MONEYBALL BEFORE IT WAS COOL:
Earl Weaver, Baseball Lout and Legend: REVIEW: ‘The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver Tricked, Tormented & Reinvented Baseball’ by John W. Miller (Matt Lewis, March 9, 2025, Free Beacon)
Behind the theatrics, however, was a guy who viewed the game differently. While everyone else was obsessed with batting averages, Weaver cared more about on-base percentage and timely home runs. He came to despise the sacrifice bunt (why give away an out?). He turned shortstops into power hitters, moving 6’4″ Cal Ripken Jr. from third to short and paving the way for future MLB stars like Derek Jeter. He platooned players before it was cool, squeezing 36 homers and 98 RBIs out of a three-man rotation in left field in 1979. This is to say, he re-created star players “in the aggregate.” Billy Beane and the Moneyball crew should’ve sent him royalty checks.
Where did this knack for data and analytics come from? Miller suggests it came from his Uncle Bud, a bookie who helped raise him in St. Louis. Whatever the inspiration, Weaver was thinking in probabilities decades before the sabermetric crowd made it standard practice. And he wasn’t just a numbers guy. He was the first manager to use a radar gun. His ingenuity even extended to the field itself. He had the Orioles’ groundskeeper doctor the field—muddying the basepaths to slow fast opponents, and hardening the infield to create tricky hops for bad defenders. It was brilliant, it was petty, and it worked.
He even helped develop a baseball video game that eventually led to John Madden Football. Think about that: Earl Weaver is at least partially responsible for the most dominant sports video game of all time. Not bad for a guy who looked like he spent his afternoons drinking Pabst Blue Ribbons and screaming at neighborhood kids to stay off his lawn.