Billy Beane at the Hall of Champions

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a luncheon with Billy Beane of the famed Moneyball Athletics as the guest speaker. I didn't get many notes down, but I thought I should get down what I remember before it all goes to waste in my head...

• Part of the reason why Michael Lewis was allowed to hang out with the A's as long as they had was because he's married to Tabitha Soren and she's easy on the eyes. Those are Billy Beane's words. I kid you not.
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• The A's also figured that Michael Lewis was going to be writing an article with his information. Then it became a feature article for the New York Times Magazine. Then it became Moneyball. Billy says that if he knew it was going to be a book, that he wouldn't have let it happen as obviously that's kinda bad business strategy to let everybody in on what you're doing.
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• Billy says that one of the more interesting thing about his job is the fact that every day he gets unsolicited critique over every single thing he does.

One thing about that luncheon that doesn't really have to do with Billy Beane. There were a couple of Padres front office people at the event (along with Sandy Alderson, but probably nobody you'd know). A classmate of mine and I went over to say hello and try to make small talk before the food was served. They weren't so much in the way of conversationalists, so I asked somewhat facetiously, "Are you guys hoping to learn some secrets from Billy?" To which I got a very curt, "No." So, hoping to show that I was joking, I said, "Nothing to pick up from 'the man'?" And the reply came very seriously, "We're not going to learn anything from this. But he's a good speaker, so that should be nice. Also, we pretty much have 'the man' here in San Diego."

So, I mean, knowing the history of the A's and stuff, I would kind of agree that anything Billy knows, Sandy probably thinks along the same lines, but it was just very brusque and not a little off-putting.

I'll chalk it up to an off day on their parts in terms of friendliness, but still... Not quite a Major League Memory. I still really like Sandy Alderson though.