Baseball is said to be America’s favourite pastime…

Together with being an amateur sport for the masses, it’s also a professional sport, with Major League Baseball being awash with cash for the best players and successful clubs.

Professional sport is a business, where the aim is to win and make as much money as possible for the owners, and if public, to increase the shares for the shareholders.

And like in the Premier football league, you’ve got more wealthy clubs than others, who you’d always expect to be winning everything. But it doesn’t always work this way.

‘Moneyball’ by Michael Lewis, is about how a small group of undervalued (misfits if you like) professional baseball players and executives became one of the most successful teams.

It’s a true story centred on Billy Bean, who was expected to become a valuable player but succumbed to self-doubt, only to re-invent himself as one of Baseball’s greatest GMs.

The top teams and executives long held belief was that expensive big name, highly athletic hitters, and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success.

Beane and his team disproved this theory. By using and interpreting massive amounts of statistical data, they believed that wins could be achieved by more affordable methods.

Using this information and with a tight budget, Beane and his team defied tradition to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans.

It’s like small retailers trying to win customers against the likes of Amazon. You don’t compete with them at their own game, you find ways of providing products and services in a way which Amazon can’t deliver. You change the field of play to your own advantage.

Which is what Beane did, building teams of inexpensive players undervalued by the wealthy teams. Full of hitters with high on base percentages and pitchers focused on ground outs.

Can’t say I’m particular into baseball, went to a game in the states once and it went for hours. But from a business strategy and tactical angle, I found the book very insightful.

‘Moneyball’ gets a thumbs up and four stars.

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…thank you & see you next week.