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Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. 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Nolan is an exploration of God, family, baseball, and America—and a tribute to one of the greatest pitchers to ever step on the mound. He grew up in the small, hard town of Alvin, Texas, was graced with a fastball, and fell in love with a woman named Ruth, then honored all three in his pursuit of hardball perfection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlongside Nolan's personal story, renowned sportswriter Tim Brown offers a thoughtful, deeply researched history of baseball in the Lone Star State, and an unforgettable account of three glorious decades in the Major Leagues.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNolan Ryan's story is about dominating on the field, then growing old in the game, then just plain growing old. It's about the man who has become a symbol of the game at its best, the way it used to be. It's about deeds over words. About cattle matching the hat. 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Drawing on that advice, as well as his own legendary life in baseball, Williams produced the all-time batting classic, The Science of Hitting. 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