Trouble with the Curve: More than a Baseball Flick

"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal."--George Will

Last week my friend Phil and I were talking about baseball movies. We listed favorites and commented on also-rans. We also each learned about a few films we'd not yet seen. One of these, for me, was the 2012 release Trouble with the Curve, starring Amy Adams, John Goodman, Justin Timberlake and a crotchety Clint Eastwood. 

Eastwood (Gus) is an aging baseball scout for the Atlanta Braves whose eyesight is beginning to deteriorate. Adams is Eastwood's estranged daughter, a hard-working attorney on the verge of becoming a partner at a law firm. Gus named her Mickey after his favorite baseball player, Mickey Mantle. 

The setting is ten years or so into the "moneyball" era. If you remember Moneyball, the film based on the Michael Lewis book by the same name, you'll recall that it took place in that transition period when computer algorithms began displacing the traditional system of sending out scouts to find new talent. It became an almost total reliance on data. Gus is a throwback whose perceived value is questionable to the younger scouts who live by the data. 

The backstory here is that Gus lost the wife he loved when Mickey was six. For reasons that come out later in the film, Gus and his daughter have an unresolved issue to deal with. 

Pete Klein, a longtime friend, is concerned enough about Gus that he intercedes and asks Mickey to help her father in an important scouting assignment. She reluctantly agrees because she's in the middle of a major project which may have a bearing on her becoming the first female partner at the legal firm she works for.

Well, Mickey knows baseball because baseball was her father's life and in choosing to join her father on a North Carolina scouting trip she...

As it turns out, the film is a father-daughter story with a baseball setting. It's also a feel-good with a measure of predictability. Nevertheless, it's a worthy baseball movie that you ought to see, in the event you missed it when it was released.

I like seeing John Goodman in a "normal" role, as opposed to those over-the-top characters he played in Flight and Inside Llewyn Davis. Goodman shows the value of longtime friends who notice and care about what we're going through.

As an aside, I couldn't help but think of Bill Belichick as I watched Mickey step up and show how much she knew about baseball by growing up with her father. Bill Belichick's dad was a football coach, and by age eight little Billy was learning how to assess defenses by watching game films. He was a student of the game from a very early age.

I suppose we should mention Justin Timberlake (Johnny). He's a scout for the Red Sox. Boston has the first pick in the MLB draft and Johnny is evaluating the same stud power hitter that the Braves are. One of the subplots is Mickey's personal love life. There's a lawyer with the firm who has a serious interest in her, but she's remaining non-committal, for reasons that come out later. You can tell that there's more electricity developing between her and Johnny as the story moves along. Will it end the way her other relationships have floundered?

Not that we care all that much. It's not high drama, just a comfortable ride with some characters we have grown to like and enjoy being with as they work out their problems.

Watching Trouble with the Curve did bring back a few baseball bmemories. When I played ball in the Babe Ruth League our team had a pitcher that some scouts from the Pittsburg Pirates were paying attention to. And another time, when I was playing varsity ball in high school, I faced a pitcher from Piscataway who was being scouted for MLB potential. When Ron Fulop, our first baseman, hit a triple off one of his fastballs, this "superstar" pitcher got rattled. I was up next and he whizzed four adrenaline-injected, supersonic pitches shoulder height and higher. I drew a walk. 

I never did find out if either of those guys made it to the majors. 

For a great read about how a kid from Panama became the greatest relief pitcher in baseball history, read The Closer. Here's my review of this inspiring baseball story.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis Didn't Do It For Me

I've been a longtime fan of Michael Lewis, having read a half dozen of his books over the years. I recently started reading The Undoing Project and for some reason wasn't getting into it. I then decided to re-read Moneyball, the bestseller that later became a motion picture starring Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. As with the first time, I again thoroughly enjoyed it.

This prompted me to go back and continue with The Undoing Project. It's not the first time I started a book, failed to connect and had better luck the next time. It was until my third effort with Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano that I not only engaged with but devoured it. Unfortunately, my second effort here yielded little fruit. If words were food, The Undoing Project was sawdust. Why was this?

I decided to go to Amazon and see what other readers were saying. Many liked the book very much, but there were others who expressed my sentiments as well.

--> This is my 10th or 11th Michael Lewis book and this is the only one I couldn't finish and did not enjoy. 

