The term ‘Moneyball’ is taken from the title of the best-selling book ‘Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game’, written by Michael Lewis and first published in 2003. The book chronicles the story of Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane who, assisted by Paul DePodesta, a Harvard economics graduate who had previously worked in a scouting capacity for Cleveland Indians, adopted a new management strategy to solve funding problems.
The strategy was based on a statistical analysis of baseball data known as ‘sabermetrics’, a term coined by it creator, Bill James, with reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and defined as ‘the search for objective knowledge about baseball’. Faced with a shoestring budget of just $39 million, less than a third of that enjoyed by the New York Yankees, Beane and DePodesta dug deep into the data for hundreds of individual players in an effort to identify those who, despite being capable of scoring runs, were not favoured by orthodox statistics, such as runs batted in.
By effectively turning the statistics on their head, Beane was able to avoid budgetary constraints by building his roster around largely unheralded, and therefore less expensive, players, including the likes of David Justice and Scott Hatteberg, to name but two. After a shaky start, his strategy started to bear fruit. Between June 6 and June 24, the Athletics went 16-1 and, later in the season, between August 13 and September 4, 20-0, thereby beating the previous American League record set by the New York Yankees in 1947. Oakland won the American League West with a record of 103-59, but lost 3-2 to the Minnesota Twins in the American League Division Series, as they had done to the New York Yankees the previous season.
On July 4, 1974, Don Revie accepted an invitation from the Football Association (FA) to succeed Sir Alf Ramsey as manager of the England national football team. At that stage, his appointment was a popular one but, while his tenure started well enough, things started to go wrong during a three-week period in late 1975. On October 30, England lost 2-1 to Czechoslovakia in Bratislava and, on November 19, could only draw 1-1 with Portugal in Lisbon, meaning they failed to qualify for the 1976 European Championships.
In World Cup Qualifying Group 2, England beat Finland 4-1 in Helsinki on June 13, 1976 and 2-1 at Wembley Stadium on October 13, 1976, but lost 2-0 to Italy in Rome on November 17, 1976 to make qualification for the 1978 World Cup unlikely from a group with just one qualification place. England did, indeed, fail to qualify for the 1978 World Cup, for the second tournament running but, by the time they beat Luxembourg 2-0 in Luxembourg in their penultimate qualifying match on October 12, 1977, Revie was long gone.
Three defeats in friendly matches at Wembley Stadium, including ritual humiliation by a Netherlands team featuring Johan Cruyff on February 9, 1977, sounded a death knell for Revie. Having discovered that FA chairman Sir Harold Thompson was seeking a replacement, Revie travelled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he agreed a lucrative four-year deal to manage the national team. He asked the FA to pay up his contract and, when they refused, broke the news of his decision to walk out via the front page of the ‘Daily Mail’ newspaper.
Thompson, with whom Revie had never seen eye to eye – in fact, they ‘genuinely hated each other’ – instigated disciplinary proceedings against him, resulting in a ten-year ban from football (later overturned by the High Court) for bringing the game into disrepute. After seven years in the UAE and a brief spell in Egypt, Revie returned to England, but never worked in football again. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1987 and died two years later, aged 61.
The short answer is yes, he did. Really. On November 2, 1931, Bradman and his New South Wales teammate Oscar Wendell Bill represented a Blackheath XI against a Lithgow Pottery XI in a match to christen the newly-installed malthoid wicket at Blackheath. With the two star names together at the crease, Lithgow brought on off-spinner Bill Black who, as Bradman was reminded, had bowled ‘The Don’ for 52 in an exhibition match in Lithgow two months earlier.
Bradman reportedly told Wendell Bill, ‘I think I’ll have a go.’ Over the course of the next three eight-ball overs, he proceeded to dispatch Black and his teammate Horrie Baker to the far-flung corners of the Blue Mountains. Off the first, over from Black, Bradman scored 33 runs, including three sixes, three fours and a single off the last ball to retain the strike. Off the second, from Baker, he scored 40, courtesy of four fours and four sixes and off the third, again from Black, 29, including two fours and three sixes. Wendell Bill contributed just two singles, on the first and fifth balls of the third over, to rotate the strike.
With uninspiring figures of 2-0-62-0 to his name, Black pleaded to be taken off again, but that made little difference to Bradman, who went on to score 256, including 29 fours and 14 sixes. For the record, Wendell Bill scored 68. Reflecting on his innings, Bradman said later, ‘…everyone was surprised at the outcome, no-one more than I’, adding that, ‘…in later years he [Wendell Bill]
said he got more notoriety out of the two singles he scored in those three overs than anything else he ever did in his life.’
The history of table tennis, albeit played with small, wooden rackets strung with catgut, or covered with vellum, and cloth-covered rubber, or cork, balls can be traced back to a series of patents filed, on both sides of the Atlantic, in 1890 and 1891. However, it was not until the introduction of the celluloid table tennis ball, which had ideal bounce characteristics, around the turn of the twentieth century that the game became succesful.
In 1926, the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) was founded in Berlin but, although the inclusion of table tennis in the Olympic Games was discussed repeatedly over the years, ITTF President Ivor Montagu remained firmly opposed to the idea. For example, in 1946, he said, ‘…I think the Olympic Games should be restricted to athletics and similar events…’, adding that, ‘We…do not need the Olympics.’
After more than 40 years as ITTF President, Montagu retired in 1967 and, ten years later, ITTF members voted overwhelmingly in favour of a proposal to amend the ITTF Constitution such that it complied with the requirements of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Thus, in 1977, table tennis was formally recognised by the IOC and, four years later, admitted to the Olympic programme, starting with the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.
In Seoul, a total of 129 athletes from 41 countries competed in four events, namely men’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s singles and women’s doubles. The gold medallists in those events were Yoo Nam-kyu, representing the host nation, Chen Longcan and Wei Qingguang, representing China, Chen Jing, also representing China, and Hyun Jung-hwa and Yang Young-Jam, also representing the host nation. Collectively, China and South Korea won nine of the 12 medals awarded, with Yugoslavia winning two and Sweden one.