re: baseball blunders
I haven't seen the book, but I suppose you'd have to include these:
(1) The Phillies trading away Ferguson Jenkins to the Cubs.
(2) The Cubs trading away (or lettering get away) Greg Maddux to the Braves.
(3) The Cubs trading Lou Brock to the Cards.
(4) The Cards trading Steve Carlton even up to the Phils for Rick Wise after the 1971 season.
(5) The Red Sox trading Jeff Bagwell, then a minor league prospect, to the Astros for Larry Anderson, relief piticher, nearly 40, even up.
(6) The Phillies in the early 80s had three 2nd baseman in their farm system--Julio Franco, Ryne Sandberg & Juan Samuel. They traded Julio Franco and four players for Von Hayes. They traded Ryne Sandberg as a throw in with Larry Bowa for Ivan DeJesus to the Cubs. They kept Juan Samuel. All three could have been kept and played with Mike Schmidt at 3d--or they could have moved Schmidt to 1st and played all three at 3d, ss & 2d.
(7) Jim Fregosi, after Mitch Williams blew a five run lead in game four of the 1993 World Series to Toronto, came back with Mitch Williams in Game Six, and Mitch Williams gave up a two run lead and the Series to a walk off three run HR to Joe Carter in the bottom of the 9th. Mitch Williams never pitched effectively again, anywhere. Jim Fregosi never won another pennant, anywhere. In his defense, Fregosi did manage the Phils to win over the Braves in the LCS.
(8) In the last weeks of the 1964 season, Gene Mauch began to pitch Jim Bunning & Chris Short on two days rest in a 3 day rotation. This didn't work and contributed mightily to the Phils ten game losing streak which ended up in the Phils coughing up a six game lead with 12 to play to the Cards, who won the pennant by one game. In Mauch's defense, the Cards probably were a better team on paper.
(9) I'm going to take the reverse view and say that the Yankees blundered by paying $100,000 for Babe Ruth in 1920 to the Red Sox. Assuming a historical return rate on the stock market of @9 %, and assuming that the Red Sox owner had invested the money, under the rule of 72, the $100,000 received for Ruth would have doubled in value approximately every 8 years, which means that as of 2006, the original investment would now be worth approximately $412.8 million dollars. Since we know that the Bosox owner actually spent the money and didn't invest it, what does this tell us?
This tells us that the current value of the Red Sox, which according to Forbes is nearly $1 billion dollars, would be AUGMENTED by an additional $412.8 million dollars in cash reserves had the Ruth money been separately invested. That would make the Red Sox at nearly 1.5 billion dollars, and not the Yankees, at just over a billion dollars, the most valuable team in baseball.
That ultimately means that the Yankees overpaid for Ruth and did not get the return on investment. Indeed, as late as the 1970s, the team was only worth $10 million, and George Steinbrenner was able to obtain the Yankees for a fraction of this sum as down money. Almost all of the value of the Yankees has come since 1980--none of it flowing from the original $100,000 investment in the babe.
(10) The Red Sox tried out Jackie Robinson & two other Negro Leaguers in the mid 1940s and Joe Cronin et al took a pass because they did not want to break the color line in baseball. Cronin was a racist.
--Arthur John Kyriazis
--Philly