How to Beat a Broken Game, Pedro Moura
How to Beat a Broken Game, Pedro Moura
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How to Beat a Broken Game
The Rise of the Dodgers in a League on the Brink

Author: Pedro Moura

Narrator: Pedro Moura

Unabridged: 8 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 03/29/2022

Synopsis

The inside story of how the Dodgers won their first championship in more than thirty years—but helped cripple the sport of baseball in the process

After years of frustrating playoff runs, the Los Angeles Dodgers finally reclaimed the World Series trophy after more than thirty years, led by star pitcher Clayton Kershaw, electric outfielder Mookie Betts, and a bevy of impressive young players assembled by team president Andrew Friedman. No team is better positioned to win now and in the future.

Yet winning at modern baseball is nothing like it was even twenty years ago. In the years since the famous Moneyball revolution, baseball has grown to look less like a sport than a Wall Street firm that traded its boiler room for a field. Teams relentlessly chase every tiny advantage to win games and make money, even as it hurts fans, TV ratings, and players, courting bigger problems in the long run.

This dramatic and insightful book takes you into the clubhouse with the championship players, as well as into the offices where teams constantly seek new ways to win—even when it hurts the game. How to Beat a Broken Game shows not only what it takes to win, but what it will take to save the sport.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on March 08, 2022

I hesitated before picking up this book-- from the description I was afraid it was going to be a hatchet job on the Dodgers... and I have loved the Dodgers all my life. "The inside story of how the Dodgers won their first championship in more than 30 years--but helped cripple the sport of baseball i......more

Goodreads review by Kyle on February 27, 2022

The Dodgers certainly have created an advantageous situation for success. They have seemingly unlimited funds, exceptionally intelligent individuals running operations, and a mix of old school and new school techniques. I enjoyed having some greater detail of the behind the scenes operations of the......more

Goodreads review by Trevor on April 18, 2022

The story of how the Los Angeles Dodgers ended their thirty-plus-year championship drought in 2020, amid a season shortened by the COVID-19 crisis and a post-season played in a bubble, is presented here in Pedro Moura's new book as a triumph of analytics over old-school baseball "insider" knowledge,......more

Goodreads review by Cole on June 12, 2022

It was somewhat interesting, but not exactly my cup of tea. I can definitely see people enjoying it but I couldn't make myself finish by the time the book was due. Fairly slow and a bit dry, but with some interesting biographies about players and front office people. I'll give it another try at some......more

Goodreads review by jeffrey on May 16, 2022

I enjoyed reading this expose on the rise of the use of metrics in Major League Baseball, focusing primarily on the Dodgers runup to winning the World Series in 2020 and beyond. But there is actually relatively little explaining how it is that MLB is actually "on the brink". As I understand it, at l......more

Quotes

“Today, baseball is deciding who it will serve in—and for—the coming generations. Soaked in greed and in the hands of Ivy League numbers crunchers, the game teeters between sport and thesis paper. Better it is in the hands of Pedro Moura, who, in How to Beat a Broken Game, has captured the science, the economics, and the soul of a pastime laboring to rediscover its most authentic self. It’s a brilliant book about the championship Dodgers. It’s a book about so much more.”—Tim Brown, bestselling coauthor of The Phenomenon and Imperfect

“Pedro Moura has written a clear-eyed, absorbing account of the Dodgers’ rise—and baseball’s decline. It lays out everything broken about Major League Baseball while simultaneously reminding us exactly why we love the sport so much. How to Beat a Broken Game is a book with heart to match its brains. If only the league itself could say the same thing.”—Eric Nusbaum, author of Stealing Home

“The scope of this book is just extraordinary. It’s supposedly about a single championship team, but it’s really about everything: technology and culture, insiders and outsiders, the young and the old, and all that’s right and wrong and now and next in the sport today. Moura is such a great reporter that he does what every writer wishes they could do: He comes to know even more about his subject than his sources do. I loved this book, even if it did make me feel old.”—Sam Miller, bestselling coauthor of The Only Rule is It Has to Work

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