Dr. James Reese, Faculty Member, Practicum Coordinator & Community Relations, Sports Management & Esports and
Billy Beane, Senior Advisor, Oakland Athletics
Former GM and current senior advisor for the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane, shares his insight on the ever-evolving world of professional sports. As a pioneer in the use of data and analytics for managing teams, Beane’s work with the Oakland A’s inspired the book, “Moneyball,” which was adapted for film in 2011. Today, Beane walks Dr. Reese through his decades-long career while answering questions from students eager to launch their own sports management careers.
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Jim Reese: Hello and welcome to the latest edition of our Voices In The Field podcast series, brought to you by the APU Sports Management Program. My name is Jim Reese, and I’ll be your host for today’s podcast. Now, please welcome our special guest, Mr. Billy Beane, senior advisor for the Oakland Athletics, and if you’re a sports fan and you don’t know who Billy Beane is, you’ve probably been living under a rock for quite some time. I think everyone in sports knows Billy. Billy, welcome. Thanks for taking time to be here.
Billy Beane: No. Thanks for having me, Jim, and, given the audience, I’m proud to be a part of this conversation. Thanks for the invitation. Again, I think the audience itself is something that’s very near and dear to myself, so, again, happy to be here.
Jim Reese: So, Billy, just briefly, we know that you were a GM with the A’s and now you’re a senior advisor for the team. We know you played Major League Baseball, so just a little bit about your path there. Did you consider that a traditional path to becoming a general manager or were there some different steps in there that were nontraditional?
Billy Beane: The path I took was the route most general managers took. It was really a very… I want to use the word, incestuous business. You played the game or you came up in the game or the business and you ultimately ran the business. We really didn’t hire many people outside, so my route was traditional. What was interesting, though, was my business mentor’s route was the one that was nontraditional, and that was Sandy Alderson. Again, most general managers were former players, were people who’d been in the business. Sandy Alderson, however, was a former Dartmouth undergrad, was a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam and then went to Harvard Law School when he exited the Marines. His background was actually nontraditional. Again, he was not a player. He taught himself the game by reading books. He was really the first one that really questioned some of the things that were going on, because the traditions of running the business were just things that were handed down where, when he came in, a lot of them didn’t make sense to him.
So, I was really lucky to have, first of all, a guy who was a brilliant businessman, but, more importantly, had great leadership skills. I think a lot of it came from his experience in the military and his background. And, also, very unique from a military standpoint: there’s not too many Marine lieutenants who were in Vietnam that also went to Harvard Law and graduated near the top of their class. It’s a pretty dynamic profile for a business mentor, so mine was more traditional.
Again, the route now to being a general manager is much different than mine was. If you look at the biographies of guys running the team now, most of them came up like Sandy: educated, go through college, have some leadership skills – not necessarily acquired through the military, like Sandy – but there’s very few players now running teams. When I came up, the majority of them were, again, ex-players, so I actually had a traditional. I’d like to think, in some respect, and I give Michael Lewis the credit – a lot of credit to the people I hired – the route changed and the backgrounds changed a lot once data and analytics were used to make player evaluations.
Jim Reese: That’s a perfect segue, because that was one of the next questions from one of our students: We know the difference in the markets and the luxury tax and all that kind of stuff. It must be incredibly difficult each year to lose good players to other teams, but, obviously, that was what got started with Sandy, as far as the sabermetrics. But what was your initial reaction? That’s a huge step. I mean, you’re talking career ending, entrepreneurial, start a business. It’s so different. How did you feel about that, and what was it that pushed you to take the plunge, finally?
Billy Beane: Well, it’s funny, my own personal background… Listen, I’m very proud to have played the Major Leagues. There’s so few people who get that opportunity. When you’re in the Major Leagues, you’re one of the 600 best in the entire world at what you do. Despite my pedestrian career, what it did was really… I always viewed it this way: Playing the game was never the end-all for me, because, I realized, even had I become a great Major League player, it really takes up a small part of your life. You’ve got, usually, from 30, 35 on, the rest of your life to live, so you’ve usually got to find something else to do.
