This article is dedicated to the late great Wesley Willis, who died last week at the age of 40. He was one of the few unique musicians in recent memory, and his music will resonate with future generations. Consider this gem from the song "Arnold Schwarzenegger:" "I love your movies/I love you too/You are the best man that I have ever liked/You are my rich man/You are my millionaire." Shine on Wesley Willis, you crazy, crazy diamond.In actuality, the Willis song segues nicely into the topic that I wish to discuss in this article, that of Michael Lewis' dynamic book, "Moneyball." The book took the market by storm, making the New York Times best-seller list and garnering rave reviews. It has often been said that the star of "Moneyball" is Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. Though the book is supposedly a work of nonfiction, Lewis has created a fictional character named "Billy Beane" who happens to bear little resemblance to the actual Billy Beane.

Lewis' Beane is a baseball genius. He can turn a community college into Harvard, a Grandma Moses into a Monet and Rosie O'Donnell into Jenna Jameson.

He talks of a man who, with the assistance of underling Paul DePodesta, creates numerous tools that analyze performance in ways that give him an unbelievable edge in dollar-for-dollar talent acquisition. Lewis talks of Beane's calculation which estimates how a single additional point of on-base percentage is three times more valuable than a point of slugging percentage.

Lewis talks of a Billy Beane who can fleece any GM, turning a Pinto into a Bentley. Lewis talks of a Beane who, despite a shoestring budget, was able to snag 13 of the 20 players he most wanted in the 2002 amateur draft. The truth is a lot less glamorous than Lewis' fawning suggestions.

Billy Beane is not a statistical innovator. Paul DePodesta is not some magical number cruncher who enters data into a computer and comes out with baseball gold. The statistics extolled in "Moneyball" as being revolutionary are well behind the curve. Any casual, intelligent fan who strolls over to baseballprimer.com or baseballprospectus.com can see that what Lewis has Beane touting as genius is already pass.

Granted, what Beane accepts on a statistical level is more than any other GM (with the possible exceptions of Red Sox executive Theo Epstein and the Blue Jays' JP Ricciardi), but that does not make him a genius. It just means that Beane is not a fool, because the GMs that ignore this data that can be freely had are utterly inept.

Billy Beane does not successfully acquire on-base machines. The A's this season feature such sinkholes as Terrence Long, Jermaine Dye and Adam Piatt. Beane gave a $2 million contract to Chris Singleton, a player whose season walk totals entering 2002 were 20,22,35 and 21. That cannot be considered a serious effort to acquire on-base percentage. The A's do have a few players who can take a walk, notably lefty Erubiel Durazo and second baseman Mark Ellis, but it is not an exceptional number of on-base hounds such as would befit the description given in "Moneyball."

It is undeniable that Beane is above average at acquiring players through multi-team trades. However, the misguided notion of Beane as some smooth operator is like saying that Dean Koontz is a serious writer. Beane generally gets what he wants without giving up very much to get it, which is the mark of a successful trade, but such is the case with 90% of all MLB transactions.

It is rare that a trade seems so lopsided when it is made that it cannot be spun around to look like a good trade for either side.

Beane has made a few deals that were perceived as one-sided, such as his acquisition of Carlos Pena prior to the 2002 season. However, he has also made a move that is beyond unpardonable, his trade of Jeremy Giambi for John Mabry when the A's got off to a slow start in 2002. This was, quite possibly, one of the most pointless trades in the past 50 years of the franchise.

In the book, the move is shrugged off as simply a "rash reaction." Sorry, Billy, you don't get a pass simply because you are "Billy."

As for the 2002 draft, Beane did do very well. He was able to draft several top prospects whose value had been significantly underrated, including Jeremy Brown. However, he was not working with the incredibly tight budget the book so adamantly suggests. Beane was only working with a few million less than all but the richest clubs.

Furthermore, some of Beane's "must-picks" were not the uber-prospects Lewis made them out to be. Many of the players simply fell to Beane, and all he had to do was sign them. It was a combination of luck and competence, not demigod-like skill.

Beane's belief in only drafting college players has also come under fire from statistical analysts who have shown the relative upside with high school players often outweighs their lack of seasoning, making it unwise to ignore them.

I'm not saying that Beane is a bad GM, because he's pretty solid. But the media has to stop and recognize that "Moneyball" is, in so many ways, more fiction than fact. When you stop criticizing and start accepting, you enter a dangerous land of complacency.

To quote once more from that sage Wesley Willis: "You are my favorite movie star/You are my big buddy/You are a low down rotten man/You are crazy like a lizard." What Willis means to say is that you cannot blur the line between fantasy and reality, between genius and serviceability, and between Billy Beane and G-d.