--> When this book was chosen for my book group, I looked forward to reading it. I have read other Michael Lewis books and totally enjoyed them, even when the topics were not a subject I was particularly interested it. Baseball! Derivatives! Why not psychology? Lewis' books always had energy and told an interesting tale. Not so with The Undoing Project. Nearly halfway through I stopped to read some reviews of the book because I had no idea what it was about or where it was going.

The book opens with Lewis talking about the challenges basketball teams have in determining who will succeed and who will not in pro basketball. Just as Moneyball focused on the Oakland A's, this book details challenges the Houston Rockets faced. 

Somewhere along the way it seemed I missed what this had with Undoing, but I hung in there, wondering where this would all be going. I'd read enough Lewis books to know that he is a storyteller, enjoys gathering details and sharing them in story form. Unfortunately, as these stories unfolded I was unable to see where they were all going.

There is a certain amount of trust that readers put in writers. If they trust the writer they continue reading, believing there will be a payoff for their efforts. The Fables of Aesop always had a payoff, but they did not require endless pages of story to get there.

The central story here is that of the friendship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two Israeli psychologists and economists who did research on heuristics (among other things) in Eugene Oregon. Their work ultimately garnered them a Nobel Prize.

After the lengthy lead-in we arrive at the main event, which is presented in a meandering story that winds over the river and through the woods, but never arrives anywhere. Or at least, after passing the midway point, did not give me confidence that there was a destination. It felt like the story was supposed to be the destination. And I was not alone in this sentiment. Here's another Amazon reviewer:

--> I'm a huge Michael Lewis fan but this book was awful. It was tedious and trying to understand where he was going with the book was hopeless.

I can't say the book was awful. It just wasn't engaging, and I would suggest part of the reason had to do with the writing. Tedious is probably an accurate word. As a result, I lost faith that the story was taking me somewhere.

Be sure to read the positive Amazon reviews before you make up your mind on this one. This review is just my two cents from the peanut gallery.

Related Links

My review of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano

Moneyball Worth More Than the Price of Admission (A Review)

Does Moneyball Give a Gliimpse of How to One Up Wall Street?

I realize that not everyone is a reader. When I interviewed the famed British illustrator Ralph Steadman (think of Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for example), I mentioned that I had started as an artist and became a writer. He replied that he started as a writer and became an artist, "because no one reads anymore."

Near two decades have passed, and the readers of this world still love their books. Many of us have not only read 50 or a hundred books a year most of our lives, but we've read many of those books more than once and as many as four or five times possibly.

I bring this up because I am currently reading, for the second time, Michael Lewis' Moneyball. After my first reading it was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Now, near 20 years later, I am seeing it with new eyes, not as a baseball fan but from the point of view of an investor. 

The book is about how baseball historically came to place value on certain factors that statistics actually proved were backwards. Billy Bean, who had been drafted as a most-likely-to-succeed superstar, is at the center of this story about the Oakland Athletics. Bean is GM, the decision maker regarding the makeup of the team. His experience as a failed potential superstar gave him an insight into the game that most front office folks could never recognize. 

How this applies to investing is obvious. The conventional wisdom is that the prices of stocks (which represent partial ownership of companies) are fairly valued by the market. That is, if the price of one share of a company is seventeen dollars, the company's true value will generally correspond with that in the aggregate of all its shares. Or more correctly, the price of a share will correspond to the future earnings based on risks and potential rewards.

If this is so, how then does a bridge player  from Omaha do so phenomenally better than a majority of others when purchasing portions of company's shares? How does he succeed where others fail? 

It may be like the story in Moneyball. Conventional wisdom is safe but backwards. Warren Buffet made a name for himself by (a) doing more homework than the herd, and (b) by using a different set of measurement tools.

I like the illustration of the herd because it corresponds to life as a zebra on the Serengeti. There is safety in the herd. The reason is that to leave the herd is to become vulnerable to the lions. 

The problem for the zebra in the herd, though, is that the grass gets shorter and shorter. Outside the cluster of zebras in the herd there is ample food, but how retrieve it and enjoy it without risk of become food oneself? 

Somehow Warren Buffet is getting outside the herd and avoiding the lions as well. How he does this is not my point. The point is that there are opportunities available by shucking off conventional wisdom. This is what Billy Bean did because he saw with great clarity how wrong the "experts" were about him.