So, for me, I saw it as a platform to do what I really, really wanted to do as a kid. I wanted to, A, run a team, which I ended up doing and, in some respect, I also wanted to be part of the ownership and the value creation that came with having a partial ownership, which I ultimately was able to achieve. So, again, taking the plunge and then not playing – I stopped playing when my first daughter was soon to be born. It seemed like an inflection point for me, for my life. I had the opportunity to work with, probably, the most progressive and dynamic front office with Sandy Alderson and, on the field, we also had Tony La Russa, who was on his way to creating a hall-of-fame career and also being somewhat of an iconoclast in the way he did things.
So, it was a really, really fertile environment to segue into, being a player and into the front office, so it didn’t seem like much of a leap. In fact, I tell this story many times: I don’t think that I’ve actually swung a baseball bat from the day I stopped playing, which is in the spring of 1990, and I’ve never missed it. Again, playing had actually provided me with the opportunity to do something I could do the rest of my life and something I was very passionate about, and, in some sense, also sort of satisfied my intellectual curiosity.
When I was 28 years old and I embarked on it, I have never looked back. It’s easy to say now, but I’d never regretted the decision. I’ve been very fortunate. I think success comes in for a lot of reasons, a lot of it is the individual. A lot of it, you can have great people around you. That’s why I think having a mentor – I always say that – finding a mentor, somebody that you not only respect intellectually, but respect ethically and morally. For me, I had that, and I was also blessed with having parents who were the same way, and I just segued into Sandy Alderson. I was real lucky. I had great people around me that helped. It wasn’t all because of me. I’d like to think I played a part in it, obviously, but for me it was an easy decision to stop playing.
Again, what I’m doing now, we’re having this conversation, and I know we’re going to talk a little bit later what some of the things I’m doing now. I’ve never been bored a day in my life, because there’s just so many things that – and I think it really stemmed from having, again, using the term, “intellectual curiosity,” wanting to learn a lot about things, and there’s always a new challenge. As I get older, I realize that people talk about retiring, and I say, “Well, I don’t ever see myself retiring, because, even if I wasn’t working, there’s so many things, whether it be fly fishing or whatever that I just find interesting.” I just don’t think there’ll be enough days in my life to take advantage of all the great things that are out there.
Jim Reese: It’s funny that you said that, because I say one of the same things all the time, over and over. People ask me what I do, and I say, “I get paid to talk about sports. And it’s the best job in the world.” You get to build relationships with students. I mean, it’s just wonderful. It sounds like we’re both extremely blessed to be doing what we love to do, and that’s what you want for any of your family members or students, to find that passion. It’s great to hear that.
The other thing, too, as mentors, I try to tell students to seek out mentors. As you have, I’ve had a few in my life that made a huge impact. You just can’t put a value on that. They take you under their wing and guide you a little bit and then turn you loose. It’s really special. I’ve probably had three or four in my entire life that have impacted me like that. I always tell students, and hopefully they’ll do that, find someone that you described, the characteristics of a mentor. Find someone like that and be a sponge and try to learn as much as you can.
All right, next question, this was one from a student as well. Of the different metrics, was there one that jumped out to help you find that, I don’t want to say non-traditional player, it’s not, but the overlooked player? Were there certain ones that were more valuable than others or was it just a score, a total score that helped you to do that?
Billy Beane: That’s easy. Now, understand, all of this has changed significantly in the last 20-plus years with technology and the ability to collect data and information. When we first started out, and I let it be known, too: any of the success we’ve had or any of the ideas we had – particularly the ideas – were nothing proprietary or were they anything we invented. I sort of say this, but if you’ve read the book, “Moneyball,” every idea in there was one we stole from Bill James. I sort of say that jokingly, but our industry sort of allowed us to. And when I say Bill James, Bill James is sort of one of the baseball academics that have been around for years. Guys like him and Pete Palmer and Earnshaw Cook have been writing like, “Listen, there’s a more efficient way to sort of deploy capital.” And there’s statistics at that time that actually mean something. It was on-base percentage and that was the one we latched onto.
