Baseball lingo in M. Lewis' _Money Ball_; #4: "the Good Face"

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

Here's installment #4:

p.7: 'He [Billy Beane] encouraged strong feelings in the older men who were paid to imagine what kind of pro ball player a young might become.  The boy had a body you could dream on.  Ramrod-straight and lean but not so lean you couldn't imagine him filling out.  And that face! Beneath an unruly mop of dark brown hair the boy had the sharp features the scouts loved.  Some of the scouts still believed they could tell by the structure of a young man's face not only his character but his future in pro ball.  They had a phrase they used: "the Good Face."  Billy had the Good Face.'

p.47: 'A lot of people who watched Billy Beane play still thought what J. P. Ricciardi thought when he played with Billy that first year in Little Falls. "He was so physically gifted that I thought he would overcome everything,"...Scouts would look at him and see what they had always seen. The hose, The wheels.  The body. The Good Face.'

Gerald Cohen