Neither of which were won on a small budget.

How do you manage to dress yourself in the morning?

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I apologize. When I finally see this movie, and I find out that Billy Beane is only a bit character in it.

The director of this movie deserves awards for having a leading actor of "numbers/methods".

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The 1997 Marlins were definitely not small budget. The 2003 Marlins were a bunch of kids and Pudge Rodriguez who was signed to a 1-year deal that was pretty affordable.

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So do the Twins, albeit over a longe period of time. The Twins also have a much higher level of sustained success. The Marlins have two aberrations amidst otherwise mediocrity. I would be interested in the payroll during those two years. I seem to remember them being a true "all in" team knowing the would break things up the next year.

I seem to recall the Ryan years in Minnesota being pretty impressive....good managers, good management, good play on the field...a true organizational success story.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

2003 Marlins payroll; $46.675 million.

They were in the 40s for the early part of the decade, and then in 06 were under $20mil and in 07 were under $30mil.

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46 million is nothing. 25% of that was probably Pudge's contract.

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He wasn't an underperforming catcher. He was a young guy with a lot of promise. He didn't really fulfill that promise but he's certainly been a decent journeyman catcher. and where the Sox are concerned, he turned into Freddie Garcia and a World Series- something Bradford never helped Beane accomplish.

I guess our main disagreement is the relative values of a decent catcher in a time when they were hard to find vs. a middle reliever. You can beat me over the head with their respective WARs if you want, you still aren't going to convince me that a middle reliever who allows more than a hit an inning is more valuable than a solid back-up catcher who can start 120 games if you need him to without killing you.

Finally, I don't even like Kenny. Michael Lewis is the guy who used Kenny as a foil (read: dupe) for Beane in the book. I could write Kennyball and put a spin on it that Williams took advantage of Beane and won a World Series with the Sox while dumping overvalued players like Ordonez and Lee, slashing his payroll, and bringing in stiffs like Pods and Politte. That wouldn't be any more truthful than Moneyball.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Im sorry but at this book of the month club, we require you to READ the book.

No seeing the movie.

I havent seen the movie and Im not arguing what IT portrays...but the book, to me, was much more about the business of baseball, numbers vs. scouting, payroll vs payroll. Beane was just the vehicle.

Truth. I don't know how much of it is Kenny Williams's appearance and how much is the fact that Hawk Harrelson is a drawling dipshit, but nobody and I mean nobody gets more buttshook about the Oakland A's than White Sox fans. The Angels have run an operation diametrically opposed to Oakland's, they play each other like 30 times a year, and their respective fanbases resent each other along basic NorCal/SoCal lines, yet Angels fans don't give nearly the shit about Billy Beane that our fair south side does.

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What would be the premise of Kennyball? Gamble on 5 cheap guys each year and hope they all pan out at once?


But I agree with the overall point that Beane is not neccessarly better than KW. No one has suggested he was, outside of Michael Lewis for one deal.

The fuck you talkin bout?

Sox fans spend very little time concerned with Oakland. The epicenter for the sabrmetric debate shifted to Boston several years ago and it is not just Sox fans talking about it. Boston uses a dramatically different approach to Oakland's.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The premise of Kennyball is that a young black man who was raised by a Black Revolutionary father who ran with Tommie Smith excelled in sports and went to Stanford on scholarship where he played football and baseball. He was on the bench during "The Play" involving Stanford's band. He knew if he had been on the field he would have dodged the Sousaphones to make the tackle. His frustration with the "loss" fueled him as he soon left school to play baseball professionally.

Unfortunately, despite being endowed with natural athletic gifts, he could not hit the baseball. After a frustrating career he moved into the White Sox front office where he quickly ascended despite being a young black man in a white old boys club.

Once he was running the Sox he realized that he could not win with gifted ballplayers like himself as they were losers. He purged his roster of talent, allowing Magglio Ordonez to walk away to the rival Tigers and giving away Carlos Lee for nothing. He then fielded a team of guys everyone believed to be stiffs and won the World Series.

One man's journey.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I'd see it if Reinsdorf was played by Harry Teinowizc

Starring Elliott Gould as Jerry Reinsdorf

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

with Micheal Clarke Duncan as Frank Thomas and a Dry Mop as Harold Baines...

you are 50% correct, and i am 50 % correct...douchbag is 100 % correct.........