And the reason it was important to us was, first of all, on-base percentage, of all the statistics – now this is in the nineties, actually up into the nineties. Now, again, the metrics and the stuff we’re using now is far more sophisticated, but, simply put, the most important statistic at that time was, as it relates to correlating to winning baseball games was on-base percentage. That and starting pitching ERA. Well, the difference between the two is that, and you mentioned talking about teams with bigger teams and smaller teams, is that, everybody who follows a baseball team knows that pitching’s important and the market realized that. So, the most expensive players were starting pitchers. Now, in Oakland we had the smallest payroll, so we couldn’t afford starting pitching. So, for us on-base percentage became, it was really a skill that was undervalued and underappreciated and, quite frankly, priced to the point where we could afford it and it was the most important one.
So, imagine any business where the most important thing you can do is actually very cheap and cost-effective, because the rest of the industry or the rest of your peer group isn’t valuing it to the level they should. That’s, simply put, what we did: we basically collected, we had a small amount of chips that we could invest in players. We used all those chips, fortunately, to invest in the most important stat and skill and the benefit to us is it was probably the ninth or 10th highest-paid skill, so we could afford it. That’s kind of what the book was about, and this was all public information, it was nothing we invented. Bill James had been writing for years that teams should be doing that, and that’s what I’m talking about. The game was very insulated and that we hired our own, so that guys like Bill James were on the outside.
They were baseball academics that nobody listened to. They were professors of baseball at the time that most people just dismissed them. And one of the reasons they did, in my opinion, was they could. Baseball is a little different than most businesses. If you don’t adapt in most businesses, you’re going to either go out of business or somebody’s going to come and gobble you up and take you over. Baseball, if you have a poor season, you just hit the reset button. You really don’t go bankrupt. You just get to start over again, and, in many ways, that kind of puts a damper on creativity, because you’re not forced. Creativity, in my opinion, comes out of necessity many times. I don’t think people just wake up in a business that’s successful and go, “Hey, let’s be really cute and creative here.” They do it because they’re trying to find a way to survive.
And baseball never was really required to do that, because, again, you could have a bad year and you might lose your job if you’re a general manager, but your business is not going to collapse because you make poor decisions by and large. So, getting back to your original question, it was really, simply put, it was on-base percentage. Again, that’s changed significantly now. What teams are doing now is so sophisticated and really driven by more sophisticated and better ways to collect data, as a result of having all this data, this raw data, you hire really, really bright people to turn it into information that can help you, because really what we’re in the game of doing, as a general manager, is predicting player performance: finding the next player and trying to predict what he’s going to do, and pricing it accordingly. It’s a market, in some sense. It’s a market for skills.
These skills are baseball players and they also have a career arc and a curve. And so you’ve got to sort of predict when you’re going to get surplus value or when that value is going to decrease based on ageing and things like that. And nowadays, we use data and very sophisticated tools to do that, but back then it was very, very crude.
Jim Reese: It just makes me think of that one clip in the movie when they’re in the conference room and with the scouts and they’re talking about on-base percentage, that’s just a funny part of the movie. So, that is very interesting and it is way more sophisticated now. There seems to be a statistic for just about everything, which didn’t exist previously.
Billy Beane: Well, you mentioned statistic. It’s interesting, because, for us, statistics were results and really the next generation – and we’re even farther past that – was, we realized that statistics and results weren’t necessarily… all results aren’t equal, but they may be graded equally using statistics. And we wanted to ultimately create player performance models that measured process. We felt like process was a much better predictor of future performance. I’ll give you an example. Twenty years ago when the book came out, if a player broke his bat and hit a single, he was positively rewarded, because his batting average went up, which was a statistic, despite the fact that a process that breaks your bat is usually one that doesn’t lead to continued success. And, so, that was a gap.
And on the flip side, you had a player who maybe hit a line drive to the third baseman that hit it 110 miles an hour. The guy made an unbelievable play, and he was penalized for that process, which, again, normally would’ve resulted in a positive outcome if he consistently does it. What ultimately happened over the course of time after the book came out is teams were able to create their own proprietary models to really start to measure process, because that was a better indicator. And there was a gap between statistics and process.
