Moneyball

When I heard that Moneyball was in production, I thought it would fail.  How do you take a book about statistical analysis and turn it into a narrative film?

Moneyball succeeds by changing focus from the book.  The book, as I said, is about statistical analysis and uses one team’s experiment with it to educate the reader.  The movie is about Billy Beane, the manager of said team, his journey, and how his grasp of the potential of statistical analysis changed his sport, his team, and his life.

Brad Pitt plays Beane as smart and savvy, yet insecure.  He’s a baseball guy, but he’s so totally a product of his lifelong immersion in the sport that he’s a baseball guy only.  When he spots an influential whiz kid (Jonah Hill) in an opposing manager’s office, he understands the value of a completely different perspective.  It’s a perspective so different that betting on it could cost him his career.  There’s your drama.  There’s your movie. 

Now, I like baseball.  I go to several games per year, I follow the Nationals in the Post, and believe that Marconi invented radio specifically to give the world the magic that is Vin Scully.  But you don’t have to like baseball to like this movie.  You have to like scrappy underdogs, you have to like things that don’t go boom, and you have to like Brad Pitt.  I like all three, and I like this picture.  I want to see it again as soon as I can.