"Moneyball", "In the Mind's Eye"

[fiefoe]

For somebody entirely ignorant of how baseball works, Michael Lewis held my attention until the last third of the book, which isn't bad. The drafting room set piece was most entertaining.

• 'Operation Shutdown has had some perverse effects. One of them is leading Billy to speak of Swisher in the needy tone of a man who has been refrained too long from seeing his beloved - Swisher is his pitcher bride.
• A batting average of 0.275 and 0.3 is only one hit every two weeks. (Thus baseball can't be seen, only understood through numbers.)
• The many little injustices and misunderstandings embedded in the game's records spawned exotic inefficiencies... Chadwick succeeded in creating a central role for statistics in baseball, but in doing it, he created the greatest accounting scandal in professional sports.
• Birth of Sabermetrics (name check: Carl Morris, Norman Mailer, screenwriter William Goldman): "It's like watching a soap opera that lends itself to probablistic thinking." how (xxx) described the pleasure.
• Conventional opinions about baseball players and baseball strategies had acquired the authority of fact, and the Sports Illustrated fact checking department was not going to let evidence to the contrary to see print. (Thus delaying Bill James's introduction to national fame.)
• "selling a closer" after pumping his 'Saves' stats like pump-and-dumping stocks.
• Jason Giambi's weak zone is as big as a milk jug (two ball high, 1 & 1/2 wide), but right next to it is his strong zone.
• The great thing about baseball players from the point of view of personal hygiene is how seldom they break a sweat.
• The power of an imagination can arise from what it refuses to foresee.

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Oliver Sacks's warm voice narrated the tough part of the book, the progress of his own eye cancer.
__ Jane Goodall has facial blindness and couldn't recognize her chimpanzees well.
__ Remberandt and many more modern painters are suspected of stereo-blindness.
__ Cuttlefish is able to swivel one eye forward to achieve stereo vision when it's attacking.