And I say this, and I don’t say this because I’m trying to be humble or anything like that, but the group of people who run baseball teams now are far brighter than I’ll ever be and have taken it to such levels. I’m proud to be a part of this story, but the idea that the GMs now, I mean, I say this too, they’re smart enough to be leaders in almost any industry. They’re that bright. Where the game is now, in terms, in fact, if you think about it, the game has come so far in terms of its intelligence that they’ve literally had to change the rules because the impact of analytics, and to me that’s, in a weird way, that shows you how smart the group of people are.
There are 30 teams out there. None of these teams are run by people who are not extremely, extremely bright and good at what they do. There’s no bad GMs anymore. There’s some who may be better, some may be resources, but all the guys out there right now, I can just tell you, they’re brilliant, passionate, and surrounded by equal brilliance as well.
Jim Reese: I’m glad they changed that shift role.
Billy Beane: The shift is a great example. I’m glad you brought that up. So, for roughly 150 years, people played their defenses one way. And then a bunch of really smart guys came in and said, “You guys have been doing it wrong for the last 150 years. And no matter how awkward it looks on the field, this is how we’re going to play the defense.” And you know what? It proved to be incredibly effective. And I always say this, the shift is really a bunch of really smart, young people coming into the game and showing us how dumb I was – or all of us were – for 150 years. Like, “Hey, there’s a better way to do it.” And they had to change the rules because it was so effective.
Jim Reese: And the fans didn’t like it because it led to less offense, and so everything is about scoring and keeping people jumping out of their seats.
Billy Beane: You know, it’s interesting. My normal path is I don’t necessarily like the idea of creating regulations when something’s successful. I like the idea of hiring smarter people to beat the shift. That’s sort of the way I would view them sort of, I guess, Adam Smithian, I guess, when it comes to stuff like that. But I just think ultimately someone will find a way to beat that shift. But I think I saw somewhere the stat that if you hit a home run over the fence, no shift’s going to stop that. So that wasn’t eliminated. I think somebody said it eliminated like 11 singles or it basically eliminated a few ground ball base hits, things like that. So, again, while it was effective, I think that the idea is that you really just, again, stop guys from getting a few singles, because if a guy hits a homer over the fence, there’s literally nothing you can do and no rule you can do to stop that.
Jim Reese:. I used to always love it when someone would bunt, because you got half of the infield is wide open and these guys wouldn’t bunt, so when someone finally did, I loved it, because there’s a way you can beat it.
Billy Beane: Of course many teams would tell you they’d rather have Ortiz try and lay down a bunt and at best get a single, than hit one over the wall. So, for them, it was a way of managing that at-bat with Ortiz. “Hey, we’ll give you the bunt, because we’d rather have you hit a single than hit one over the wall.” But laying down a bunt, interesting you said is, listen, it’s a skill that a lot of players lost or stopped creating.
Jim Reese: It’s a lost art.
Billy Beane: Yeah, a lost – well, it depends on if you… I don’t like to call it an art, because I’m not a huge fan of the bunt. It can be effective in the role that you’re talking about, because it becomes an offensive play. I’m less of a fan when it becomes a “give up an out for an extra base.” To your point, I think that the lost art is of using it offensively, not as a way of just, again, gaining an extra base, which I find to be, actually, mathematically, just not, normally, is not a good idea.
Jim Reese: I agree a hundred percent. This next question, you touched on this when you talked about the group that you had together in Oakland and how everyone was kind of willing to do some different things.
In a lot of situations, you’ve got a general manager that can’t put together a team that he wants to because of different influences, and it could be a coach, it could be an owner. Is there a certain mix of communication there that allows GMs to do a better job versus not being able to be successful?
