Apply the lessons of baseball to any field

Management by Baseball
The Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field
By Jeff Angus
Collins, $22.95

In Yogi Berra-speak: Management consultant and professional baseball writer Jeff Angus has hit a home run out of the park with ''Management by Baseball."

Some may wonder how that can be, inasmuch as Angus is adding another entry to the legions-long list of business books that draw sports-to-business analogies. Moreover, he has picked baseball. Does the world need another baseball book?

Yes. At least this one. Angus has taken an old familiar score and done something new with it, something as exhilarating as a double play in the bottom of the ninth to save the game. He can do that because he knows business, knows baseball, and has a great writing style.

Among the significant insights that Angus inserts in this wide-ranging, well-wrought game plan for business success is this one:

''The talent is the product. Baseball learned this over a century ago and has thrived with this reality. Few other lines of work have even a decade of experience with it, and most of them resist it, pointlessly hoping they can get around the inevitable truth. The most refined and practical methods for thriving in the current global economy are contained in baseball. Baseball knows."

That excerpt is from the introduction to Part II, ''Stealing Second Base -- the Players Are the Product." The section deals with how to get the best out of your staff. The points Angus makes are illustrated by episodes of baseball managers' successful and failed strategies.

One example of management excellence pinpointed by Angus is Joe Torre's handling of his star-studded 1998 New York Yankees. He points out that Torre avoided a common mistake: having all those super-talented players compete for starting spots.

Instead, he first worked hard to learn all he could about each player's strengths and weaknesses.

''Second, he promised all of his non-everyday players that there'd be opportunities for them to play in spots where they'd have the best chances for success," Angus writes. ''Third, he delivered on his promise and got most of the best talents of a host of contributors. His model can work for you if you've done the observing and monitoring ... and find out the areas where each of your staff members excels."

This book could be enjoyed strictly as a baseball book because it is so chock-full of baseball history, revelations about players, managers, owners and quotes. Yes, it has its Berra saying: ''Sometimes you can observe a lot just by watching."

Then there is the portrayal of New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner as a ''perfect example of the behave-as-though-he-is-a-sociopath boss as you'll ever witness."

''Most of the El Supremos in these organizations -- it's usually a male thing -- are not actually sociopaths. Most are people who behave that way because they learned it as a style, frequently from the dominant parent, sometimes from an early work or school experience," Angus writes.

None of the baseball information is included just for fans' enjoyment, though. Angus is always driving home a point about good and bad management while displaying the extensive knowledge of the baseball he has gained from decades of covering it for newspapers, magazines and other news outlets.