Moneyball: Don't wait for the movie

As something of a connoisseur of great sports writing, it's somewhat odd that I hadn't read Moneyball, Michael Lewis's 2003 bestseller, until last week. The reason for my tardiness is, I was aware it was a highly influential book on the statistical revolution in baseball. Thus, I assumed it would be largely academic, and therefore a drag to read.
How wrong I was.
Moneyball is a freaking riot. In the first line of the preface, Lewis writes, "I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story." By the end of the book, that much is clear. The general gist of the book chronicles the rise of a new stats-based wisdom in baseball, viewed through a series of fascinating characters - Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane being the most central.
Lewis's brilliance is evident throughout. A's portly left fielder Jeremy Giambi, trying to track down a fly ball, is "like a postman trying to escape a mad dog," in Lewis's parlance. "When he (Giambi) runs, he manages somehow at the same time to convey personal embarrassment." Hilarious stuff. Equally brilliant is Lewis's sarcasm directed at baseball's old boys' club - executives who flatly refuse to open their minds to the new statistical logic.
By the time I'd finished Moneyball, it had earned a place in my personal pantheon of favourite sports books, along with My Losing Season by Pat Conroy, Positively Fifth Street by James McManus, The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam, and Boys Will be Boys by Jeff Pearlman (among others).
As we speak, Moneyball is being made into a movie starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Director is Bennett Miller, who directed Hoffman in the stellar "Capote." Deadly cast. Due in 2011. Can't wait.