Finally, a sports movie where there is no moon-shot home run, ridiculous touchdown to end a football game, half-court buzzer-beater, or slap shot for the win.
“Moneyball” is the true story of the 2002 Major League Baseball season, focused on the Oakland Athletics. The gist of the movie is that Oakland only has around $41 million to spend on its whole team, while other teams have as much as $125 million, in the case of the New York Yankees.
The movie stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane and Jonah Hill as a fictional Paul DePodesta. Beane is the general manager for Oakland, and is the one who makes trades, signs players, and decides with scouts on who to draft. DePodesta used to be a nobody in the Minnesota Twins organization but started talking to Beane and eventually ended up as the assistant general manager for Oakland.
The two of them threw out what scouts did for over 100 years and used completely new mathematical formulas to build their team. They used an analysis called Sabermetrics, which focuses on on-base percentage, a formula that calculates how many times a player gets on base. When all of his scouts told him not to do this, Beane ignored them and led his team with two players who the rest of the MLB teams discarded. Beane signed Scott Hatteberg, a catcher coming off a bad injury to his arm who couldn’t even throw anymore to play first base, and an overpaid, washed-up outfielder, David Justice, that Oakland was able to get for cheap from the Yankees.
The acting was good, with every character seeming believable. Pitt, in particular, adapted in his role to make the movie realistic. He ranged from a sensitive father to a hard-nosed general manager.
Hill’s role was to be a somewhat nerdy, yet sports-savvy young intern who just graduated from college. Hill reacted to Beane and asked him questions realistically, learning from his every word, like a real intern would.
One bad thing in the movie was the pace. The season was exciting; however, right after the last game was over, I wanted the movie to be done. It dragged on for a few more minutes, and I thought they were unnecessary.
A good comparison to “Moneyball” would be “The Blind Side.” These films were both originally written by Michael Lewis; this is why both had the same general style. In general, the movie was very good, and I would recommend it to anyone. You don’t have to like baseball or stats to enjoy the movie; it had something for everyone.