THE BUFFETT OF BASEBALL.(Brief Article)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 23-SEP-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Even if you set aside the accounting scams and the free palaces for C.E.O.s, these last few years would rate as some of the most dismal in the annals of corporate leadership. Intoxicated by cheap money, executives squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on doomed mergers, vacant dot-com warehouses, and thousands of miles of useless fibre-optic cable. Now their rickety empires are falling to pieces.

Billy Beane followed a different path. Beane was frugal, Beane was shrewd. In three short years, he turned a stumbling outfit into a profitable enterprise that is the pride of its industry. If he hasn't been recognized as one of the most successful executives in America, it's only because his business isn't derivatives or microchips. It's baseball.

Beane is the general manager of the Oakland A's, one of baseball's much pitied small-market teams. The A's don't...

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