Moneyball by Lewis, Michael (mobile ebook reader txt) 📕

rules forbade the general manager from sitting in the dugout. But even there the GM was never very far away, because the manager, Art Howe, walked around with a miniature Billy Beane perched on his shoulder, hollering in his ear. In the Oakland A’s dugout occurred the most extraordinary acts of mind control; if Art had a spoon in his head Billy could have bent it with his brain waves. One time Adam Piatt, the spare outfielder, had gone up to the plate in a tight game with a runner on first base with one out, and bunted the guy over. Just like you were supposed to do. Just like everyone in baseball did. Art hadn’t exactly disapproved—at heart Art was an old baseball guy. Instead, incredibly, he had wandered down to where Piatt sat in the dugout and said, “You did that on your own; right?”

The TV viewers saw only the wise old manager conferring with his young player. They probably assumed they were witnessing the manager making some fine point about the art of the sacrifice bunt. The manager was more concerned with the politics of the sacrifice bunt: Art Howe wanted to make sure that it wasn’t him who got yelled at by the GM after the game. Sure enough in the papers the next day Piatt confessed that he had bunted on his own—that Art hadn’t given him the signal. Art, for his part, offered the reporters an impromptu lecture that might have been written by the GM himself on why the sacrifice bunt was a bad play. (Baseball players and coaches often used the newspapers to send memos to their general managers.)

Before long the new member of the Oakland A’s realized: Billy Beane ran the whole show. He was like a Hollywood producer who insisted on meddling not only with the script but also the lights and camera and sets and wardrobes. He wasn’t just making the trades and supervising scouts and getting his name in the papers and whatever else a GM did. He was deciding whether to bunt or steal; who played and who sat; who hit in which spot in the lineup; how the bullpen was used; even the manager’s subtle psychological tactics. If you watched the games closely you noticed that Art Howe always stood on the dugout steps above the players, his chin raised and a philosophical expression upon his face. Art had a great chin. When he stood up and thrust it out, he looked like George Washington crossing the Delaware. No manager in baseball better conveyed, with the thrust of his chin, the idea that he was completely in control of any situation. They flashed up on the television screen that stoic image of Art ten times a game and at some point the announcers felt moved to mention Art’s calming effect on young players. Art became known throughout baseball as the steady hand on the tiller. Why? Because he looked the part!

The whole thing was a piece of theatre. Billy had told Art how and where to stand during a game so that the players would be forced to look up to him, and take strength from his countenance, because when Art sat on the bench, as he preferred to do, he looked like a prisoner of war.

It was a different scene here in Oakland, and some players enjoyed it more than others. The thirty-nine-year-old utility infielder, Randy Velarde, complained often to reporters that the team was run from the front office and that the front office wouldn’t let anyone bunt or steal. The twenty-three-year-old star pitcher, Barry Zito, said that it didn’t matter who played for the Oakland A’s or how much money the team had to spend: as long as Billy Beane ran the team, it had a shot at championships. A player who preferred to remain anonymous, asked how it would affect the team if Art Howe was fired, said that he couldn’t see what difference it would make since “Billy runs the team from the weight room anyway.” And it was true: before every home game Billy would put on his jock and head for the weight room. During the first couple of innings he’d run a few miles and lift a few weights and generally remind whichever pitchers and bench players who had sneaked out of the dugout to get in their workouts that they played for the only team in the history of baseball on which the general manager was also the best athlete. After that, what he did depended on the situation.

What he didn’t do was watch the games. When he watched his team live, he became so upset he’d become a danger to baseball science. He’d become, as he put it, “subjective.” His anger might lead him to do something unconsidered. The notion that he would huddle in his luxury suite with friends and family and visiting dignitaries—well, that just wasn’t going to happen. Some visiting dignitary would hint he might like to see a game from Billy’s box and Billy would say, “Fine, just don’t think I’ll be seeing it with you.” His guest thought Billy was joking, until he discovered he had the suite to himself.

Billy couldn’t bear to watch; on the other hand, he couldn’t bear not to watch. He carried around in his pocket a little white box, resembling a pager, that received a satellite feed of live baseball scores. The white box was his chief source of real time information about the team he ran. He’d get into his SUV and drive in circles around the Coliseum, peeking every few minutes at the tiny white box. Or he’d set himself up in a place inside the clubhouse, white box in hand. He was like some tragic figure in Greek mythology whose offenses against the gods had caused them to design for him this exquisite torture: you must desperately need to see what you cannot bear to see.

Only every now and then Billy Beane did