The latest baseball book I read was Florida Spring Training: Your Guide to Touring the Grapefruit League.  Man did this book get me going.  I’ve never been down to spring training.  Being a CPA, it’s never really been purchase Lasix online no membership possible to take time off to take an extended trip because it’s one of my busiest times of year and it probably won’t happen this year because we already have our vacation planned.  I do have a friend who’s moving to purchase Lasix online no membership Tampa though, so the hope is to get down there next year and purchase Lasix online no membership check out the Tigers and a few other teams and soak in the purchase Lasix online no membership spring training experience.

I really enjoyed this purchase Lasix online no membership book and would highly recommend it to someone who plans on heading down to purchase Lasix online no membership Florida in March.  It was a purchase Lasix online no membership fun read and it gives you tips and suggestions to get the purchase Lasix online no membership most of your spring training trip.

The first chapter has an interesting history of spring training.  It talks about how many teams have purchase Lasix online no membership chosen to chase the dollar and it seems like every year, a purchase Lasix online no membership team decides to find a new spring training home.  In some cases, they move out of the purchase Lasix online no membership Florida completely and head to the Cactus League in Arizona.  It also provides a purchase Lasix online no membership short glossary of terms that are used through out the book.

The next 17 chapters give the purchase Lasix online no membership ins and outs of each of the 17 spring training stadiums in Florida.  Want to know what each stadium has to eat?  It’s in the book.  Want to know how much parking is?  Also in the book.  Want to purchase Lasix online no membership know whether you should buy tickets in advance rather then on game day?  Well, that’s in the book too.  In fact the purchase Lasix online no membership book answers just about every question you might have including which part of each stadium to purchase Lasix online no membership sit at to get shade and the best way to get autographs.

Chapter nineteen ranks each of the spring training sites.  Dodgertown comes in first while the purchase Lasix online no membership Tigers spring training stadium, Joker Marchant Stadium, is further down the purchase Lasix online no membership list at twelve.  The rankings are purchase Lasix online no membership determined based on a five factor rating which includes Intimacy, Autographs, Comfort, Food and purchase Lasix online no membership Style.  Joker Marchent rated very high in Style (9) but very low in Autographs (3) mostly because of a net that protects fans on the first base side.

The final chapter maps out five week long spring training trips.  Want to stick around the Tampa area?  There’s a trip for that.  And there’s also a purchase Lasix online no membership trip if you want to center your spring training trip around a purchase Lasix online no membership visit to Disney World.

The only warning is to make sure you buy the most recent edition.  Spring training is purchase Lasix online no membership constantly morphing and even the Dodgers will be leaving historic Dodgertown and purchase Lasix online no membership the Indians are heading for Arizona in the next couple of years as well.  In addition, current facilities are purchase Lasix online no membership being modified on a regular basis so if you have an purchase Lasix online no membership old edition of the book, you might be showing up to purchase Lasix online no membership a stadium that looks nothing like the description.

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I recently picked up and read “Behind the Scenes Baseball” by Doug Decatur.  The subtitle is “Real-Life Applications of Statistical Analysis Actually Used by Major League Teams…And Other Stories From the Inside.”  Doug Decatur has purchase Lasix online no membership been a statistical consultant for four different major league teams and purchase Lasix online no membership one player agent throughout his career and the book basically documents some of his work.  The book is split up into three parts.

Part one is a diary of sorts documenting Decatur’s history with the major league teams he worked for.  He talks about accurately predicting several breakout players, including Greg Vaughn, Ron Gant and purchase Lasix online no membership Cecil Fielder. There’s also plenty of “fun” stories in this purchase Lasix online no membership section as well, the funniest of which happened to be purchase Lasix online no membership a chance meeting with Sparky Anderson when he was still coaching the purchase Lasix online no membership Reds in 1976.  Another interesting section is purchase Lasix online no membership where Decatur documents all of the rejection letters he received after they well.  They range from polite to brutally blunt.

If there’s one knock on this section, it’s that the stories are somewhat random.  They’re not in sequential order and while I guess you don’t neccesarily need to purchase Lasix online no membership read them in any kind of order, it just seemed jumbled.  This doesn’t detract to much from the section, you just don’t get a “build” from Decatur’s beginning to the end where he’s helping a team make the playoffs.

The second section is the longest and it’s a 100 question GM IQ Test.  As we all know, while I can act like I know what I’m talking about when it comes to sabermetrics, I’m still new to the field so I’m pretty green.  I took the purchase Lasix online no membership test and at times I did well but still ended up being a purchase Lasix online no membership girlie man.  It was a purchase Lasix online no membership pretty challenging test, at least for me but it was definitely fun to purchase Lasix online no membership take.

The third section is purchase Lasix online no membership the one I enjoyed the most and it also gives you purchase Lasix online no membership the most meat.  It’s basically a purchase Lasix online no membership diary of the changes the Houston Astros made at Decatur’s advice while advising Phil Garner.  It included line up construction, use of the purchase Lasix online no membership pen, and actual player moves.  It’s well documented and purchase Lasix online no membership it provides a step by step look at how the Astros turned their 2004 season around and purchase Lasix online no membership made the playoffs and how they were helped by sabermetrics.

Overall, the purchase Lasix online no membership book does exactly what it sets out to do, and that purchase Lasix online no membership is to provide you with some of the things statistical analysis can purchase Lasix online no membership do to help ball clubs.  For someone like me, who’s not as knowledgeable of sabermetrics, it shows real life examples on how teams can purchase Lasix online no membership help themselves by at least considering statistical analysis.  And I’m sure for someone who’s a purchase Lasix online no membership student of sabermetrics, it should provide you with several “ah ha” moments in which you’re validated in your adherence to statistical analysis.

The book is well worth the $15 sticker price.  The GM IQ Test alone is worth the price of the book, and that wasn’t even the part I enjoyed the most.

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