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The Best Team Money Can Buy covers baseball’s most polarizing and entertaining team in recent years without newspaper reporting deadlines.

“How does the [The Best Team Money Can Buy] compare to Moneyball?” The Duluth Public Librarian asked me after I checked out the new book by former ESPN reporter Molly Knight.

I explained my excitement. “Basical, this book is about baseball, but you do not have to be a fan to understand it. From what I have read in some of the reviews, it's extremely behind the scenes of the Los Angeles Dodgers as they transition from a bankrupt owner in the midst of a divorce to a team with a 200 million dollar payroll and 2 billion dollar cable TV contract”

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Knight covered, then Dodger owner Frank McCourt divorce for ESPN and in the first chapter uncovers the nooks and crannies of the Dodger auction. For example, Frank McCourt’s chess moves, including filing for bankruptcy, selling the team within the “Country Club MLB owners” and to the current owners. The Guggenheim Group owns the team today and is faced by Los Angeles Laker Legend Magic Johnson and run by experienced Major League Baseball Executive Stan Kasten. Also, later in the book, Knight uses her sources on the transition from long-time General Manager Ned Colletti to Sabermetric friendly and long-time Tampa Ray’s General Manager Andrew Friedman.

In the Best Team Money Can Buy, Molly Knight was not present for such closed door meetings, but she had the sources , as many writers today do, to get into them. She was also allowed extensive one-on-one interviews with Dodgers players. In Moneyball, Author Michael Lewis was present or recorded every meeting in and outside of the Oakland A’s front Office.

In fact, this book reminds me of Moneyball in several Ways.

• Both Writers had experience from other industries that translated well into their current books. Prospective. Molly Knight’s main career objective was not to write this book. She was on the premed track at Stanford University before she realized it was not for her. She moved to the other side of the country to New York, where she bartended in the night and wrote during the day. Michael Lewis earned a degree in Art History from Princeton and worked with a New York Art dealer before completing his MA from the London School of Economics.
  
• With Lewis, I was able to visualize Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane pumping his fist in the air while another MLB team drafts an overvalued high school Pitcher. With Knight, I can see Zach Grienke standing up in a players only meeting and declaring “all players are not flushing after taking a 'number two' in the Men’s Locker Room”.
  
• Both Lewis and Knight explain how and why each person into each organization arrived and how they fit in the strategically into the marathon regular season and crapshoot postseason. Due to the smaller sample size of games, the baseball playoff's explains the regular season triumphs of the Oakland A's and LA Dodgers without a world series title.
  
• Lewis profiles Scott Hateberg as he transitions from washed up back up catcher with the Boston Red Sox to starting first basemen for the Oakland while batting .280/.374/.433.
  
• Knight shows how a struggling player, Zach Grienke, overcomes his social anxiety, finds his personality, and overcomes his whispers to win the American League Cy Young Award.
  
• While Reading this book, readers should feel the excitement as the Dodgers or Athletics win.
  

I would put The Best Team Money Can Buy up there with other baseball literature classics Moneyball, Luckiest Man: the Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, Lords of the Realm by Jon Helyar and Babe by Robert Creamer. All of these classics are available at your public library. But what most taxpayers are unaware is the public library can order new books for patrons. This helps with updating the collection and of course with circulation. The Duluth Library ordered the book for me and I will proudly return it for the next patron.