This being the final day of the 2011 baseball season compels me to write up my review of the recent movie "Moneyball". As a fan of both baseball and movies, this film is tailor made for someone like me.
The film opens up with us watching the final out of the A's 2001 season versus the Yankees. After the loss we see Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) have a meeting with the owner of the A's and being shot down about getting anymore money for the upcoming 2002 season. Better yet, he is told that all of their big stars are not going to be resigned and he must make due with what he is allocated which isn't much. As we see the rich (Yankees, Red Sox) get richer and the crap below the crap ( A's as Billy says ) get poorer we can see how the imbalance of financial deep pockets runs baseball. Billy travels to Cleveland to try to work out a trade with the GM of the Indians and though he is shot down he runs into Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) who works as a special assistant to the GM. In Peter's mind most of baseball overpays for players that don't bring what their contract worth is to the stadium everyday. His idea is to invest in players with high OBP (On-Base Percentage). Simple equation is if you get on base more you score more runs which wins you games. Peter is hired away from Billy to work with him and the A's. First day in Peter is basically treated like a bastard child as all of the scouts and advisers that have been in baseball for decades can't believe Billy has brought in someone that crunches numbers to assemble a team rather than tried and true version of building a team by looking at the physical look of a player.
As the team is finally put to together with the misfits and castoffs of other teams, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman) the manage of the team is frustrated as well with what he is given to work with but he goes along with it for the most part even though he doesn't agree. Season starts of dismal and the team slowly sinks to the bottom of the standings as people in the media and baseball call for Billy's firing as what he has created is a failure. Through the movie we see how Billy was a highly touted young baseball prospect that was a "can't miss" player but never was able to fulfill his promise and faded away from the playing field and into the role of GM. He failed as a player but he has put all his eggs in this basket and will live or die with Peter's philosophy of OBP. After a few tweaks tohe lineup the team starts to win a little and the moral of the team and everybody around them improves. The team then goes on a ridiculous run and wins at an incredible rate. For those that don't know the record for consecutive wins in baseball at the time was 19 by two teams. They make a run for it and I won't tell you how that ends.
With a payroll of a tad under 40 million again the A's make playoffs once again. To compare the Yankees were now at a 200 million payroll with a bunch of big star players while the A's were no names. Even with the momentum of the impossible season they just had the A's lose once more in the playoffs to the Twins. Heartbreaking to Billy once more. After the season the big payroll Boston Red Sox come calling and offer the biggest contract ever for a GM in sports. After thinking about it and talking it over with Peter he turns them down to return to the A's and continue what he started.
Rating : 3/5 - Brad is believable and as charismatic as usual on the big screen. Jonah is miscast as though he is on the screen alot other than the first time we see him he is not talking too much. Philip is great as the uptight and high strung field manager. Could have used more of him. As a fan of baseball I knew how this plays out and as a fan of movies I thought it was a good interpretation of what happened. Other than the climax of the winning streak the movie moves at a constant pace with no typical Hollywood action but that is not what you come for for this movie. The only side not I would have liked to see in the movie is that though Billy is portrayed as being some mad genius and able to buck traditional baseball standards, in all the years that he has used this concept, none of the teams have made it past the first round of the playoffs. So either you can look at the glass half empty as what have you done really or half full and say with what you got you did on hell of a job. Though maybe you don't need to see this in the theater I don't think it should be missed when it premieres.
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