Reading list: baseball

At the Independent Will Dean compiled a brief reading list on baseball, including:

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

Brad Pitt is getting an Oscar buzz for his portrayal of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane in the movie based on Lewis's book. In Moneyball, Lewis breaks down how – at the start of the 21st century – Beane and other statistical analysts at his club found disproportionate success by finding inefficiencies in the market for players (ie, using different measurements of what made a player valuable).

Read about another book on the list.

Moneyball also appears on Richard J. Tofel's list of the five best books on baseball as a business and among Sports Illustrated's five most influential sports books of the decade.

Also see Allen Barra's five best works of fiction about baseball, Marjorie Kehe's ten best list of baseball books, Doug Glanville's best books on baseball, Richard J. Tofel's list of the five best books on baseball as a business, Tom Werner's six favorite baseball books, Fay Vincent's five best list of baseball books, Tim McCarver's five best list of baseball books, and Nicholas Dawidoff's five best list of baseball novels.

--Marshal Zeringue