A great movie for baseball fans!
Moneyball (2011)
Created By: Bennett Miller
The Prologue
As a lifelong fan of baseball (Go Tampa Bay!), I’m always down for watching a baseball film, especially when it’s a good one. Now over the years I decided that the film, Major League was THE baseball movie but I went into watching Moneyball with an open mind. After all, the film does have Brad Pitt in the leading role of the Oakland A’s GM, Billy Beane. And we all know that Brad always seems to put in a memorable performance, no matter what role it is. Toss in a oddly tolerable Jonah Hill (While he was still fat) as Brad’s #2, and you have a film that I can enjoy. And I do see why it got such a warm welcome from most critics.
The Movie
Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane is handicapped with the lowest salary constraint in baseball. If he ever wants to win the World Series, Billy must find a competitive advantage. Billy is about to turn baseball on its ear when he uses statistical data to analyze and place value on the players he picks for the team. What follows is the great story of the 2002 Oakland A’s and how they pretty much turned nothing into something.
Baseball is a game of numbers, that’s the point of the movie. Only the numbers that Billy and Peter (Pitt and Hill) are interested in are combined numbers, lead by a good on base % of each player. This differs from most, especially at the time of 2002 when this movie was taking place. Players are swept up from smaller teams, usually by baseball giants The Yankees or the Red Sox and the little teams are left trying to compete. What the A’s did was not try to compete by simply buying big players, they couldn’t afford it. This film shows how they changed the game and we see it take place under another outstanding performance from Brad Pitt.
As everyone knows, or should know, the A’s didn’t win the 2002 MLB World Series, they didn’t even make it. But they did something that had never before been done at the time. They turned a nothing team into something and they took part in one of the biggest winning streaks ever. That is what the film focuses on. And as it builds up to that we see all the under the radar deals and ways of baseball. I found this all really interesting and fascinating and it makes for a film that can be interesting for people, even if you don’t like baseball. After all, you still have such actors as Brad Pitt and Philip Seymour Hoffman (in the role of A’s skipper, Art Howe) on screen. And those guys are always fun to watch.
After the big events of the film, Billy Beane makes a comment that unless you win the last game of the season (aka The World Series), that nobody will care about what they have done during the season. As if to say that no matter what you accomplish if you aren’t the champion it won’t matter. Luckily in this case Billy was wrong. I was happy to see this film mostly focus on the great stuff the A’s did in 2002. As odd and awkward as it was at the time, the “by the numbers” style of baseball would go on to influence how teams are built even today. And the fact we have Brad Pitt here in a great role only helps make sure that what happened in Oakland in 2002 will never be forgotten.
The Conclusion
If you love baseball, you will probably like this a little more than you will if you don’t like baseball. There is great acting, a few funny moments, and it really does dip into the business and show us a different side of it. It’s a bitter sweet story at heart and it really puts the spotlight on something that a lot may have forgotten all about over the years.
The Rating (8/10)
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