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Juiced - Wild Times- Rampant -Roids- Smash Hits- and How Baseball Got Big

4 stars (Thoughtful and Important) - Conseco begins by stating that he believes inteligent use of steroids, combined with human growth hormone, will one day be accepted and standard practice. (Add genetic engineering to the list - my opinion.) Conseco was a fair-to-middling minor-league player until he vowed to his dying mother that he was "Going to be the best athlete in the world." Shortly after that he began using steriods after reading up on the topic and considerable discussion with a "regular." Initially it was scary - he wasn't certain what would happen, or even if anything would change. After about two weeks he began to see and feel changes. At the same time, Conseco also undertook a strenuous program of exercise - particularly exercises that emphasized speed, not muscle mass. A third enhancement came from intense studying of pitchers to better guess their next pitch, rather than just reacting. Eventually Conseco added about 70 lbs. of muscle, and increased his running and swinging speeds. An additional benefit was building endurance - he no longer lost energy as the season wore on - like most players. Mark McGwire soon became a pupil and followedd a similar regimen - adding 50 lbs to his frame. Both McGwire and Conseco had great swings at the start, and Conseco stresses that steroids will not make a great athlete out of someone lacking talent. Conseco is sensitive to possible damage from steroid use, and credits his avoidance to careful attention to amounts and types used. He also believes that baseball players have an advantage over football players when it comes to steroid use because they are not so inclined to overdo it in an effort to reach 300+ lbs. Conseco eventually became well-known for steroid use - probably because he taught so many other players and trainers about it. Conseco, however, also thought it was due to racial bias - he was from Cuba. Clearly Conseco, McGwire and others reached great success via steroids, and do not appear t...
Regan Books :: Biography & Autobiography & Sports :: United States :: Sports - General :: Sports - Baseball :: Sports (Specific Aspects) :: Salaries :: etc :: Personal Memoirs :: D :: Juiced - Wild Times- Rampant -Roids- Smash Hits- and How Baseball Got Big

 

Moneyball- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

5 stars (About so much more than baseball!) - Don't judge a book by its cover. Ostensibly the title and cover of this book would lead you to conclude that this book is all about baseball. It isn't. When I was handed this book I was expecting a dreary George Will book about the symmetry of motion in baseball or how baseball is the smart man's sport. My expectations were very low. The first few pages quickly put that concern to rest. This is a page-turner that you will not put down. Have you ever wondered how the Oakland A's with a team that looks so unlike other major league teams can be a consistent winner? The A's General Manager Billy Beane found market inefficiencies and effectively exploited them. He recognized that other teams religiously used subjective measures and the wrong statistical measures in evaluating a player's worth to the team. Billy Beane found the right measures. And, he recognized that the measures being used by every other team inflated player's salaries not because they contributed to the team's bottom line but because they looked the part or their stats looked good on paper. He looked for talent where others were simply not looking and he found it. This allowed him to field a winning team for far less than others. He developed a strategy to exploit the system by seeking out players not deemed worthy by conventional measures. For instance, short stocky players did not fit the image of a baseball player. Because of their smaller strike zone they walk more frequently, meaning they get on base more often. While other teams were looking at batting average or RBIs, Billy Beane was using statistical measure such as on-base percentage to measure a player's contribution to a winning. He focused on what's important. Billy Beane recognized that using the traditional measures of a play's worth and the scout's reliance upon subject measures didn't match up with what really matter to winning. He leveraged this market inefficiency to bui...
W W Norton - Company :: United States :: Sports Economics :: Sports & Recreation :: Sports :: Scouting :: Salaries :: etc :: Management - General :: Economic aspects :: Baseball players :: Base :: Moneyball- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game