Mr. Media is recorded live before a studio audience of baseball fans who secretly wish Joe Maddon was their team’s manager … in the new new media capitol of the world… St. Petersburg, Florida!
I was a little nervous about the publication of Jonah Keri’s new book, The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First.
Why? Because up until today, the book most often associated with the former Tampa Bay Devil Rays was my own first book, Stadium For Rent: Tampa Bay’s Quest for Major League Baseball. It was published in 1993.
Going forward, I think Keri’s book will be the one that captures the renamed Tampa Bay Rays franchise and will be remembered for the recognition it brought to the business – and baseball — management philosophy developed by Stuart Sternberg, Matt Silverman and Andrew Friedman.
JONAH KERI podcast excerpt: “Tropicana Field is, charitably, a dump. It has fewer people within a 30-minute drive of any other stadium in baseball. It’s a big problem. And the economy is not great in Missouri or Pennsylvania, but I think it’s better than it is in the Tampa Bay area.”
The Extra 2% is this year’s version of Moneyball, the book about how the Oakland A’s made more from less. It’s a book with a real story, a beginning, middle and end, heroes and goats, and a pretty happy conclusion for any baseball fan but us Rays fans in particular.
I hearby cede the title of author of best book about the Tampa Bay baseball franchise to Jonah Keri.
Read excerpts:
GQ: “The Smartest Team in Baseball is… The Tampa Bay Rays?”
ESPN.com: “How the Rays Whiffed on Albert Pujols”
Jonah Keri Website • Twitter • The Extra 2% Website • Order The Extra 2% from Amazon.com
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