Billy Beane: Yeah, it’s actually a good question, and one I don’t think people think about a lot, but one of the advantages we had in Oakland: we didn’t have a lot of money, but we had a lot of autonomy. Usually, when people who have a lot of money buy a baseball team, very rarely do they just go turn it over to mid-level employees like myself and say, “Hey, I know I spent a billion dollars in this. Go have fun with it.” They buy it because they want to be… They love sports too. Who can blame them if they choose to buy a team and they want input, then they have every right to do that. They’ve sort of purchased that right. That being said, one of the advantages we had was we did have autonomy. As I say, we had a budget, and we just had to stay inside that budget.
We didn’t have a lot of interference, other than, “Don’t spend more than we give you.” Actually, a good environment to work with, despite the limitations financially. And so, in some sense, I think any GM would tell you, “In a perfect world, you have the financial support of your owner with pure autonomy,” but those doesn’t exist all the time. I mean, and some owners are very much out there in terms we know who they are. I mean, certainly, one of the most famous was a guy like George Steinbrenner, who was very involved, not just publicly, but he was also very successful. He invested a lot and he felt like, “Listen, if I’m going to invest this kind of money, then I want a say in what’s going on.”
But I think anybody in any industry would tell you, particularly if they don’t actually own the entire entity, that as long as they sort of get to do their job. I’m sure the military, I know the military is the same thing, just the ability to do the job and not feel like you’re being micromanaged by bureaucracy above you who may or may not have experience in your field of expertise. And that was it. So, we did have that advantage with our ownership. They left us alone. They just didn’t give us a lot. But given the two, listen, we were able to sort of thrive with very little, but the autonomy we were able to take advantage of.
Jim Reese: You guys definitely made the best of what you had available, for sure. Back to your career path, one of the questions we get from students all the time is: How do I become a GM? And you mentioned that yours was traditional and now a lot of them are non-traditional, so there’s no real, straight path. I guess there’s just a lot of just getting as much experience as you can in different areas and then taking advantage of opportunities when those doors open.
Billy Beane: Again, I explained a little of mine, which was, at the time, traditional, and then with the sort of advent and the utilization of analytics, we really became sort of like—the backgrounds that we were hiring were STEM. I mean, we were looking for the same résumés that Silicon Valley was looking for, that Wall Street was looking for. We were competing with them for the same employees. That really has been the case in the last 15 or 20 years. I think the other thing that’s really starting to come into play is that, if you are going to be a general manager, it is a leadership position and that is interface with your employees and providing great leadership in many different ways. It’s not just a ruthless, quantitative position, because you do have to lead people, and you’re dealing with the press, you’re dealing with fans. Because even if you’re not going to, as I say, make the sausage and create the models, it’s certainly going to help that you understand them. So that’s a lot of the background.
But again, the leadership, now, I think you realize how important it is to not only have an understanding of how these models and how the analytics are being used, but also having the leadership ability. That combination. So, to get your question, I said it is very competitive, as you can imagine, because, I mean, sports: Everyone, at some level, has some experience and maybe some passion for sports. But I’ve also found too some, despite the fact that we’ve had… I mean, listen, the Ivy League, I hired Paul DePodesta who was in the movie and he was a Harvard econ major, and then we’ve very much had, there was a lot of guys with Paul’s background that came in after him. But also, I’ve seen the backgrounds of some of my best employees are ones that you would never expect.
In fact, quite frankly, the background is less important. The opportunity, once you get it, is most important. And you mentioned the military too. We’ve had opportunities where we’ve had people who’ve come to work with who—we had a West Point graduate who came and interned for us after his service was done, which is always fascinating. I mean, it would be neat, actually, if we had even more people from the military apply because it’s such unique – and when you talk about leadership skills, there’s probably no better training ground than that. And the life experiences, and those mean something, even with a baseball team. And, listen, if there’s one thing I can say, having been around professional athletes, the one thing that really makes them sort of listen is people who’ve served the country and stuff like that. I mean, that’s when their ears are wide open.
So, in some sense it is cool. It’s cool to get those résumés and just getting the opportunity, having a chance, to basically display your skills, whether they’re quantitative skills, communication skills… But I think, more than anything, I’ve said this (if we go back to the mentor thing): Search out somebody that you really like to see yourself and you admire for and sort of search the person out as opposed to searching out for the job. Because if you’re hired at what you think is your dream job and you have the less-than-dream guy above you, that doesn’t turn out as well as maybe the not-so-good job that has the dream mentor. I’ll take that combination any day. And so again, I say, search out people and the job will figure itself out. That’s my own experience. I was lucky to have that.
