Moneyball

Billy Beane had it all.  The talent. The looks. Intelligence.  He lacked one thing though: mental toughness.  Drafted out of high school to play for the New York Mets, Beane was suspected to be even greater than the now legendary Darryl Strawberry.  Both outfielders were drafted at the same time and came up through the minors at the same time, but Darryl seemed to possess a poise in the batter's box that evaded Billy.  Billy could catch, field, and run but he could not swing the bat to save his life.  He thought too much, and the batter's box made him feel clausterphobic, trapped, immersed in the anger that followed each failed at bat. 

Billy thought too much.  He focused on everything he did wrong and never on what he did right.  Growing up he always excelled and did not possess a failure mechanism to help him bounce back.  What astounded me was the fact that he gave up.  He gave it all up to become a scout, even with over half of his career left ahead of him.  I do not think I could accomplish such a task.  I love baseball too much to throw it away after a couple years of failure.  That's the beauty of the game of baseball: you can fail 3 times out of 10 and still make it into the Hall of Fame.  It's a game of mental toughness and overcoming adversity. 

After finishing the Hunger Games Triology, I found myself looking for different novels that would suit my fancy.  Since baseball is what I sleep, eat, and dream about I figured Moneyball would be an interesting selection.  It has been my experience that stories about baseball tend to become boring with stats and figures, not bad aspects of the game, but it doesn't make for a good novel.  Moneyball, so far, has incorporated the present with the past to examine and predict the future.  I sit reading and keep wanting to flip the page to find out what happens next to the players in the MLB posed in the novel. 

I am hoping this book continues to develop a plot though.