Monday, November 26, 2012

Billy Beane

In the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis it tells the story of baseball prospect Billy Beane's’ life after his unsuccessfully baseball playing career. It explains how his past experience helps him as a baseball GM and teaches him that money isn’t everything. Those experience made Billy Beane a good leader. He turns his 40 million dollar team from last in division to tying the Yankees regular season record. These are just a few of the ways Billy Beane changes his life and affects others in the book.

Billy Beane went from future star to draft bust in a matter of years. This is due to his lack of self confidence against major league pitchers. This changes his point of view entirely on baseball and money. He learned that no matter how much money they offer you can’t buy confidence. He chose money over a college degree. Would you have done the same if you had to choose?

Billy Decided to give up being a  baseball player to being in the front office. He became the Oakland A’s GM in 1997 which started his roller coaster ride as a poor GM. Under Billy Beane they reached the playoffs 4 consecutive years 2000 - 2001. This is because of Billys influence on the Oakland A’s players and coaches. In whatever way Billy influenced almost everyone in the A’s system. Including Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford two of Billy’s surprize players he picked up in 2001 offseason.

In the end Billy Beane proves that money isn’t everything. He wins with a team with less the half the salary of  some of their opponents. All you need to win is a different strategy. Billy changed from when this started. He started going for the money. He end up declining the biggest GM contract in the history of sports. Thats how much he regretted his decision to go for the money.

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GOALS

1. Learn and be able to apply syntax definitions A through H

2. Document pages read when reading

3. Organize ideas and topics for essays

4. Clearly identify a topic to write about and build on that topic so the reader understands my opinion

5 . improve organization of essays

6. develop strong transitions between paragraphs

7. increase the fluidity of our written work

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