The 2002 Oakland Athletics, pegged by baseball insiders as a mediocre club at the outset of the season, exposed much of the sport’s conventional wisdom to be bunk when they posted a 102-60 regular season. But the central insight of Moneyball is that much of this conventional wisdom, propagated by baseball’s traditional gatekeepers, is hopelessly wrong. When you think about the question “Is Moneyball true?” you should also consider why it was so important for the story to be told. And this long and storied tradition has created a century and a half’s worth of conventional wisdom about best practices and how the game ought to be played.īaseball’s old guard-a consortium of coaches, scouts, general managers, owners, former players, and sports journalists-have rigid conceptions of what makes a good player and how teams win games. As America’s national pastime, it’s been played in the United States since before the Civil War. Is Moneyball true? Or is Moneyball based on a true story? Anyone involved in playing professional baseball or managing a professional team cannot escape the weight of the sport’s history. But it’s important to not only ask “Is Moneyball true?” but to know why it works. Moneyball is a true story about how the Oakland A’s GM, Billy Beane, used data-driven tactics to form and operate the baseball team. All the people in the book are real people in the baseball world. When you ask, “Is Moneyball true?” the answer is yes. Is Moneyball true? In other words, is Moneyball based on a true story? Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading. This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of 'Moneyball' by Michael Lewis.

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