I spent my entire career with one of the smallest baseball teams with the opportunities to leave. And I never regretted it, because it ended up being about the people I worked for, and Sandy Alderson, but ultimately the people I hired that stayed around me, that created an atmosphere for myself that I never wanted to leave, despite the fact that we had challenges that maybe other teams didn’t have.
Jim Reese: You may regret saying what you just said, because you’re going to get flooded with résumés from our military alumni. So, students, students? Are you listening? Are you listening to Billy? Okay.
Billy Beane: Yeah. My father started—I was thinking, in another life, he would’ve been an Apple engineer, it all started out with him, as a teenager, enlisting in the Navy, and becoming a jet engine mechanic, which doesn’t sound all that really sort of exciting. He loved it, quite frankly, and just sort of built upon that to create a really interesting, fascinating life. And to this day, if I need something fixed, I call my dad, to this day. And he always knows the answer. And, again, to me, it started out with his training in the military as a jet engine mechanic when he was stationed at Miramar.
Jim Reese: We have a guy in our neighborhood like that, and he just thinks like an engineer. He “MacGyver”s everything, but it always works. It’s just…Bob can do anything. All right, this was an interesting question from one of our students: How did you develop an interest in soccer?
Billy Beane: That’s a great question. Well, it really started on a trip. I was in London – probably, it’s been over 20 years ago – and it was a little, quick trip for my wife’s birthday. I couldn’t figure out where to get her for a birthday. And then they had these really cheap flights over to London. So, we went to London, and I was there during the soccer – football – season, Premier League. It was relatively new. I was reading at breakfast and, just, they have, sort of, tabloid-style newspapers and headlines and, quite frankly, I saw the emotion that surrounded the sport. Another thing, ironically, soccer – the FAA is in England – is about as old as baseball. So, you had a very, sort of, similar history, and a similar tradition to way you did things. And I saw the emotion. My first thought was, “Wow, if there’s this much emotion surrounding the game, there’s probably a lot of opportunity to make rational quantitative decisions.” So, that’s kind of how it started.
As time went on, I sort of grew to love the sport and the athleticism that comes with it. And the other thing too, as I’ve gotten older and become more and more involved, I’ve also said the one great thing about it is that it’s the biggest sport in the world. There’s got to be a reason. That was also another reason for my curiosity. But to really go see great soccer/football teams, you get to go to some of the coolest cities in the world. And I thought that that was another byproduct – you go to London, you’re going to Rome, you’re going to Paris, and Munich. And, so, it’s just something that, over time, has grown. The world’s become smaller. Even now, in the states now are – 20 years ago, you couldn’t see… soccer/football games weren’t on TV. Now, you can find them anywhere.
And, so, I’d like to think I was a little bit ahead of the curve on that, but my interest started more from a business standpoint. It turned into a love of the sport. And subsequently, since then, I’ve had ownership stakes in some European clubs, in terms of operations. And I suspect going forward, it will continue to be the case. As you mentioned, I’m a senior advisor now, not handling the day-to-day with the A’s. And I see sort of a second part of my professional career being even more involved, not just in soccer, but in European and international sports in general.
Jim Reese: I’ve noticed from a grassroots level that soccer, because it’s so inexpensive to play, it’s just exploded at the youth level. And, so, I think that, I guess it would be “trickle-up,” not “trickle-down,” but I think that’s going to help our athletes from the United States be more competitive, at some point. So, we’ll see if that happens. I don’t know if you agree with that or not.
Billy Beane: Yeah, no, I was going to say, I mean when the international tournaments come, we all sort of rally around the national team and there are some good young American players. Especially now, it’s neat to see them going abroad and playing in Europe and competing in the bigger leagues. Christian Pulisic is at Milan, and a number of players are in Italy, and all around.
