Money Ball the movie

I think it was truthful. I think that Michael Lewis would tell you that including more about Mulder, Hudson, and Zito or Tejada and Chavez would obscure the truth he was presenting. It would get in the way and confuse readers.

 

Pretty good profile of Lewis here
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/michael-lewis-2011-10/

It appears he doesn't give a flying fuck about his critics and at his going rate of $10 a word and writing 10,000 word pieces for Vanity Fair, I guess he's got good reason. People are paying him a pile of money to write and write well. Even if you disagree with his premise, I think most people would have to admit Lewis is pretty good at turning a phrase.

He's also made his profile subjects successful beyond their wildest dreams.

 

He's the anti-Dan Wetzel.

Michael Lewis calls you to do a story on you, you run, don't walk, to the phone.

 

Gosh, Wally, it sucks when stuff that is rooted in truth gets in the way of what I'm trying to say.

 

What I'm trying to say is that someone like Lewis believes the "truth" is that sabermetrics helped the A's win. He isn't trying to hide unhelpful facts, although maybe that's part of it, so much as he finds the rest of it superfluous to the argument.

He could have included Mulder, Zito, and Hudson. But "Moneyball" really wasn't about the A's anyway. It was about the sabermetrics revolution. The A's were just the vessel he used.

 

But you have to assume Icelanders check every plot of land for elves. That's just good environmental practice.

Lewis is due to write about California's financial problems in the next Vanity Fair. Should be a good one.

 

This is getting circular.

Even his mother said in that piece that he has a talent for embellishment.

 

This times 1,000.

In fact, the book industry sometimes works entirely counter to what you would expect.

A good friend of mine wrote a first-person true-crime book -- he was 11 years old at the time of incident and lived next door to the victims -- and was encouraged by his publisher to make himself 8 or 9 in the narrative because it would make him "more sympathetic." Of course, he told them to pound sand, and the publisher relented once it saw how angry he was. These days, from the acquiring editor on up, the mentality is driven much (much, much, much) more by sales and marketing than by journalistic integrity.

This was not some small book put out by a backwater publisher. It was a national bestseller and a Big Six imprint.

 

Jeremy Giambi, why didn't you slide? I know, that was 2001. But still ...

 

I worked in the book industry for about three decades, including stints at major publishers like Penguin and Harper Collins. I was a member of most publishing boards where I worked and not once did I EVER encounter an instance where anyone in editorial, sales or marketing encourage a writer to make shit up or embellish the truth.

And journalistic integrity and sales and marketing are not mutually exclusive.

 

I'll say this as politely as possible:

The Hirsches should never be quoted again. Their book is more full of holes than Lewis' (which has plenty of omissions, as noted throughout this thread) and it's an embarrassment to thinking baseball fans of all stripes. I don't care how anyone feels about advanced metrics. That book is just plain dumb.

 

did the on deck batter tell him to?