H2NO: A’s Front Office Wizard Billy Beane Near Top of East Bay Water Hogs List

Billy Beane remains frugal in handing out the green to players. But the tight-fisted executive vice president of baseball operations for the Oakland A’s keeps the spickets flowing to keep his lawn green.

During this summer’s drought, Beane used more water than all but three East Bay residents. According to the San Jose Mercury News, 5,996 gallons flowed at the Beane residence per day. That’s roughly the equivalent of dumping the contents of a four-foot deep, 16-foot round, above-ground pool on his lawn, in his tub, and down his sinks every day.

Like the Oakland A’s in the MLB standings, Beane beat out just two others. He trailed in consumption dot-com entrepreneur Mark Pine and former Chevron executive George Kirkland, the East Bay’s top water hog. Why is the East Bay Municipal Utility District employing bush league tactics to shame the Moneyball inspiration? They say that state law obliges them to release the names of aqua malefactors upon request.

“I certainly pay for it,” Beane reasoned to the Mercury News about his water use. He will pay for it above his bill in a fine meted out to customers who exceed 1,000 gallons of H2O per day. Beane’s Poseidon adventure stemmed from not wanting to see blades of grass die. Isn’t that environmentalism of a sort, too?

Surely Beane’s celluloid doppelganger Brad Pitt does not approve. “I don’t have time to take a shower,” Pitt not-s0 recently explained to a co-star about not recently washing. The environmentalist actor apparently does not care for soap, either (toxins!).  The star of Moneyball served as the inspiration for the eponymous phrase “Brad Pitt Shower,” which Urban Dictionary defines as using baby wipes instead of water to bathe.

Cleanliness may be next to godliness. Brad lies next to Angelina.

Jason Priestly, Eli Roth, and even Mrs. Pitt says the man nominated for an Academy Award for playing the Oakland A’s front-office guru pollutes the air with his stench. Yet it’s the real-life Billy Beane whom environmentalists dub public enemy number one. Some people are harder to understand than sabermetrics.