His name is Lindy Hinkelman, a 59-year-old pig farmer from Greencreek, Idaho, and he just won the National Fantasy Baseball Championships grand prize of $100,000. His inspiration? Billy Beane. Yep, Hinkelman takes the Moneyball approach to acquiring players. And yes, the pigs have helped … sort of. New York Times:
“Raising pigs and this baseball thing really go together,” he said. “There are certain things in farming: keeping track of productivity, indexes for your sows, the genetic lines there. To do well, you’ve got to be pretty proficient in numbers. Math has always been my strong suit. I can see things with the numbers.”
He cautioned with modesty: “That’s just my theory. I have no proof.”
What he does have is in excess of $300,000 in prize money earned over the last three years.
My favorite part of this story, though, is the fact that Hinkelman won the title this year on the final day of the season on a home run by the Cardinals’ Allen Craig, whom Hinelman got off the waiver wire. He beat a San Diego investment portfolio manager, according to the Times, “whose first-round pick, Alex Rodriguez, had an off year.”
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Modest Farmer, Managing Mogul [New York Times]
