It helps to be a big baseball fan to thoroughly enjoy “Moneyball.” I really liked it; I didn’t realize I was wearing a baseball hat in there (a championship Giants hat from my sister), but as I looked around other people were wearing jerseys and hats, too. I warn that non-baseball movie-goers might find “Moneyball” a bit slow, long to take root and not much action (a lot were there for Brad Pitt, no doubt). But stats, lineups and subtleties are at the crux of baseball.
“Moneyball” explores how a team found a way to compete in a league where huge payroll discrepancies exist, from the New York Yankees with their million-dollar players to the Oakland A’s with far, far less. The movie goes back to the end of the 2001 season, when three of the A’s stars: Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and closer Jason Isringhausen became free agents and were pilfered by richer teams. Come 2002, what were the less-monied A’s to do?
Enter General Manager Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, and his fresh out of college assistant, Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill. They piece together a motley crew of overlooked players based on a statistical analysis of on-base percentage and runs scored. The A’s scouts think they’re totally nuts, and true to form, the team is awful in the first half of the season, compiling losses at an alarming rate. But somehow the little team takes hold and starts to come to life, eventually winning an incredible 20 games in a row, a record still in the American League.
Pitt as Beane and Hill as his nerdy assistant, are the gist of film, as they concoct a roster they believe can win. Both are great, and fill up the screen with anxieties, and at times humor. It’s mostly baseball from behind the scenes, from a GM who nervously listens to games only intermittently on a transistor radio, and who once was a player, too, with the inner scars still to show for it.
I haven’t liked a baseball movie this much, since perhaps “The Natural” in 1984. Kudos to director Bennett Miller (who also did “Capote”) and screenplay adapters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin who worked from the bestselling book by Michael Lewis. This reminds me: What are the best baseball movies in recent memory? I’d say: The Natural, Moneyball, The Rookie, Bull Durham and Field of Dreams.
