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Harry Nilsson, of the great songs, magnificent voice and the going on the piss with John Lennon a lot in the 70s is a big fav here at sportreview.
Later in his career, he attempted to write a stadium chant (along the lines of creepy Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll (Part Two)) for the LA Dodgers, who, like Harry, were originally from Brooklyn.
01 Yo Dodger Blue (L.A. Loves You) – Harry Nilsson (MP3, 6MB)
Moneyball is about a new approach to baseball, hiring Harvard statistics nerds to scout talent, going deep inside the stats to find the most effective players. Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane, portrayed as an obsessive perfectionist lead the A’s to the play offs several times early in the noughties with a fraction on the budget of most teams. Using number crunching to scout meant the A’s recruited players who were fat, old or just had weird technique who, crucially, got the job done – on paper.
Michael Lewis is one of the smartest writers around, and he brings this world of number crunching and hours alone with Excel to life. This book caused a storm in Baseball with theories that flew in the face of what ‘traditional baseball guys’ valued. It would be fascinating to see this approach applied to Cricket, another sport that lends itself to statistical obsession.
Recommended.
Michael Lewis article on Moneyball in Basketball (NY Times).
Tags: baseball
Hilarious / cautionary tale of Dock Ellis pitching a no-hitter, while off his tits on LSD:
The middling hurler — whose career record stands at 138-119 — claims he dropped acid not knowing it was a game day, and took the hill despite being “high as a Georgia pine.” He tells viewers about imagining Jimi Hendrix in the batter’s box, Richard Nixon calling balls and strikes and coping with a ball that constantly shifted in size.
Tags: baseball
