months down the road - a one game series. A 67 percent winning percentage would be failure in the business world for a project. Business managers seldom have the independence that a baseball manager does to establish an entire workplace environment that fits their and their employees' personalities.
The author attempts to intersperse anecdotes that supposedly demonstrate the applicability of baseball management to the world of business. The result is as herky-jerky as the windup of a Latin pitcher. He abruptly introduces business terminology for which there seems to be limited correspondence in the baseball world. After a while, it gets old trying to keep up with the jumps between the two worlds and struggling to see the connections.
Baseball players are millionaires with guaranteed contracts and are in a union. Most people in the business world have no such security or rights. That alone makes the approach to baseball players drastically different than one to typical employees. Even successful baseball players and teams fail at least half the time, players hitting at a rate of 30 percent and teams winning at about 50 percent. And players have others throwing a ball at 90 mph at them. Presumably in the business world employees can generally do their job at nearly a 100 percent rate without a win-loss record being kept on a daily basis.
The bottom line is that there really is very little overlap in managing in baseball and business. Both worlds require savvy operators with talents finely honed for those very different situations.
Great Insight.......2006-09-25
This is a thoughtful and funny book that anyone in business can learn from. It is always good to see things from different and new points of view. Jeff Angus proves that baseball provides us useful insights into our everyday management challenges. All of us who have spent sunny afternoons at the park can relate to this approach. Mr. Angus represents these ideas with pace and humor that is rere today in any nonfiction let alone a business book.
Any new manager and baseball fan will relish.......2006-09-24
MANAGEMENT BY BASEBALL: THE OFFICIAL RULES FOR WINNING MANAGEMENT IN ANY FIELD could also have been featured in our sports section, but it's reviewed here for its applications of baseball principles to management theory. Baseball managers can be better role models for leaders in business than current business models because they have learned how to implement innovations, overcome resistance to new ideas, adapt to changes, and lead team efforts: any new manager and baseball fan will relish these 'how to' guidelines.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Action-oriented wisdom for the rest of us.......2006-05-11
I normally hate how-to books and management titles. But this one is a different animal. Mr. Angus's advice is smart, practical, and connected to the game of baseball (which makes it more fun as well as more understandable). If you enjoy baseball, and want to learn a few new moves to help you manage better, I urge you to read this book.
Book Description
An important element in Japanese baseball is wa--group harmony--embodied in the proverb "The nail that sticks up shall be hammered down". But what if the nail is a visiting American player? Here's a look at Japanese baseball, as seen by baffled Americans
Customer Reviews:
Japanese Baseball Demystified.......2007-08-12
With the influx of Japanese stars into the US Major Leagues, many sports fans are becoming intrigued by the league across the Pacific and the ballplayers who play in it. Reading this book, along with Mr. Whiting's two others, Chrysanthemum at the Bat and The Meaning of Ichiro, will give you the best understanding availible. This book focuses more on the relationship between Japan and the American ballplayers who play over there, but there is a lot on Japanese players, the history of the game in Japan, and the culture of Japanese baseball. It was written in the late 1980s, but still is informative to a reader 20 years later.
Homu Ran!.......2007-05-08
What a fun book this was! It's very quick and easy reading - a fast reader can get through it on a plane trip or on a Sunday afternoon. I also gave it to a family member who was laid up with an illness, and he found it to be a good distraction. I myself picked this book up originally because I was interested in Japanese-American cultural conflicts and issues. I also just so happen to enjoy Dodger basu-baru.
This book has some very entertaining stories and pictures. My favorite is a picture of a Japanese catcher being taught how to crouch behind the plate by squatting above a board with spikes pointing up toward his privates! Ouch!...that's one way to keep focused! There's also a funny shot of all the Japanese team managers dressed up in samurai armor and sort of scowling at the camera - they look fearsome, all right!
The book did give me the kind of information I was seeking, though. Through the prism of baseball, it deals with some of the most important contrasts between American and Japanese culture. For example, the Japanese are much more likely to play when injured, for to do otherwise is "weak". This book tells the story of a pitcher with a torn ligament in his pitching arm who tried to "pitch through the pain", and could not get help from the Japanese sports doctors. He finally had to go to the US to get treatment, starting a rush of Japanese athletes who sought consultation and surgery here in the US that they were ashamed to seek in Japan.
I was also very interested in the story about how baseball came to be introduced to Japan (though an American schoolteacher). Before long, Japanese youth were being subjected to intense training in baseball which rivals that for martial arts.
Some posters here have mentioned that the book is two decades old, and somewhat out-of-date in terms of the players discussed. I didn't really mind that, and found it, all-in-all to be a very enjoyable and interesting read.
