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Abstract
We apply lessons from Moneyball, Michael Lewis's (2003) best-selling account of the Oakland Athletics's use of “sabermetrics” to find undervalued baseball players to help build a cost-effective team to the context of recreation, park, and leisure studies. Specifically, we coin and apply the term “academetrics” to find undervalued faculty members to help build cost-effective academic teams. We also draw analogies between the effects of long- term baseball contracts and tenure on performance, as well as describing different kinds of academic leagues, different kinds of academic players, and what it takes to “win” in academe. We conclude with a discussion of how academe's traditions, just like baseball's traditions, interfere with the progress of the “game.”