BASEBALL ON A BUDGET OAKLAND A'S WILY, WINNING WAYS REVEALED IN 'MONEYBALL'.

Byline: David Kronke Staff Writer

Michael Lewis likes to stay ahead of the curve. Before the crazy markets of the '90s, he wrote about Wall Street in ``Liar's Poker,'' followed an Internet billionaire as he tried to create his next billion in ``The New New Thing,'' and examined the unexpected ways the new technology would collide headlong with culture and society in ``Next.''

Now, Lewis brings his forward-looking approach to baseball. ``Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game'' examines Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, a washout as a player who has become a ruthlessly efficient competitor in the front office, creating winning teams - with shoestring budgets - that push deeper into the postseason than many whose payrolls are two to four times higher.

Lewis followed Beane and his team of wonkish executives as they manufactured new criteria for athletes. Declaring speed, fielding prowess and high batting averages overrated commodities, they sought out underrated players cut loose by other teams or ignored by scouts (scouts, in general, look particularly inept here) who had character, high on-base percentages and were available for a song. Beane outlawed bunts and stolen bases - the steals he preferred came in the form of midseason trades with other teams' GMs.

It became no longer a game for Beane, who took his work so seriously that he literally couldn't sit through a game. If he watched even a part of a game on TV in the clubhouse, equipment was in serious danger of getting trashed.

``Moneyball'' makes a compelling case for rethinking the star system in baseball - brains and a little money could go much further than pampered stars and locker-room ego trips. Lawrence Ritter, reviewing ``Moneyball'' in the New York Times Book Review, declared it ``a joy ride ... one of the most enjoyable baseball books in years.'' The book has started popping up on best-seller lists.

The Daily News spoke with Lewis over lunch at the Peninsula Hotel (though intrigued by ``The $16 Hot Dog'' on the menu, appropriate given the topic was overspending in baseball, Lewis passed it up for a Cobb Salad).

Q: How much have you screwed the Oakland A's by revealing their system?

A: (laughs): If you ask them, not that much. I told them up front, ``I'm going to try to find out all your secrets and publish them. That doesn't disturb you?'' They said, ``Even if you did, the rest of baseball wouldn't listen.''

I disagree. I think I've screwed them a bit. Boston and Toronto are already on board (with Beane's theories). The book will cost them a little. At the very least, other GMs will think, ``I don't want to be seen doing a trade with Billy Beane because everyone will think I'm a dope.''

Q: It seems as though the Angels were a slightly more up-market version of the A's last year.

A: Very true. It was refreshing to see a team that wasn't about a single player - they really did feel like a team. One of the implications of the Oakland experiment is that the star system is not an efficient way to run a team. The Angels built a team of a lot of guys with a good on-base percentage. They had a much different view of base-stealing, though, which is more fun to watch.

Q: The fact that Billy Beane can't watch games ...

A: (nodding incredulously) He goes ballistic, he gets so upset. He'd get angry at me for getting him to go to a couple of games. They won those games, but even when things got tense, he'd turn on me. He simply can't watch. It's wonderful. He's completely emotionally unequipped to practice science, but that is what he's doing.

Q: You'd think a guy responsible for a baseball team might actually enjoy the product he's creating.

A: No pleasure in him. There's fun in doing the deals. There's no pleasure for him in watching any baseball game.

Q: The portraits of A's players are unlike most sports bios.

A: When I was choosing the cast of characters in this story, I wanted the reader to experience seeing someone they hadn't valued properly. It helped that they were guys other organizations had explicitly rejected. It's amazing how many rejects the A's have built their teams on.

I wanted to slightly tease the reader with sentiment (in the profiles of players). I wanted them to feel the way they always feel about baseball players and then pull it away in the person of Billy Beane. If you start feeling these things (about players), you can't (run a team) right. You have to be ruthless. My father said, ``If players read this, they'll realize they're nothing more than checkers on a checker board to these GMs.''

Everything in players' worlds convinces them that they're unique and special. It would never cross their minds just how little this general manager thinks of them: You're cogs in a machine. ... He's managing them that way without them knowing it. It's very funny.

Q: What has been baseball's response to the book?

A: There's been so much noise in the past few weeks. The negative response, which is the interesting response, has come from scouting publications, which are livid. I've swatted the side of a hornet's nest.

GMs are upset because they think Billy Beane in some way orchestrated the book - that it's his book. That's irritating, because I took all my guile to get the story, and (Oakland) didn't want me to do a lot of the things I did - the idea that they sponsored this is bizarre. The GMs who are upset are from teams who spend a lot of money and lose a lot of games; it makes them look bad. The minute you say, (the A's success) isn't luck and there's actually a system here, anyone who spends a lot of money looks like a fool. Imagine if you're the guy with the Dodgers and suddenly everyone you know is reading this book explaining what a moron you are.

There's been no response from the commissioner's office. Inside big- league baseball (there is) indifference. It's just a book. They don't care about books.

Q: If people actually pay attention to the book, the implications could be staggering.

A: You could screw up the market, there's no question. It changes the relative value of on-base guys vs. batting-average guys, the price of some guys would go up while the price of many others would go down. The other thing that could happen is that there would be a meaningful role for people who really think about the game as opposed to old baseball guys. The biggest opportunity is in scouting. It's done so badly - it's so male, they never talk about it. It's gorillas in the jungle.

The likely effect, I hate to say, is none. Anyone who's written for any length of time adopts a certain fatalism about the effects of prose on American life.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) no caption (book: ``Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game'')

(2) LEWIS