The film Moneyball, released in 2011, is the cinematic rendition of the baseball management story written by Micheal Lewis. The movie stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane (general manager of the Oakland A’s), Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe (head coach of the Oakland A’s), and Jonah Hill, as the young and brilliant baseball statistician Peter Brand. Moneyball is a sports drama telling the true story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics organization credited with creating a model which worked around the immense payroll gap of organizations in Major League Baseball (MLB). The story starts with Brad Pitt sitting alone in the Oakland Coliseum. He’s listening to the 2001 American League Division Series (ALDS) game five on his radio. His A’s have choked the 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series and the fate of the series is being decided in New York. After the Yankees defeat his team, Billy is struck with the pain of knowing the season is over and the realization that this roster wouldn’t hold up another year due to money constraints. The movie then ventures down the journey the Oakland A’s and Billy Beane start—The search to create a team for just 41 million American-dollars. Peter Brand joins us on this path, laying down the groundwork for the birth of the iconic cost-effective baseball management model. Billy steals Peter from the Cleveland Indians, hiring him to help make decisions on what players should be on this team by spotting what statistical advantages those players have that other organizations aren’t spotting. The idea from Peter and Billy is basically to form a team of players who get on base the most, but are neglected from other teams because of their defensive skills, age, or their playing style. This proved to be doubly effective. Not only was cost-effectiveness of picking up players who weren’t wanted in the MLB helpful, but also the performance of these players being superior due to their high involvement on the base paths. Apart from the drama and sensationalism of baseball, the movie Moneyball at its core showcases the radical model started by the A’s as a message to the game of baseball. The message says that baseball isn’t just a game to be won and molded by the goliath organizations with deeper pockets.
The Pros
Moneyball does a tremendous job balancing how much “baseballness” they throw at you. There isn’t a scene within this movie that you can get confused by if you at least know what happens in the game known as baseball. The movie almost feels like a business drama. That’s probably because we often forget to look at organizations in professional sports as businesses, but that’s what they are. There’s drama between Billy and Art Howe throughout the entire movie, but also tension between the baseball community as a whole and the Oakland A’s. These sources of drama help the story be more to consume then just a baseball story about how the Oakland A’s shifted thinking in baseball management.
I enjoyed the casting. Jonah Hill fit very well into the role of the nerdy, smooth, and brilliant character we know as Peter Brand. It was truly very believable through the writing and his acting that he was an actual Yale graduate in statistics. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill also really are a duo we took for granted I think. I mean come on, the only other movie we see the two acting together in is Megamind, just a year prior to Moneyball.
The Cons
The plot tries to take too many different routes. There’s the Oakland A’s “Moneyball” plot; Then there’s Billy Beane’s relationship with baseball (the reason we see all the flashback scenes); It’s small but also Brad Pitt’s relationship with his daughter; And we focus on Billy’s management career which becomes even more focused on in the end of the movie. I personally felt that the movie was trying to tie in too much into one story. We can pretty much cut out his relationship with his daughter and still achieve the “just enjoy the show” angle of Billy’s inability to appreciate the moment. Personally I can also do without the flashbacks and Billy’s story of how he became a manager. I don’t see why it ties into the Oakland A’s and their mission throughout the story. I’d also like to say that I respect the opinions of the producers and story writers who believe those scenes were valuable—I’m sure they have their reasons.
The baseball clips are cheesy and don’t hold up. Moneyball includes both real footage of the Oakland A’s and their own creations of important baseball plays and moments which I value. However, they were not well made. All the important details are right: the jerseys, bats, players, etc. But the feeling they give off is what I mean by “not well made.” The scenes just fail to give off the emotions which the stories within the scenes are trying to convey because they’re not real. The scenes I’m referring to would be the scene where the A’s blow the 11-0 lead to the Royals and thankfully win from Hatteberg’s walk off homerun (Chris Pratt). While I also know they couldn’t only use entirely real game footage, I think the scenes could’ve been made better for sure and instead less cheesy feeling.
Despite what you may think after reading me rip on parts of Moneyball in The Cons, I still liked this movie and think it’s one of the best sports movies capturing a legendary story. The score is an 81.