I once published an article titled "Who Are Your Experts?" in which I challenge people to think for themselves, or at least recognize that when choosing experts you are ultimately responsible for the choices you make. 

Desert Storm was another example of how the conventional wisdom was wrong. Experts were saying that we were about to enter a protracted war with Saddam Hussein that would end up as another Vietnam. Instead, Iraq capitulated in 100 hours. (This was Desert Storm under George Herbert Walker Bush.) There were many lessons for both businesses and investors from that brief war.

* * * *

The subtitle of Moneyball is, The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. Wall Street, which Michael Lewis has also written about in the past, is also considered by many to be an unfair game. Can the lessons Billy Bean learned about player valuations be transferred to the Street? 

To some extent it may be possible. When everyone loves a stock because of the personality of its leader or for any other reason trotted out by the media, it valuation goes up, and likely exceeds its real value. The diamonds in the rough, like some of the players with apparent flaws -- a pitcher with a quirky delivery, for example -- may be neglected and undervalued, until someone notices that they have been consistently making a boatload of money for years, and with no end in sight.

All decisions involve weighing risks and rewards, and learning how to identify what has real value and what only has the illusion of value. Be wise.

Kim Ng Becomes First Female General Manager of a Major League Sports Team

What does a GM do in Major League Baseball? To find out, watch Brad Pitt in Moneyball. Or, if you prefer, read the book. It's a good book and I've read it twice. (And if you listen to audiobooks, I'll loan you mine.) Essentially, the General Manager handles the business of negotiating player contracts, the dollars and sense.

This past week the Miami Marlins announced that they were hiring Kim Ng as their new general manager, thereby making her MLB's first female GM.  

When I saw the story trending on Twitter I had several immediate thoughts. First, when did the Florida Marlins become the Miami Marlins? I guess I'd not been paying attention as much as I should. Second, this is an interesting breakthrough. When will women be accepted as umpires?

I raise this latter question because my cousin Theresa was mentioned in a 2011 ESPN story titled Women Umpires Are Striking Out In MLB and again in this 2012 story in Women's Voices for Change.

In 2016 I addressed this umpire issue in a blog post titled Major League Baseball: Some Things Have Changed and Some Haven't in the Umpire Business. In that story I noted that women have served on the Supreme Court. Women have served as heads of state (e.g. Margaret Thatcher) and women are CEOs of major corporations. But there are no female Major League umpires. Why is this? Are baseball's rules more complicated than the U.S. legal system?

* * * *
The Kim Ng has many interesting features, one of them being that four years ago the Marlins became the first Major League team to have a black CEO, none other that the highly respected Derek Jeter. 

Ng comes into the role with a strong resume, 30+ years in the business. On Twitter the show of support has been massive, not only for breaking the gender barrier but also being a minority. Even Michelle Obama Tweeted her enthused response to the move.

"I entered Major League Baseball as an intern and, after decades of determination, it is the honor of my career to lead the Miami Marlins as their next General Manager," Ng said in a statement. "We are building for the long term in South Florida, developing a forward-thinking, collaborative, creative baseball operation made up of incredibly talented and dedicated staff who have, over the last few years, laid a great foundation for success.

You can read ESPN's account here: 
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30310018/miami-marlins-hire-kim-ng-mlb-first-female-general-manager

Congrats, Kim.

That Titanic Tempest

“I think that he bought a ticket on the Titanic.” ~Moneyball

It’s interesting how much the sinking of the Titanic has been woven into the fabric of our culture. Here I am watching Moneyball and one of the former baseball scouts who used to be on the payroll for Oakland is sniping at General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) for his new approach to the game of baseball. (the quote above.) It’s a perfect segue into a revisiting of Bob Dylan’s latest release Tempest.

The title song is a 45 verse recounting of the sinking of demise of the Titanic on her maiden voyage to New York. But this is not Dylan’s first reference to the 1912 tragedy in the North Atlantic. Many decades earlier there’s an obscure reference to this same incident in his song Desolation Row, Highway 61 Revisited's capstone.

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting 
“Which Side Are You On?

