The first and obvious thing about Earl Weaver, for me, was that he was terrifying. I lived about seven blocks from Memorial Stadium, depending on how you walked it, and Junior Orioles packages were cheap, so my parents took my older brother and me to games all the time, from our youngest days. This meant that when I…

Earl Weaver, who managed the Orioles for 15 seasons from 1968-1982 (and another two from 1985-1986) passed away on Friday night at the age 82. In 11 of his 17 seasons, the Orioles won 90 or more games, and in his first three at the helm he guided Baltimore to three World Series, one of which, the 1970 Series with the…

"The Oakland A's have shocked the Rangers and the baseball world!" That's one way to put it mildly. As Dan Brooks of BrooksBaseball.net reminded us all, the A's had less than a 1 percent chance of even making the playoffs back on June 15. That's just completely insane.

Earlier this month, Sean Doolittle made his major-league debut for the Oakland Athletics. It wasn't an obviously momentous event: The left-hander took the mound with two outs in the top of the fifth, with the A's trailing Texas 5-0. He struck out Nelson Cruz to end the inning, then pitched a perfect sixth, striking out …

Republished from V Magazine.

Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal took Mr. and Mrs. Yogi Berra to see Moneyball. Yogi liked the movie, although not Philip Seymour Hoffman's dour Art Howe. "'Art's a good guy,' he says. 'And I never saw him that fat. He's thin.'" [WSJ]

We've heard from many of the figures on the periphery of Moneyball since the movie hit theaters two weeks ago, but one we hadn't heard from was Billy Bean, the former Tigers, Dodgers, and Padres outfielder who came out of the closet in 1999. Bean, because of that slight difference in names, has often been mistaken for…

Until today, I'd seen no evidence that Tony La Russa had ever in his life been intentionally funny. I believe the funniest thing Tony La Russa ever said was probably, "Nah, I'm just tired, officer." Tony La Russa treats funny the way he treats a lefty reliever facing a righty in the sixth inning of an early-June game in…

Michael Lewis isn't just a disturbingly prolific journalist who elevated Billy Beane to mythic status. He's also a one-man center of power who enriches and ennobles all those with whom he consorts, according to New York Magazine, which neglects to really examine why having so much influence concentrated in a journalist …

Although advanced baseball analysis had been around for years, Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball, about the Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane's using it to build their roster, helped to start an online industry of carping about player evaluation and team structure. The release of the 2011 film adapted from it…