The most thorough (yet sadly outdated) account of Japanese Baseball you can find.......2007-01-26
As a long-time Japanese baseball fan, I was very excited to finally receive this book and start reading it. Robert Whiting has done an excellent job of finding material that is usually not accessible for the average foreign fan of Japanese baseball, simply due to the fact that everything is written in Japanese.
Whiting has succeeded in creating a very enjoyable and very interesting "summary" of Japanese baseball as a whole, and really portrays just how differently the game is played and thought of in the East. In particular, the mentality of Japanese baseball that he describes, along with the accounts of many of the players were eye-opening.
It's just such a shame that the book is published in 1988, with no revisions forthcoming since then, because, as is inevitable with time, baseball in Japan has moved on.
In the modern game, the popularity of the "Yomiuri Giants" which Whiting talks at length in his book are declining - so much so that they have trouble filling the stadium or even getting good ratings on TV. In fact, baseball as a sport in Japan as a whole has been on a gradual decline in the face of Soccer, which, when Whiting wrote "You Gotta Have Wa", was unthinkable.
There have also been great shifts in terms of the power of Japanese baseball: away from the Giants to other teams, and the players union even went on strike in objection to the loss of player jobs following the merger of the Orix Bluewaves and Osaka Buffaloes. Whiting wrote however that the player's union would never consider striking, as that was the Japanese player's mentality. This signifies just how much the game has changed in Japan. Further, the systems have been edited to incorporate playoffs, and foreign coaches in Japan are now found at three clubs - a vastly different landscape to the one which Whiting reported on so excellently twenty years ago.
Even though the book is outdated however, it is still a very enjoyable and very thorough account of baseball and the mentality of baseball in Japan. For anyone with an interest in the sport in Japan, I would highly recommend reading it, as very little else is available which is of a similar quality to "You Gotta Have Wa".
But when reading, I just cant help but feel how worthy a book this would be if updated with information on the modern game. With stars like Matsui, Matsuzaka and Ichiro now plying their trades in the US, Whiting would have a lot to talk about.
I recommend it: Just realise that the game has moved on a little from then.
what other country would name a baseball team the Ham Fighters.......2006-12-08
There is no doubt that the author has a firm grasp of Japanese culture. For that I would give him five stars. His knowledge of baseball is only passing for a professional writer, and make cause hard core baseball fans to be left wanting for more detail.
The book was written in the late 1980s and reads a bit dated, but the stories of how a select group of American ballplayers attempt to integrate into Japanese style baseball is still interesting and worth a read during the long baseball-less winter. It was also written before the days of all-star players like Ichiro came from Japan to America and dominated. During the 1980s, you could be a semi-over the hill overweight American and still hit 340 with 40 homers in Japan.
The author's knowledge of Japan was first rate and his obviously lived in the country for a long time. The book is about baseball, but is really about how the Japanese culture is still struggling to integrate culturally with the rest of the world. I would reccomend it for the baseball reader who is looking for something unique.
Fun read.......2006-07-21
This book is a fun read about American players in Japan. From my experience seeing a game in Japan, it is a bit dated, but I'm glad I read it beforehand. It gets repetitive at the end. The chapter about translators is a hoot! A great companion volume to the movie, Mr. Baseball.
Customer Reviews:
A lot of mud slinging........1999-11-10
I found the book to provide an interesting history on collecting from early times to present. After the history lesson is over, William's seems to spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the various misdeeds of Upper Deck President Richie McWilliam. McWilliam has a very strong (and negative) reputation that is well understood within the industry. Why spend half a book telling everyone that he is dishonest, a liar and a cheat when it is already well understood?
Fascinating look at the sports collectables industry.......1999-01-14
The "Barbarians at the Gate" of the baseball card industry. Fascinating, yet creepy, to see from the inside how a child's hobby has been exploited by sleazy characters. Will definitely turn you off collecting new cards as an investment.
Well written book that is a must reading for card collectors.......1998-11-18
I enjoyed this book very much. It has two themes: first, it shows how one company with the right idea and the right people behind it can revolutionize an entire industry, against all odds. Second, it tells us that to succeed in today's competitive markets you have to elbow your way in. While the allegations of wrongdoings by trading card companies seem like unsubstantiated hearsay, the book does make you feel that you are on the inside, witnessing how the real entrepreneurs do it. Very entertaining read.
Well written book for the money.......1996-05-31
I feel any person who is in the hobby of collecting cards or thinking about getting in the hobby should read this book
I found it interesting some of the aligations of conterfiting ones own cards interesting. Some people would be shocked to know
why there cards have no value.
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Baseball Prospectus 2007: The Essential Guide to the 2007 Baseball Season (Baseball Prospectus)
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