Book Review: The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri

Living in the Tampa Bay Area, I am constantly at odds with the greater sports fandom of America.  I consistently feel like were getting boned on every close call in any Bucs/Lightning/Rays' game, while ESPN and other media outlets refuse to produce even the smallest shred of positive news on our sports franchises.

The Bucs and Lightning have both won their league's title in the last decade but no one seems to care.

Our lowly Rays have captured two division crowns over the past three seasons in the vaunted AL East.  Still, they receive little, if any, positive press.

But finally we have this Jonah Keri thing.  A piece dedicated solely to the merits of our Tampa Bay Rays.  This book is easily the best piece of writing on any of the Tampa Bay sports franchises and a must-read for any diehard fan within the region.

Coming into The Extra 2%, I was already somewhat familiar with Mr. Keri's work, having previously read Baseball Between the Numbers: Why Everything You Know About the Game Is Wrong.  That title provided a whimsical look at statistical oddities within the game of baseball combined with funny little anecdotes repudiating the old-timey train of thought that still pervades the game's modern minds.  With this prior knowledge and the few bits and pieces I'd heard about the book being a business work with some baseball parts, I had my own resignations about the book being perhaps too heady or down right degrading to what the Sternberg/Silverman/Freidman trio have accomplished in their less than six years at the helm.


This is where I was wrong. 


From the onset, the book hooks you with an entertaining view of the history of baseball in the Bay Area and outlines the painstaking efforts of the region to finally land an MLB team.  It goes on to recount the abysmal Naimoli-LaMar era that preceded the current regime.  Then, it goes on to provide amazing incite on exactly how these Wall Street whizzes came to dominate America's pastime on a shoe-string budget by using brain-busting algorithms and clever wheelings and dealings to create baseball's equivalent to arbitrage, thus yielding them the titular extra 2%.


The book is in tune with a younger generation using youthful witticisms, profanity (I really fuckin' love them four letter words!) and a host of colorful vignettes that string together this franchise's brief history in a quick and easy read.  It provides wave after wave of newfangled sabermetric statistical references to reinforce its points, but Keri is not enslaved by these newer metrics, often relying on more basic numbers to convey his point for the layman.  Also, the book accommodates readers of any demographic, with its short chapters, charming biographical bits on the Rays' top brass and manager Joe Maddon as well as Keri's denouncement of the game's two evil empires, the Red Sox and the Yankees, which almost any baseball fan can relate with.


I consider myself a Rays aficionado, but Keri's collection of 175 personally-conducted interviews blew me away, not just with the sheer quantity of knowledge, but with the overwhelming breadth of facts, that I, heretofore, had zero knowledge about.  From the Devil Rays narrowly missing out on the services of both Albert Pujols and Mark Teixeira, to the shrewd frugality of Vince Naimoli that damaged the team's brand and community relationship, this book was nearly impossible to put down, as I was constantly intrigued by what new piece of insider information or the next trivial tidbit that lay in wait on each upcoming page.


However, the book is not solely a work of admiration for the Rays; it also serves as a cautionary tale to the Tampa Bay area.  The final chapters wind down, outlining a desperate situation and the precarious state of Major League Baseball in the Bay Area.  Keri emphasizes the need for increased revenue streams, more local fan support and the absolute necessity of a new stadium in Tampa, pointing out that while the concept of contraction is an unlikely scenario, the idea that a business man of Sternberg's esteem may very well move the team or sell it to a less savvy ownership group, which would likely dismantle the current front office and bring back the gloomy feel of a bona fide loser to the Trop.  


I have read many baseball books, but this was the first one by a member of my own generation, and while perhaps not an immediate classic, the book is an absolute must-read for Rays fans.  Go to your library and request it or splurge the $16.49 at Amazon, just do whatever you have to do to get this knowledge in your head, you'll be all the better for it.