With the economy and international turmoil, President Obama has enough headaches; he doesn’t need any more. But his staff has created one for him with its failure to investigate fully the career and life of Stan Musial before recommending him for a Presidential Medal of Freedom that Obama bestowed on him last month.

It turns out that the 90-year-old Musial is not the Saint Stan he is considered in St. Louis. For sure, Musial remains the great player he was in his Hall of Fame career and deserves all of the accolades he has received for his achievements in that career.

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This was going to be a column about a new baseball book, but a couple of matters intruded and have to be dealt with first, both having to do with the book, “The Beauty of Short Hops” by Sheldon and Alan Hirsch. It is subtitled “How Chance and Circumstance Confound the Moneyball Approach to Baseball.”

When I first heard about the book, I eagerly anticipated its arrival because I was told it was a critical assessment of two subjects I have written about on occasion – the 2003 Michael Lewis book about Billy Beane, “Moneyball,” and the proliferation of new-age statistics, initiated by Bill James, known as sabermetrics.

When I have written about “Moneyball” negatively, which is the only way I have written about it, its advocates have written to me telling me I don’t understand the book.

Not that I needed reassurance, but the Hirsch book shows me most clearly that I have always understood it.

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Picture if you can Nolan Ryan standing in the executive offices at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, dressed in suit and tie, his left arm wrapped firmly in a headlock around Chuck Greenberg’s neck, his Hall of Fame right hand punching Greenberg repeatedly on the top of the head.

All right, that was Robin Ventura nearly two decades ago on the pitcher’s mound at the Rangers’ park, his head firmly in the grasp of the uniformed Ryan. But if you get the idea that that was what Ryan the owner/executive, not the pitcher, did metaphorically to his partner last week, you understand why Greenberg resigned as the Texas Rangers’ managing partner and chief executive officer last Friday.

The moral of the story is clear: whether you’re a third baseman from Chicago or a lawyer from Pittsburgh, don’t mess with Nolan Ryan in Texas.erred the Greenberg-Ryan group.

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