97 marlins were 5th highest payroll

03 they were 20th highest @ 63 million..i also remember girardi taking the team to a pretty decent record in his last year there with a team payroll that was pretty close to what arod was making, they did not win the wild card but kept it close..how do you dress yourself in the morning mr cozstanza?

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I'll tell you one thing, as I was writing that, I realized how much more interesting Kenny is than Billy Beane.

Also in Kennyball, Kenny is the brilliant young student-athlete who attended Stanford on a full ride. His foil is Billy Beane, a bitter former ballplayer who opted for a bonus from the Mets and turned down a scholarship to Stanford. Beane's jealousy and thinly veiled racism toward Mr. Williams is eating him alive. Beane is desperate to win a World Series before Williams does. Will he succeed? You'll have to read the book.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

the twins have been around much longer...the marlins will win another before the twins..the marlins did what the twins can't..beat the yankees...the marlins in my opinion have great scouts..they seem to keep finding young talent

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It's really a pretty good movie. Beane does realize when he loses Giambi, Damon and Isringhausen that he cannot go out and simply find players cabable of replacing the 3. So he tries to figure out how to come up with more of a collective solution to the problem, rather than trying to replace individual player losses. He meets a young man working for another organization when trying to work out a trade for a player he wants and then gets that guy (Peter Brand) working for him. Its this guy that has all the mathematical data that he is convinved will allow a team to collect a great number of undervalued players and then put together this group of misfit toys and make a team of it. The sum is greater than the individual parts and all that. But you do get the understanding that it wasn't just Beane coming up with this all on his own. I was shocked to learn that Beane turned down the GM position with the Red Sox for more money than any GM has ever made. The movie is worth seeing.

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Go Cubs!!!!

I'm not sure the book even mentions Eric Walker. That in itself makes it questionable.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

As is often the case, the movie has me wanting to read the book. You know there is always so much in a book that never is covered in the movie and I have to think the book would be pretty interesting. After seeing the movie and how much Peter Brand (who's Eric Walker?) was involved in player moves and team philosophy, I can't imagine he isn't a central figure in the book as well.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Walker is in the movie? He doesn't play much of a part in the book- if any.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

No-I thought you were referring to Peter Brand. I actually have no idea who Eric walker is. I had to go and check on the name of the Assistant GM to see if it was Eric Walker because the name didn't sound right. It is Brand (I should remember the name BRAND) that is the Assistant GM that I was referring to.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Walker is a guy who was commissioned by the A's to prepare a report, which ultimately contained a lot of the ideas Beane adopted. Walker has a website and does a lot of writing on baseball and other topics. He makes an interesting case on why he doesn't believe steroids were responsible for the increased offense in the 90s.

http://steroids-and-baseball.com/

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

peter brand is not a real person. he was a composite character.

RPB, the movie is somewhat about what the book is except because it's a movie, it takes a personal approach with beane's life.

Thats interesting. I wonder besides David Forst (the actual Assistant GM now) if he's also part Paul Depodesta and who else might be involved in the charachter. In any case, the charachter they came up with for the movie was a good one and played pretty well IMO by Jonah Hill in a role that was not like those he has previously taken (comedy-without exception I believe).

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Go Cubs!!!!

Yeah, he's based in large part on DePodesta.

Speaking of Stoney, I saw the clip of the end of last night's game and he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He really joined the family, didn't he.

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OMG there's a lot to read there. I have to agree with him about one thing that gets overlooked a lot and that was the "juiced ball". That could very well have played a far greater roll in the huge numbers many players accumulated during the steroid era. However, when you look at the numbers that players like Luis Gonzalez, Lenny Dykstra and Gary Matthews Jr. accumulated in seasons after they chose to use steroids and how they performed before and after ceasing steroid use, it's clear that the roids did have a positive effect. A warning track flyball becomes a HR. There are too many examples of players with enhanced production to dismiss the effects of steroids.

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Go Cubs!!!!

Marlee Maitlin in black face as Harold Baines

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Why did you choose not to name Sammy Sosa?

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