Funny Articles

Today I happened to stumble upon several funny Athletics articles. One was posted in the local paper and the other a friend sent to me. The first is titled: Revisiting Billy Beane's Perfect Draft and it is all about Moneyball being flawed system. The person writing the article went through very thoroughly using stats to prove his points. Since I am not the biggest Beane fan in the world it was nice to read someone who doesn't worship him. The link to said article is: http://www.baseballevolution.com/richard/2008beane
The second article I read today was written by my favorite sports writer Ray Ratto and was titled: Now here's how the Next 40 will Look. This had to be the funniest thing I have read in ages and was literally rolling with laughter. It is a ficticous look at what the next 40 years for the A'S and Giants will be. It ranged from well this could happen to the insane. The link is: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/23/SPQLVLN3C.DTL&hw=Ray+Ratto&sn=002&sc=809

Some highlights from this gem are as follows:

2010: Billy Beane trades Daric Barton, Travis Buck and Mark Ellis for 37 prospects, 11 of them neonatal.

2016: Lew Wolff decides to sell his 10 percent stake back to John Fisher, who immediately announces plans to move the team back to Oakland as soon as he can break his lease in Fremont. Bud Selig is blow-darted out of a nap to say that the Bay Area isn't big enough to support two teams.

2020: Oakland's stadium plan, which is to pave over Lake Merritt, fails in a county-wide vote 28-23. In other news, Michael Lewis writes "Moneyball II: The Reckoning," in which he chronicles Beane's new method of building a team, by signing players and then refusing to pay them.

2024: The A's make the playoffs after completing their third restructuring and announce their intention of building a new "ballpark bodega" in Gilroy. Capacity will be 19,792, for "intimacy." Also, for charging $340 for a bleacher seat.

These are hilarious but some cut a little to close to home. Oh how I love the baseball humor!