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

Not thinking where it might lead, I ask Wash how many bases he stole in his youth.

“I stole fifty-seven one year,” he says.

Ray Durham turns, slightly, and cocks his head in mock amazement: no shit?

Wash is looking straight at Ray when he says, “Boz stole ninety.”

Boz just nods.

Ray drops his bat in wonder. “You stole ninety?” he says.

Boz just nods again, like it’s no big deal.

“Damn!” Ray’s now engaged. He’s like an American tourist who has just discovered the German on the train next to him is a long-lost cousin. “It’s different here, huh?” he says.

The question is rhetorical. Ray Durham knows firsthand just how different it is here. Two months ago, freshly plucked for next to nothing by Billy Beane from the Chicago White Sox, Durham was seated in a dugout before his first game with his new team. The Oakland beat reporters swarmed around him. Their second question was, “How do you feel about Billy Beane putting you in center field?” That was the first Ray Durham had heard of Billy’s quixotic plans for him. He hadn’t played in the outfield since high school. Durham dutifully said that he was willing to consider anything to help the team, a statement his saucer eyes translated beautifully into a question: Are you fucking kidding me? In nanoseconds Durham’s agent was on the phone to Billy to explain that his client, an All-Star second baseman, was a free agent at the end of the year. While happy to perform the usual offensive services for this low-rent team that, by some miracle, had got their sweaty peasant hands on him for half a season, Ray Durham did not intend to jeopardize his financial future by making a spectacle of himself in center field for the Oakland A’s.

Ray had put an end to that particular stab at baseball efficiency. But when the A’s coaches told him to stop trying to steal bases, he had stopped. His whole career Ray Durham had been hired to steal bases; the moment he arrived in Oakland, his coaches told him to stay put wherever he was until the ball was hit. Billy had traded for Ray not because Ray stole bases but because Ray had a talent for getting on base—for not making outs. And so, for the first time in his career, Ray mostly played it safe on the bases. From the aesthetic point of view, this was a pity. Let Ray Durham do what he pleased on the base paths and he became a human thrill ride. The other night in Seattle, after a passed ball, he went from second to third in a heartbeat and then, instead of stopping like a sane person, just flew around the bag and headed toward home. The entire stadium suffered a little panic attack. The Seattle catcher dove and spun, the Seattle pitcher felt his sphincter in his throat, and forty thousand Seattle fans gasped like they’d just reached the first crest on a giant roller coaster. A millisecond later Ray screeched to a halt, trotted back to third, and chuckled. Ray knew how to use his legs to fuck with people’s minds.

Not running is about as natural to Ray as not breathing, but until now he’s bottled up not just his speed but his feelings. Now he says, “It’s different here, huh?”

Wash snorts. “It’s the shit,” he says. “We have twenty-five stolen bases all year. Eight were guys going on their own and getting it. Ten were 3-2 counts. Seven, Art gave the green light.” One hundred and sixty games into the season Art Howe has given base runners the green light a grand total of seven times. It’s got to be some kind of record.

“Ray, how many bags you got this season?” asks Wash.

“Twenty-five,” says Ray.

“When he came over, he had twenty-two,” says Wash. “So he got three bags here. Two of those he took on his own.”

“You run on this team and you’re on your own,” says Boz, ominously.

“Yeah,” says Wash. “There’s a rule on this club. It’s okay if you get it. If you don’t, you got hell to pay.” That would cast Billy Beane as Satan.

Ray shakes his head in wonder, and goes back to taking his cuts.

Crack!

“If you say base-running isn’t important, you forget how to run the bases,” says Boz.

“You wanna see something funny,” Wash says. “Come sit with me in the third-base box and watch that shit comin’ at me. Nobody on this club know how to go from first to third.” In addition to being the infield coach on a team that can’t afford to waste money on defense, Wash is the third-base coach on a team that can’t afford to waste money on speed. Whenever a ball goes to the wall, he’s required to make these weirdly elaborate calculations to take into account the base-running talents Billy Beane has provided him with. He doesn’t want to hear that foot speed is overpriced.

Ray can no longer concentrate on his hitting. “Cautious doesn’t work in the play-offs,” he says.

Wash and Boz don’t say anything to that. Ray’s got three weeks, at most, before he’s a free agent deciding which multi-milliondollar offer to accept: Ray can say whatever he wants about Billy Beane’s approach to baseball. In a few days the Oakland A’s will face the Minnesota Twins in the first round of the play-offs, and all the noise on the television and in the papers is about how the play-offs are different from the regular season. How the play-offs are about “manufacturing” runs. The play-offs were all about street cred, and science didn’t have any.

“I don’t see a lot of play-off games where the score is 8-5,” says Ray. “It’s always 1-0 and 2-1.”

“The fact of it is,” says Wash, “Billy Beane hates to make outs on the base paths.”

Ray shakes his head sadly and resumes taking his cuts.

I’ve stumbled upon a revolutionary cell within the Oakland A’s, three men who still believe in the need for