There's something to be said for being a fickle sports fan. Allow me to explain.
In my opinion, a good sports fan is one who's willing to switch allegiances in the postseason. When your team loses, you don't give up on the sport altogether-you find a new team, and for one month, you follow them religiously.
For me-I suppose this is my inner sportswriter speaking-it's all about finding the best story and rooting for it. This January, for example, when the Patriots got knocked out of the AFC playoffs in the second round, I broke out the Terrible Towels and spent the rest of the month rooting for the Steelers. Why? Because I wanted to see Jerome Bettis come back to Detroit and win a title.
This spring, when Danny Ainge ran the Celtics franchise into the ground and watched them lose 49 games, I became a Heat fan. My reasoning was simple-I hate Kobe Bryant, and I wanted nothing more than to see Shaq win a title without him.
So far, it all seems simple. But here's where my theory gets tricky. Sometimes, the most interesting story isn't the one with the happy ending. So sometimes I turn sadistic, and instead of picking a team to root for, I choose one to root against.
That's the case this October. One of the more overlooked stories in this year's baseball playoffs has been the plight of the Oakland Athletics, and I for one find that particular story fascinating. A's GM Billy Beane, generally believed to be one of the brightest minds in baseball, has consistently built a team that can fight its way into the playoffs despite having a small budget.
Once October rolls around, however, it's a whole different story. Between 2000 and 2003, the A's went to four straight AL Division Series, and lost all four, three games to two. They finally returned to the postseason in 2006, and after sweeping through the first round, they were promptly swept right back, falling in four games to the Tigers.
What is wrong with the Oakland A's? How have they become the Buffalo Bills of the American League? What, if anything, is Billy Beane doing wrong?
Billy, of course, is the subject of Michael Lewis' 2003 book "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game." The book exposes the GM's revolutionary ideas on how to build a baseball team, and chronicles his successes in rebuilding the A's franchise.
If you haven't read it, I recommend you track down a copy right away-it's arguably the best sports book ever written. But even if you have already read the book, here's a passage that I doubt you'll remember. It concerns Grady Fuson, the As' former head scout, and a certain first-round pick from the 2001 draft.
"When Grady leaned into the phone to take Bonderman," Lewis writes, "Billy, in a single motion, erupted from his chair, grabbed it, and hurled it right through the wall. When the chair hit the wall it didn't bang and clang; it exploded. Until they saw the hole Billy had made in it, the scouts had assumed that the wall was, like their futures, solid."
"Bonderman" was none other than pitcher Jeremy Bonderman, a high school junior who had rushed to earn a GED, rather than wait another year to enter the draft. Billy has always urged against picking high school players, as they're too risky and there's too much uncertainty to predict their futures.
Naturally, Billy gave up on Jeremy Bonderman. A year later, when the A's picked up Ted Lilly from the Yankees in a three-way trade, Bonderman was the "player to be named later" in the deal, shipped off to Detroit along with two other players.
The Tigers only had to give up one player to pick up Bonderman, Carlos Pena and Franklyn German. That one player was Jeff Weaver-the same Jeff Weaver who earned the loss for the Cardinals in Game 1 of this year's NLCS. And as for Bonderman? At age 23, he pitched the deciding game of the Divisional Series, as the Tigers cruised past the Yankees, and a week later, worked the deciding game of the ALCS, as they topped Billy's A's.
I bring up this anecdote because it's a perfect example of Moneyball gone wrong. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I myself am a stathead. I'm a total geek-I know that Bonderman's "VORP" in 2006 was a solid 39.2, and if you really want me to bore you to death, I can explain what that means. But I'm beginning to realize, and I hope Billy is too, that the numbers can only go so far.
There's a certain intangible element that goes into building a great baseball team. Simply playing the averages and hoping for the best is one strategy, but there's more to it than that. Sometimes you have to be willing to gamble a bit. Sometimes there's a Jeremy Bonderman out there waiting to be discovered, and you have to look closely to find him.
That intangible element is what seems to have eluded Billy Beane in his quest for a World Series ring. "Moneyball" is a decent way to build a baseball team, but not every piece of the puzzle can be found in a spreadsheet on Paul DePodesta's laptop. And so, once again, Oakland will have to wait for a return to the World Series. And for me, that's the real story of the 2006 postseason, regardless of who ends up winning it all.
Evans Clinchy is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major.