Desolation Row is another of those lengthy classics Mr. Dylan shot up into the stratosphere of the Sixties, but the Titanic reference is little more than that here, a reference. This time around, on Tempest, it's a fourteen minute exposition.

Just out of curiosity I decided to Google the phrase Nero's Neptune to see what popped up. And guess what? It's another cool Dylan site that I'd been previously unaware of.Or rather, it's a site by a musician consciously influenced by Dylan. Though not a comprehensive site, for the Dylan fan it's worth exploring.

Here's a quote from that site pertaining to Dylan's influence:

Bob showed that lyrics are important, about equally important, as the music. That songwriting and poetic imagery can make you.

That certainly has to be a central piece of insight in understanding the longevity and pervasiveness of Dylan's influence.

For the record, Nero was a Roman emperor who persecuted the early Christian church. Neptune was the Roman name for the god of the sea. (The Greek name was Poseidon.) Another of the songs on Tempest is called Early Roman Kings. Another thematic echo? And here's another, from Slow Train Coming:

Sheiks walking around like kings, 
wearing fancy jewels and nose rings. 
Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and to Paris 

Early Roman kings? The Titanic sails at dawn. Apocalypse now.

For what it's worth, Nero's Neptune is an entertaining diversion. Check it out.

Billy Beane purportedly said, "It's hard not to be romantic about baseball." The same can probably be said about the Titanic. In a more macabre manner, however.

Moneyball Worth More Than the Price of Admission

Last month when I read Joe Torre's book The Yankee Years, the great Yankee manager shared how the game of baseball had shifted approximately ten years ago. Old school managers and owners were still placing value on things like potential, whereas a maverick approach was being developed by the Oakland A's using statistical analysis to build a team. These ideas, tested in Oakland in 2002, were quickly adopted by teams that lacked the deep pockets of the Steinbrenners and other money-laden teams. Ultimately it enabled the Boston Red Sox to sling off the Curse of the Bambino, whom they regrettably traded in 1919.

The book by Michael Lewis, Moneyball, detailed the inside story of Billy Beane and these amazing A's. Baseball produced yet another bestseller. And like so many such books, the story begs to be told on the silver screen.

This weekend the movie adaptation of Lewis' book hit theaters across the country. I'd read the book (twice) so when I saw the marquis, with heavyweights Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman in leading roles, it seemed a necessary way to decompress on a Friday evening.

Brad Pitt is Billy Beane, general manager of a team that must win with the odds stacked against it. The book's subtitle summarizes the dilemma. "The Art of Winning an Unfair Game." Despite a stellar season in 2001, Beane's Oakland Athletics fell short of the ultimate prize and then stood helplessly by as their emerging stars were snatched up by teams with larger bankrolls. In the era of free agency this had been a perpetual problem. Beane determined that the A's, being amongst the poorest franchises in terms of money to work with, had to think outside-the-ballpark if the team ever hoped to achieve an alternate result.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the team's old school manager Art Howe. When Beane brings in a Yale economics grad to make decisions based on numbers instead of gut instinct or a player's likableness, the teams scouts and Howe are up in arms. Beane's approach, they say, will be disruptive to the entire game of baseball. The old ways of scouting will be undermined. But Beane is determined.

Howe is equally determined to be the manager and not let Beane interfere with his old school ways. Instead of playing the players Beane thinks Howe should have on the field, Howe plays the guys he believes would be more suitable. Beane trumps Howe by trading the guys who have been in the lineup instead of the players he has assembled. Ultimately, there are payoffs for this relentless commitment to the plan.

When I left the theater I had a strong impression that I had just watched one of the great baseball films of all time. I can't recall a film that so clearly presents the dynamics of what goes on behind the scenes in the formation of a championship team. The story itself provides an inside perspective on a significant moment in time, because the decisions made by that one team have had ramifications throughout the major leagues.

Pitt again shows his range as an actor. Billy Beane had been a superstar prospect in his youth, foregoing a Standford scholarship to jump to a career in baseball. The scouts believed him to be the next superstar, but in the end he was a failure in the big leagues and later in his marriage. Pitt's portrayal of an inwardly anguished man striving with issues of meaning in life are spot on and noteworthy.

It's a fine film about a very fine story, rich with nuanced performances throughout. For anyone who has had a remote interest in baseball at some point in their lives, it comes with my highest recommendation.