Another craft essay for my class.
Figurative Language in Moneyball
Michael Lewis’ book about the Oakland A’s, is so brilliantly told that readers who don’t care about baseball (readers like me for example) still enjoy the story. For those who like fairy tales, there’s the Cinderella story about how the A’s General Manager Billy Beane drafted players who were too fat, too short, or just not handsome enough for the other major league teams. Or for readers who enjoy a hero’s tale, there’s the one about how Beane, by looking at statistics in a new way, revolutionized the game of baseball. But it isn’t just about how the author spins his content, Lewis also engages his readers by sprinkling fabulous metaphors, similes, and analogies on the pages to enhance scenes, sharpen characters, and to just explain concepts to readers not familiar with baseball (again, readers like me).
Lewis figurative language is especially effective when describing how Billy Beane’s actions affected the people around him. He describes how Beane quitting as an outfielder and instead looking for a desk job took the A’s front office by surprise because, “It was as unlikely as some successful politician quitting a campaign and saying he wanted to be a staffer, or a movie actor walking off the set and taking a job as a key grip.” (55) While setting the scene for how the A’s GM interacts with his scouts during the 2002 draft, Lewis conveys the level of tension in the room, “The tone of the conversation is that of a meeting in a big company that has just decided to drop a product line, or shift resources from marketing to R&D.” (30) New members of the A’s team realized that the GM was more than a distant figure head, “He was like a Hollywood producer who insisted on meddling not only with the script but also the lights and camera and sets and wardrobes.” (154) When Beane trades players with other GM’s mid season he does so by “Trawling in late June, using Carlos Pena as chum…” (203)
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Two reoccurring themes chosen by Lewis are from the worlds of casinos and Wall Street. Some of them are close enough on the pages that they should function as mixed metaphors, but somehow the author makes them work. This may be because Lewis sees both as gambling establishments; he described being a bond salesman in London in a book titled Liar’s Poker. (Which I have not read.) The gambling examples include how during the 2002 draft, “Billy and Paul no longer think of the draft as a crapshoot. They are a pair of card counters at the blackjack tables; they think they’ve found a way to turn the odds inside the casino against the owner.” (112) Lewis describes Scott Hatteberg’s virtues of plate discipline and ability to get on base to be the same as David Justice’s and Jeremy Giambi’s, “He like them, was a blackjack dealer who understood never to hit on 19.” (160) During the game between the Oakland A’s and the Kansas City Royals, the author argues that if Billy Bean really believed that baseball could be reduced to a science, he would remain calm during all games. “To get worked up over plays, or even games, is as unproductive as a casino manager worrying over the outcomes of individual pulls of the slot machines.” (247)
Some straight stock market examples include Lewis’ description of Billy Bean’s reaction when he’s able to draft pick Nicholas Swisher. “He was a bond trader, who had made a killing in the morning and entered the afternoon free of fear. Feeling greedy. Certain that the fear in the market would present him with even more opportunities to exploit.” (113) He relates the effect of A’s complete lineup after the 2002 draft to, “It was is if a big new market-moving Wall Street money manager had sprung into being, and bought shares only in vegetarian restaurants, or electric car manufacturers.” (117) The method of creating big league closers out of minor league players Lewis illustrates as “You could, in essence, buy a stock, pump it up with false publicity, and sell it off for much more than you’d paid for it.” (125)
The figurative language in Moneyball, makes Lewis narrative crisp and colorful. He’s a master in its usage and adds those extra details that drive his point home perfectly. One example of this is when he contrasts deeply religious pitcher Chad Bradford’s normal behavior with how he is on the field. Lewis could just say, “The moment he scuffed the rubber with his foot he became a pitiless con artist, a sinister magician.” but continues with, “He sawed pretty ladies in two, and made rabbits vanish.” (232) That extra sentence is what adds the colorfulness to the crispiness of his words. Through it’s usage, Lewis also manages to convey his own opinions. My favorite example of this is when he describes how event though many baseball professionals purchased computers in the 80s, they still didn’t know how to use them effectively. This was because they hired technical personnel, “But they did this less with honest curiosity than in the spirit of a beleaguered visitor to Morocco hiring a tour guide: pay off one so that the seventy-five others would stop trying to trade you their camels for your wife. Which one you pay off is largely irrelevant.” (88) Lewis clearly shows his contempt of the baseball insiders who were too foolish to recognize the opportunities presented to them, but does it with wittiness which keeps him from becoming preachy—something few authors know how to do.