The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team

This book may not be for everyone. But as someone who writes baseball simulations for a living, I have to say that this book is *perfect*.

The authors start with the sequence of events that landed them with the Sonoma Stompers for the Summer of 2015. One key reason is something that hadn't occurred to me: the "General Manager" of a low-budget team spends most of his time selling tickets and keep the concessions flowing, so he is happy to get free help building a roster (the task we associate most often with a team's front office).

Then Ben and Sam dig into the nitty-gritty of building a team. They do a great job of laying out all the numbers that they had in front of them for such tasks as: choosing which players to sign; making lineup recommendations; employing extreme defensive shifts; and building detailed reports on opposing pitchers for use by the team's hitters. Seeing the raw data made the book much more enjoyable than if they had just jumped ahead to the conclusions that they reached.

The authors also do a great job of conveying the storylines and emotions associated with the team. It's reminiscient of a movie like Bull Durham: the overarching plot is about baseball players trying to get a crack at the majors, but the most interesting and important events revolve around the players' individual growth and interpersonal relationships.

Finally, I found this book inspiring as a personal story of humility and frustration, combined with some great insight into how to "make friends and influence people". I would honestly recommend this book to aspiring business leaders or consultants. Ben and Sam are two extremely bright guys with great communication skills. So one might assume that they had an easy time showing up at the Sonoma Stompers and turning the team around. But I know that my life is never that easy -- and I have to admit it's nice to see that their lives aren't either. Although Ben and Sam are nominally in charge of the roster, it's difficult for two guys that never played professional baseball to earn credibility in the clubhouse. But if you keep reading you see that more often than not they are able to succeed at what they try to do -- relying primarily on honesty and candor and true generosity, more than on any spreadsheet.

As an avid listener of Effectively Wild and consistent reader of Ben and Sam's work, I know that they are statheads. I assumed this book would lean heavily on sabermetrics, the pages chock-full of numbers and advanced baseball analysis. I was wrong. This book offered much, much more.

This is less of "The Book," by Tom Tango, and more of "The Soul of Baseball," by Joe Posnanski; it is more story than stat. Ben and Sam may have been the ones who got to run this indy-league baseball team, but through their writing you feel like you're right alongside them. You cringe when they're getting scolded by the team's manager. You're sad when a player leaves for greener pastures. You pump your fist when the team comes through. It's funny, it's dramatic, it's gripping. By the end, you realize you've grown to love this ragtag group of characters just as the authors did.

This isn't just a baseball story. It's a story about people, about relationships, about finding your way. My only regret is that that summer in Sonoma had to end.

This is the best baseball book I've read this year. I immediately felt connected to Ben, Sam and the Stompers go from pre-spring training signings throughout the season. Anyone with any interest in baseball should pick this up immediately.

Behold a rarity: a baseball book that offers (a) good writing; (b) intelligent analysis of the sport; (3) humor (really!); and (4) a compelling, previously untold story (really, really!).

Most in the know consider Lindbergh and Miller two of the best―if not the best―’ball scribes around, and they show why where. It starts with the book’s structure. In many cases, co-authors alternating chapters results in an uneven, disjointed mess. Not here. Both are talented, and their different storytelling flourishes keep things fresh-feeling. The book actually feels short.

Of course, part of that is the story itself―a real page-turner. That sounds weird, given the season played out around this time last year and the results are known to anyone who cares to Google them. But therein is the rub: the team, league, and players involved are almost all entirely unknowns. Nonetheless, the authors do a great job of making them feel, well, human. This includes pitcher Sean Conroy, who becomes the first openly gay baseball player in the sport’s history. Conroy’s maturity comes across as impressively as his courage and his statline.

For those who aren’t baseball fans, rest assured you’ll find something worthwhile here. The writing is wonderful (they’ve been said to have a great post-comma score), and there’s a lot to chew on with regards to outsiders versus insiders; new ideas versus old; and the difference between observers and actors. Basically, there’s a lot of crossover appeal here.

My one complaint is that Lindbergh has very odd food tastes―who snacks on raw mushrooms and eats beans straight out of the can? Oh well. He can write.

This book exceeds this humble reader's lofty expectations. Ben and Sam's Effectively Wild podcast combines the best analysis of baseball and existential reflections on life itself. This book is about the summer they spent putting their stathead ideas into practice and about the many interesting people they met along the way.

Without a doubt, this is the best baseball book you'll read this year. In fact, unless Harper Lee has has another book up her sleeve, it will be the best book of 2016.

My 20 year old baseball playing grandson loved this book.

This book is to its authors, who rarely smell of garlic, what OPS+ is to Barry Bonds – an unimpeachable case in favor of a transcendent talent whose achievements almost definitely required the strength and skill of two grown men.

After much anticipation, I read the book over the course of a busy week. Despite knowing the outcome of the season and some of the anecdotes therein, the story was present in my mind long after setting the book down each sitting. I even dreamed about it. While it would've been easy for Lindbergh and Miller to focus on their successes running the Stompers, they give equal (if not more) time to their struggles as newcomers in the power structure of professional baseball. The premise of the book is based on data analytics, but this is one of the most emotionally satisfying works of sports nonfiction I've ever read. Piggybacked on the story of Ben and Sam taking unprecidented control of a pro ball club, are the stories of the players themselves, weaved intricately in. It sounds cliche, but I laughed (a lot) and even cried (tears of earnest joy induced by certain R. Kelly remix). The Only Rule was of the most enjoyable reads of my life.

I want to talk about their writing voice:
Take George Plimpton, but remove the Steve McQueen coolness of Plimpton.
Take Hunter S. Thompson's Gonzo journalism but replace the drugs with an addictive inner hyper critical inner monologue.
Mix those two with large pieces of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Tom from John Fitzgerald's The Great Brain Children's Books.
You'll end up with a book that you wish was more magazine than book, so that you could continue get chapter after chapter for the next few years.

If you like baseball get this book, if you like innovation get this book, if you like people, or just wearing pants, buy this book.

Great book wirtten by Sam & Ben. Don't need to be a stathead to enjoy this book but statheads will still love it.