By Kathryn Reed

Baseball is a pretty simple sport – throw, catch, hit.

The business of baseball is a bit more complex as spelled out in “Moneyball”, the book by Michael Lewis. But it was also clearly pointed out if baseball were run more like a business than an old boys’ club, some teams would likely be more successful.

While the movie by the same name was up for six Academy Awards this year, including best picture, the book is so much better. (The other nominations were for best actor, best supporting actor, best-adapted screenplay, best sound mixing and best film editing. It did not win one statue.)

As with most books compared to the movie rendition, there is depth in those 304 pages. This isn’t one of those books that you just plow through. It’s really more of a book about business and strategy than it is sports. But it would be hard to imagine a non-baseball fan finding anything interesting about this book.

While the Oakland A’s are the focus of the book in how they transformed the business of recruiting ball players and the importance of factors heretofore overlooked by other teams, the book is more than the A’s and Billy Beane. It is all about an institution set in its ways that is challenged by one of the little guys.

I’m not one of those fans who know all the stats about players or can remember my team’s history all that well. I’m more of an in-the-moment kind of fan.

Still, I found “Moneyball” absolutely fascinating.

It also has personal intrigue with the various personalities involved. It made me wonder how a psychologist would dissect all of the human elements involved.

And with spring training under way, well, “Moneyball” just whets the appetite for the 2012 season that is just weeks away.