So, I think the more that the younger players go out and play in the best leagues in the world, it is going to ultimately help the national team. I think everyone can acknowledge that there’s certainly a lot of great athletes and a lot of great young soccer players here. And, ultimately, becoming one of the best in the world is what we’d all like to see. And, certainly in my lifetime, I’d like to see it, and I’m hoping that’ll be the case.
Jim Reese: Exactly. I think we all would aspire to that. So, all right, now this last one that you’ve touched on this a little bit with soccer. This is my question that I usually end every podcast with. What’s next for Billy Beane? What are you working on, and where do you see yourself being involved in the next three to five years?
Billy Beane: Well, I’ve still got a couple kids that I’ve got to get out of the house. So, I got a boy and girl still at home, an older daughter, soon to get married. Professionally as mentioned a little bit, I’m very involved – and we have some ownership interest and some operating interests – in some soccer teams in Europe. We also have some, as I mentioned, international sports. We have an investment in a cricket team in India, believe it or not. Some of the partners also have invested in some F1 and Formula One. And again, for me, they’re all new sports and new businesses. Some of them have similarities to baseball. I think, listen, some business ideas translate to other businesses and there’s some things that are unique about each business. But more than anything, I just find them really interesting, and I would say that as I get older, that more and more of my time is spent on international sports and investing as well in those sports.
And again, the last couple of years I’ve, again, sort of segued out of baseball. On the day-to-day, I still have a passionate interest, because my closest friends are still involved in the business. But it’s nice not to… As I say now, no matter how long you do it, there’s something to be said when you’re playing 162 baseball games and your mood is dependent upon that team winning the night before. After 20-plus years, it starts to wear on you a little bit. So, it’s kind of nice to not… I still live and die with my A’s results, but not to the level when you’re operating a day-to-day. So, it’s kind of nice to get off that treadmill a little bit and be involved – and still passionately – but in a different way now.
And my passion now is the success of the people that I worked with for years. David Forst, who’s running the A’s on a day-to-day basis. Hired David 24 years ago. He is not only a brilliant, young executive, but he’s also one of my closest friends. So, my stress level is really just rooting for him and hoping that he puts together good teams for his benefit and the people that were there when I left.
Jim Reese: My gosh, what a roller coaster ride that must be. But just living and dying on the results of all of those games over a season. I can’t imagine what that would be like.
Billy Beane: You have no idea.
Jim Reese: No, I don’t.
Billy Beane: I see it in younger GMs now. Listen, there’s nothing… You don’t even know what’s happening. I mean, it really is an intense business. I know, as exciting as it is, it sounds fun, but when those results mean something, it can be very stressful for people. And you have so many different dynamics in sports that you don’t have in other businesses. You basically have quarterly earnings, but it’s every night. People are evaluating you and your team every single night based on the result. There’s just very few businesses that have that sort of pressure and that kind of stress.
And so, the people who run these teams are beyond bright. They’re also very unique, in terms of emotionally stable enough to handle the ups and downs that come with running a baseball team. It’s one thing, an NFL team, you win on a Sunday, and you’re in a good mood for a week. In baseball, you win on a Monday night, you might be playing Tuesday afternoon, and if you win, you got about 12 hours to enjoy it, then it starts over again. So, it’s very unique, and as much satisfaction, it’s also incredibly stressful.
Jim Reese: You just made me appreciate my job that much more, so thank you for that. Billy, listen, our students, this is for them, and we appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule, but we just appreciate you being here and sharing your wisdom for our students. I think they’re really going to enjoy this.
Billy Beane: I’m flattered to be a part of what you guys are doing here, Jim, and the best of luck to all the people who’ve taken the time to listen to this and be a part of this conversation in some way.
Jim Reese: For the listeners, thank you for your continued support of our Voices in the Field podcast series. We’ve had some requests from our students for someone in Motorsports. So, our next guest is going to be Jason Golden. He’s the Chief Revenue Officer for Richard Childress Racing. We’re really looking forward to that. Until then, this is Jim Reese from the APU Sports Management program saying so long.
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