2g2k: MoneyBall
As I read your post, something came to mind that I think a Yay-Area-ite such as yourself might appreciate. If as your ace Humanity Critic declares John McCain is the 50-Cent of politics, is Obama the Billy Bean of politics? Yes, I know Billy Bean is not a rapper so the analogy is an imperfect one, but I still wanted to give HC a shout.
When Michael Lewis dropped MoneyBall, many baseball traditionalists were offended because it challenged their approach to the game with its emphasis on statistics. Considering baseball is a sport obsessed with stats, this was an ironic critique, no less so than the offense supposedly taken by so many Americans with Obama's eloquence. What traditionalists did not like about Moneyball is that it prioritized a different set of stats, in the case of hitters On Base Percentage (OBP) over home runs and battting average.
However, Beane's success with the small-market Athletics enticed other teams to take chances with similar younger general managers who favored Beane's statistics oriented approach. The most successful of these GMs thus far has been Boston's Theo Epstein who's overseen the teams last two World Championships. If you look online you'll find any number of sites that abide to a stats-driven approach to analyzing athletic performance producing some fascinating assessments. Case in point one basketball statistician once ranked someone like Eduardo Najera ahead of Kobe Bryant, a revelation that the analyst conceded meant you can not take the numbers at face value. Nonetheless, the success of teams like the San Antonio Spurs, Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots prove that some variation of Beane's stats driven approach works.
Where this relates to Obama is that so much of his campaign is tied to numbers; his fundraising totals, size of crowds, red states he's putting in play; and of course his age. Numbers have a way of making people more effective than they seem, and quickly bringing accord where a moment ago there was discord. Considering his long battle with Hillary Clinton their union, while necessary, may seem too perfect too soon, which in turn leads to people again focusing on the numbers. In this case the numbers are reflected in the amounts that Obama is helping Clinton's campaign raise. Dubya professed to not pay attention to the numbers which led to him characterizing Al Gore as out of touch, and Kerry as a "flip flopper." Obama's association with numbers has McCain declaring that Obama is both out of touch and a flip-flopper.Moneyball's subtitle is "The Art of Winning an Unfair Game." Baseball is as artful as it is unfair precisely because it's as irrational a sport as it is a scientific one. The Cubs and Athletics practically sellout every game but haven't won a title in ages, the Marlins have won two titles in a decade yet they can't draw any fans. It does not make any sense.
But it does, because more than numbers, what baseball fans love more than anything else are stories. Obama had a better story to tell than Clinton in the democratic race and that's largely why he won. One of the reasons that Wesley Clark's comments have gotten so much attention is that Obama's response unmasked a concern of his campaign, and that is that John McCain may be as good a story-teller, or have as good of a story as the skinny black kid with the funny name.
More than not bringing a title to Oaktown, Beane's legacy may be that he took the story out of the Athletics. Once people started focusing on the numbers, they forgot about those teams from the 70s and 80s and the characters who made them national phenomenons, larger than life figures such as Rollie Fingers, Reggie Jackson and the "Bash Brothers" Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. Obama might want to consider putting aside the speeches until the fall and think of this summer as if it's one big BBQ and the eyes of the world are on him waiting to tell his story. We may have heard it before, but we'll gladly listen again.
Ferentz
1 Comment
Reader Comments (1)
Uh oh! You went there with my man Billy Beane :)
Hmmm. While I love you equating the two people who probably most inspire in me the most intense mix of fanboy awe and bar-side cynicism, I'm not sure the analogy is perfect. You might say that the campaign is Billy Beane-like, and the candidate is much older-school.
I think Michael Lewis was trying to show how Billy Beane had rationalized the game for the 21st Century, removed it from the mystical realm of old scouts and false indicators. And I think he did it because Oakland is one of the poorest drawing teams in the league--we're consistently in the bottom quarter, I mean, shit, we're moving to freakin Fremont.
He's the epitome of the restless Adam Smith-style capitalist, relentlessly destroying the team to remake it. He's probably the least wedded to narrative of anyone in the game. Every die-hard A's fan--of which I am beyond one--knows their heart will get broken in the fall.
Nick Swisher or Danny Haren or Tim Hudson or Miguel Tejada--Miguel Tejada! whom Beane found on the cheap in the DR and built up from a scrawny little, um, beanpole into one of the best in the game--all of these were heroes who conformed to Oakland's sense of underdog love and bootstrap pride. None of them got the long-term contract, and all of them were traded before their time.
The story Billy Beane delivers every year is this one: we'll have a new crop of underachivers, outcasts, past-their-prime stars, and hot young stars on the field. And then when the year's over, we'll lose half of them--some to bigger paychecks (the Hankees, the Gnats) and some to oblivion. But don't get too attached.
That's certainly the mentality of the permanent party operatives, especially Dems who have been mainly out of power for the last forty years. The candidate is the candidate, and next year there will be another. Obama is Mr. Field of Dreams, though, and that's why I agree with your conclusion. The campaign may be underestimating the damage it is doing with the standard post-primary rightward swing thing.
I think an essential tug-of-war in the Democratic party is between its idealism and its pragmatism. Most long-time observers don't want to go there--they correctly point to 1968 and 1972 as times when this intraparty fight ended in disaster.
But no one can get to a new majority without some leaps of imagination, and that's where numbers, statistics, and damn lies can strand this presidential campaign like the last two.