Moneyball

This week, we went to see Moneyball. In case you didn't know, Moneyball is based on a book called Moneyball, and follows the Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season. It mainly deals with how they started using Sabermetrics to evaluate players, instead of relying on scouting (by the way, it's starting to spread into other sports as well. It's just that baseball is the one sport that can be most accurately be reflected by statistics besides wins and losses). "Finally" I thought to myself "A movie for me." I'm a math nerd, and a movie geek, putting Moneyball squarely in my dweeb wheelhouse.

Evan won the preview game (he's been beating me a lot lately) because he got Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Real Steel (terrible) and I only got The Rum Diary (hey look, it's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, redux). Anyway, after only one single, solitary company logo (Columbia Pictures), the movie starts with archival footage of the A's losing the decisive game of the 2001 American League Division Series (ALDS, which sounds more like some affliction I'd get when I'm older, as opposed to baseball playoffs). Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is the manager, listening to the game on his portable radio and turning it off during critical moments (he's a bit superstitious). After his team loses, he takes a couple of days to regroup and come to terms with his losses (two of his best players are leaving for free agency. As a warning, this movie - and thus review - will probably have a lot of sports terms. Sorry). He tries to re-sign Johnny Damon, but Damon's agent (Scott Boras. Ha!) leverages their interest to get a better deal from Boston. Oakland can't match the offer because they just don't have the money (Why buy a baseball team if you can't afford it?) so they have to watch him walk.

Beane goes to the Indians to trade some players. He walks into the GM's office and tries to make several trades, the last one being for a substandard player. Even that’s rebuffed, because the GM listened to this really young guy named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill. Peter Brand is a renamed Paul DePodesta). After the meeting, Beane seeks out Brand, who explains to him that baseball scouts have been going about it all wrong. Batting Average, RBI's, and other "traditional" stats don't correlate that well with winning. Other stats, like OBP (On-base percentage), do a better job. It doesn't matter how a player gets on base (Walks, hit by pitches, or hits) as long as they do.

Beane hires Brand, and together they go after players that other teams have deemed expendable based on traditional scouting (too old, weird looking pitching - that's what submariners do, folks). So they assemble "An island of misfit toys" that their scouting department hates, but Beane and Brand like.

The regular season gets off to a rocky start, because the manager won't play the players how Beane expected (Hatteberg is supposed to be on first base, not Peña). Fed up with constant arguing with his manager, Beane trades Peña (and Jeremy Giambi, for good measure) after a 20-26 start to force Hatteberg onto first.

Things pick up from there. The team starts to play better. They swing some deals and manipulate managers at the trade deadline to get who they want. It sparks a winning streak that provides a lot of the tension at the end of the movie, because they have a chance to break the record for the longest winning streak.

I liked this movie, but that might be because I'm a sucker for baseball movies with SPOILER happy endings END SPOILER. Brad Pitt's good, but he's always good. He does Brad Pitt things, but with an underbite and a trace of an accent.

His daughter is cute and worries about her father, and sings a sweet song to make the SPOILER happy ending END SPOILER. The song is totally real, and it's called The Show by Lenka. And yes, I have it stuck in my head. It's still a good song, and the rest of the music sounds remarkably like Explosions in the Sky (who did the music for Friday Night Lights), by which I mean it's pretty good.

Other than that, there's baseball in it, and players learning to hate losing and love winning (really? Players still need to learn that?) and dealing with not having a bunch of money in Oakland. I guess it's a Blue-Ray movie. Not quite enough to make it a theatre movie, mainly because there's no real end to the movie - it just stops. Good beginning and good middle, though. Plus, it has Bobby Kotick (he's the head of Activision Blizzard) playing the owner. And it's hilarious thinking he's that frugal, because I can totally imagine Bobby Kotick being that way in real life. Only a lot meaner. And stealing peoples' souls.