Billy Bean was an MLB player in the 80's but went down in history as a managerial genius. He gave a ticket to the league to all athletes showing good results, no matter how far they were from the standards. Billy Bean's approach to player selection has turned baseball into a money-making sport.
The focus is on the Moneyball system and its founder, Billy Bean. The biography of the man who changed baseball is in our article.
Childhood and passion for football
William Lamar Billy Bean III was born on March 29, 1962. Billy was introduced to baseball through his father, who played in his spare time as a pitcher on an amateur team.
In early childhood, Bean was also fond of football, but fears about possible injuries prevented - any bruise could cross out the prospects for a possible baseball career. When it came time to choose between football and baseball, Billy Bean chose the latter without hesitation. He devoted his whole life to this sport.
To this day, Billy Bean's life is closely connected with baseball, but his high school passion for football,which he had to give up, was also not forgotten. Bean is an avid fan of English football, attends games and never misses broadcasts of key matches.
Baseball career
Soon he had to make another fateful choice. The Stanford team offered Billy a spot and at the same time he got a chance to sign with the New York Mets - the club offered him $125,000.
Scouts (assistants who specialize in finding players and negotiating with them) "Mets" predicted a bright future for him and a brilliant career. They were so convincing that Billy decided to abandon his university studies in favor of future success in big-time sports. Billy later said that this decision was the first and last he made, following the material side of the issue.
From 1984 to 1989 he played as an outfielder in the major leagues, and by 1989 his baseball career came to an end.
Innovative ideas
In 1994, Billy Bean became the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, and on October 17, 1997, its general manager. The competition of purses that baseball had become at the time did not suit Billy at all. New players did not come out, and well-known clubs simply bought popular baseball players from each other. Athletes did not have a fixed salary, so it all depended on which franchise could offer a large amount. Each victory cost the clubs quite a lot.
The Major League did not pay attention to the contribution of individual players to the game. They were more interested in appearance and falling into the vague unspoken standards that a professional player had to meet. External data was of great importance, as a result, too short, tall, fat or thin players turned out to be overboard. Any baseball player with a unique or unusual playing style had no chance of breaking into the professional sport.
It was these baseball underdogs that Billy Bean turned his attention to. He discarded stereotypes about style and appearance and focused on dry statistics: the percentage of successful hits and runs, exits to the base, strikes and outs. Billy Bean has been called both a genius and a lunatic for his lineup of high-profile but quirky athletes.
Once Bean's tactic paid off, other teams picked it up. The Boston Red Sox tried several times to lure Billy into the position of general manager, but after another refusal, they simply began to apply his schemes on their own. Bean made it clear that even in a game like baseball, it is possible to cast aside dogmas and find alternative solutions that will later lead the team to victory. A set of underrated baseball players who cost an order of magnitude less than the famous ones allowed Billy to prove that they can successfully take on even the strongest MLB franchises without much resources.
Book image
For Billy Bean, 2003 marked the release ofbooks about baseball's statistical revolution written by Michael Lewis. The author was impressed with how Billy was able to lead a team made up of baseball underdogs of the time to so many victories.
Billy Bean proved that money isn't everything. He preferred to focus on the statistical utility of the players. For the first time, they were selected based on the principle of economic profitability and the calculation of the value and usefulness of each specific person in the selected position.
Billy Bean in the movie
Seven and a half years after the release of the book by Michael Lewis, which by that time had already become a bestseller, Bennett Miller took up the shooting of the film. Brad Pitt played the main role in it, later this film will become one of the best in his acting career.
Michael Lewis's book tells exclusively about Billy's work, without affecting the human factor in any way. It is a collection of dry facts and rules. The main character is depicted as rather tough, prudent and self-serving, although in real life Billy Bean, on the contrary, is quite charming. He himself is more impressed by the image from the film.
At the same time, Billy Bean's views on baseball from the movie contradict his views in reality. In the film, he claims that in baseball, it's impossible not to be romantic. However, in reality, Billy believes that sports can only be romantic in childhood, only victory matters later.
Application of the Moneyball system to other sports
Can Billy's ideas be calleduniversal and make it work for the benefit of any other sports? Many consider the Moneyball system only suitable for baseball, in which it is easy to calculate the possible outcomes of events on the field.
Billy claims that with proper skill, any sport can be calculated. Moreover, he calls those who disagree with this foolish.
