Billy Bean was an MLB player in the eighties, but went down in history as a brilliant manager. He gave a ticket to the league to all athletes, showing a good result, no matter how far from the standards. Billy Bean's approach to player selection has turned baseball into a sport that makes money.
The focus is on the Moneyball system and its founder, Billy Bean. The biography of the person who changed baseball is in our article.
Childhood and passion for football
William Lamar Billy Bean III was born on March 29, 1962. Billy met baseball thanks to his father, who played in his spare time as a pitcher in an amateur team.
In his early childhood, Bean was also fond of football, but fears about possible injuries prevented - any injury could erase the prospects of a possible baseball career. When it came time to choose between football and baseball, Billy Bean, without hesitation, preferred the latter. He devoted his whole life to this sport.
To this day, Billy Bean's life is closely connected with baseball, but the school passion for football, which he had to abandon, was also not forgotten. Bean is a passionate fan of English football, attends games and does not miss the broadcast of key matches.
Baseball career
Soon he had to make another fateful choice. The Stanford team offered Billy a place, and at the same time he got a chance to sign a contract with the New York Mets - the club offered him $ 125, 000.
Scouts (assistants who specialize in finding players and negotiating with them) Mets predicted a bright future and a brilliant career for him. They were so convincing that Billy decided to abandon his studies at the university in favor of future success in sports. Billy later said that this decision was the first and last that he made, following the question of the material component of the issue.
From 1984 to 1989, he played as a reserve outfielder in the major leagues, and by 1989 his baseball career came to an end.
Innovative ideas
In 1994, Billy Bean became the chief manager of Oakland Athletics, and on October 17, 1997 - its general manager. The wallets competition that baseball of the time turned into was totally unsatisfying for Billy. New players did not come out, and well-known clubs simply outbid popular baseball players from each other. Athletes did not have a normalized salary, so it all depended on which franchise could offer a large amount. Each victory cost the clubs quite expensive.
Major League did not pay attention to the contribution of individual players to the game. They were more interested in external data and falling into blurry unwritten standards that a professional player had to meet. External data was of great importance, as a result, too low, tall, fat or thin players turned out to be overboard. Any baseball player with a unique or unusual playing style had no chance to break into professional sports.
It was on these baseball outsiders that Billy Bean turned his attention. He rejected stereotypes about style and external data and focused on dry statistics: the percentage of successful hits and injuries, exits to the base, strikes and outs. For a set of athletes who have high expectations, but have strangenesses, Billy Bean was called both a genius and a madman.
As soon as Bean's tactics bore fruit, other teams took her into service. The Boston Red Sox tried several times to lure Billy to the post of CEO, but after another failure they simply began to apply his schemes on their own. Bean made it clear that even in a game such as baseball, you can discard established dogmas and find alternative solutions that will subsequently lead the team to victory. A set of undervalued baseball players who cost an order of magnitude less than the known ones allowed Billy to prove that they can successfully withstand even the most powerful MLB franchises, without possessing large resources.
Book image
For Billy Bean, 2003 was marked by the release of a book on the statistical baseball revolution, written by Michael Lewis. The author was impressed with how Billy was able to lead to so many victories a team consisting of baseball outsiders of the time.
Billy Bean was able to prove that money does not solve everything. He preferred to focus on the statistical utility of the players. For the first time, they were selected on the basis of economic profitability and the calculation of the value and usefulness of each individual person in the selected position.
Billy Bean in the movie
Seven and a half years after the release of the book by Michael Lewis, which by then had already become a bestseller, Bennett Miller set to shooting the film. The main role in it was played by Brad Pitt, later this film will become one of the best in his acting career.
The book of Michael Lewis tells exclusively about the work of Billy, without affecting the human factor. It is a collection of dry facts and rules. The main character is outlined rather tough, prudent and selfish, although in life Billy Bean, on the contrary, is quite charming. He himself is more impressed by the image from the film.
At the same time, the views on baseball from Billy Bean from the film contradict his views in reality. In the film, he argues that in baseball it is impossible not to be romantic. However, in fact, Billy believes that sport can be romantic only in childhood, later only victory matters.
