The Idea Of Sport In Moneyball By Michael Lewis

When one hears the word sport the though that comes to the mind is athletic people who are physical specimens competing against one another to be the winner or the champion. In the dictionary the exact definition is, "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment." This is the way sports have always been though of from the world. Although, this is not all that factors into a sport. By reading a book named Moneyball by Michael Lewis one may think of sports in a whole different way. In specifics this book focuses on the sport baseball and within the book there is a short story on one of the characters. This discusses not only does baseball, or really any sport, …show more content…
He possesses all the characteristics and skills to be the best that ever was in baseball. When someone gets scouted in baseball they are judged by having "tools" and there are five "tools". The tools are hitting for power, hitting for average, fielding, arm strength, and speed. Billy was a kid that had all of these tools and did them all incredibly well. The one thing the organization that drafted Billy, the New York Mets, did not include in the scouting was his capability to deal with failure. In baseball one of the hardest things to do is to cope with failing seven times out of ten and sometimes even more than that. Lewis describes this situation, "If there was one thing Billy was not equipped for, it was failure." It was a new way of thinking for me as a reader and the people that scouted young kids. They had, "badly misjudged Billy 's nature," because of his mental makeup. Some kids deal with failure and stepping into box better than others and it comes natural. While some always have fear in their heads. This stripped down the way scouts and I thought about the game of baseball and the players. It was no longer a game of pure physicality anymore to scout it became a game of mental capacities mixed with physical gift as well as work …show more content…
There is always a sight amount of failure in every sport but an abnormal amount in baseball, making it one of the most frustrating and hard sports one would ever play. With a different mindset and a new point of view towards baseball it can only affect the people that get the chance to see this example and experience what it 's like to fail so much in baseball. From experience it can be frustrating and it can get to one like it did to Billy or one can choose to not let it consume themselves. I have learned a lot from the defamiliarization of the game of baseball. It shows one that physical abilities mean just as much or even less than mental abilities. Dealing with failure is something one must do, and without that they will not survive and baseball will eat oneself alive. No one will ever be able to experience what baseball players go through until they have experienced it themselves. This changes how we view the game of baseball and how we view the people that play the game and sports in