re: What's the best sports book you've read?

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I'll go with the painfully obvious answer, Moneyball.

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what is painfully obvious to me is that people view Moneyball as some sort of revelation in MLB. billy bean did not invent statistical evaluation of players as he infers. and scouts are not an inferior way to evaluate talent as he infers. i get that oakland doesn't have enough money to do both but the teams that actually win pennants and stuff do both. as far as taking college pitchers over hi-school kids he was lying. that's right, oakland got lucky with some draft choices as their stud pitchers in years they actually excelled. lastly, as far as valueing outs over the small ball strategem of advancing runners people completely ignore that he is in the american league. any perceived advantage (backed up by his own statistical choices) of that goes away in the NL. a manager in a one run game in the 9th inning with a runner on first with no outs is a fool not to advance that runner. if he hasn't practiced bunting he's fricked. i would be much more impressed with a book written by tony larussa than billy bean. he doesn't own the market on statistical evaluation of players and never has. he propelled a few good years of success (based on lucky pitcher selection) into an expose' of "how he is smarter than all the other gm's" and making big bucks from it. good for him.