Moneyball Quote of the Week: 1/30
“For forty-one million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Pena and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent one point four million per win and you paid two hundred and sixty thousand. I know you’ve taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall. It always gets bloody, always.
It’s the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, it’s threatening their jobs, it’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people are holding the reins, have their hands on the switch. They go bat shit crazy. I mean, anybody who’s not building a team right and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.”
- Arliss Howard as John Henry, Moneyball
Read MoreMoneyball Quote of the Week – 1/2
“The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams, then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game. And now we’re being gutted, organ donors for the rich. Boston has taken our kidneys, Yankees takin’ our heart and you guys are sittin’ around talkin’ the same old good body nonsense, like we’re selling deeds. Like we’re looking for Fabio. We got to think differently.”
- Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, Moneyball
Read MoreMoneyball Quote of the Week – 12/26
“There’s not an organization in baseball who would not have taken the chance on this young guy. It didn’t pan out. It happens every year. Some do, some don’t. Two scouts can go into the mind of a young man and determine whether he’s really confident about what he can do. So he gets to sign him based on his ability, but then he’s gotta be successful to be confident. And once he becomes confident that’s when you got something. You make a decision on what you see and things don’t pan out, you move on. That’s baseball. Many are called, few are chosen.”
- Unknown Announcer in Moneyball
Read MoreMoneyball Quote of the Week – 12/19
“Unfortunately he can’t do Stanford and professional baseball. He would have to pick one or the other. If he wants to be the center fielder for the New York Mets, he wants to be the baseball player, he really needs to accept this as life’s first occupation, a first career. We’re all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children’s game, we just don’t… don’t know when that’s gonna be. Some of us are told at eighteen, some of us are told at forty, but we’re all told. But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, we want you badly and we think that this amount of money expresses that desire.”
- Scout in Moneyball
Read MoreMoneyball Quote of the Week – 12/12
“Seriously guys, I think we have to remember this is the man. He answers to no one except ownership and God. And he doesn’t have to answer to us. We make suggestions, he makes decisions.”
- Bob Bishop as himself, Moneyball
Read MoreMoneyball Quote of the Week – 11/28
“It’s about getting things down to one number, using stats the way we read them, we’ll find value in players that nobody else can see. People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws: age, appearance, personality. Bill James and mathematics cuts straight through that. Billy, of the 20,000 notable players for us to consider, I believe that there’s a championship team of 25 people that we can afford because everyone else in baseball undervalues them. Like an island of misfit toys.”
- Jonah Hill as Peter Brand, Moneyball
Read MoreMoneyball Quote of the Week – 11/7
The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.
- Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Read MoreMoneyball Quote of the Week – 10/31
The sheer quantity of brain power that hurled itself voluntarily and quixotically into the search for new baseball knowledge was either exhilarating or depressing, depending on how you felt about baseball. The same intellectual resources might have cured the common cold, or put a man on Pluto.
- Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
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