If there’s one place I love more then my house, it’s the library. For those of you who don’t know me, I love to read. And I love to read about a wide range of topics. At this very moment, I’m reading the following:

Damn Right – A biography of Warren Buffet’s partner, Charlie Munger
John Adams – A great biography of our second president
Havana – a novel by Stephen Hunter, great author
Song of Susanah – a recent start, the sixth book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series
Options as a Strategic Investment – Basically a text book on investing in publicly traded options.

Also for those of you who don’t know me, I’m a business junkie. I have an MBA in accounting, and when I get home, I don’t flip on Sportscenter, I flip on CNBC. I was in the library last week looking for the book Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis, which is basically about Mr. Lewis’ time with Salomon Brothers as a bond trader.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have it. I purchased it, along with a reprint of the 1940 edition of Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd. What I did find instead was Moneyball, which was also written by Michael Lewis.

And after just finishing it, I found it a great read. I lean more on the side of the Sabermetric crowd, so I buy into the Billy Beane philosophy. I thought the chapter on Bill James was particularly interesting. There was even a brief mention of the Jeff Weaver deal. He was right about Ted Lilly, who’s pitching in the All Star game for the Blue Jays. Instead of writing a full blown review, I’m going to defer to Aaron Gleeman, who was nice enough to provide me with some links to some excellent columns he wrote on this very subject:

Moneyball
The Boys of Moneyball
The Boys of Moneyball, Again

For the first time in a while, the Tigers have two members playing in the All Star Game. And for the first time since 1988, they actually had a player voted in. I’m looking forward to seeing both Carlos Guillen and Ivan Rodriguez play in the All Star Game this year. This will also be the first All Star Game I get to spend with my four week old son, which is exciting by itself.

And the Tigers start a three game series with the Twins tonight. They’ll be riding their two blowout wins over the best team in baseball right now, the Yankees, so it should be interesting. Will it be the Tigers who manhandled the D-Backs, or the Tigers who blew three straight games to the Rockies? If the Tigers can sweep, they’ll be guaranteed to be only five games back in the AL Central, and that’s if the White Sox sweep their series with the Angels. Three out of four would be very nice as well. But it’s a big series for them.

Hopefully they get off to a good start tonight against the 41 year old Terry Mulholland. Mike Maroth is coming off of a couple of bad outings, so hopefully he can bounce back. Mulholland hasn’t pitched well this year, so this could be their best opportunity.

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