Moneyball

Vlad Piranha · Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 9:39 pm Post subject: Moneyball

After seeing a promising trailer, I went to go see Moneyball a week back. I'm only getting to it now.

Moneyball is the story of the 2002 Oakland Atheletics and their revolutionary approach to building a winning baseball team. The film opens with a very simple message in plain white text against a black background that sums up the frustration of baseball fans everywhere. Teams like the Yankees win because they have money to throw at player contracts every year and smaller teams simply can't compete with this highest bidder mentality.

Enter Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A's who believes that there is a better way to build a team. From his own experience, he knows that talent and bargaining money simply aren't enough to build a truly effective team. After a chance encounter with a bean counter with a knack for player assesment through raw mathematics and statistics, he begins to build a winning team that, according to traditional baseball logic, should be a collection of failures. Like counting cards in poker, he employs this system of statistics and averages to produce the most effective team he can muster while spending next to nothing on his team compared to the richer franchises.

Like the quotable quote in this movie says, it's hard not to romanticize baseball. I briefly remember the 2002 baseball season and some of the games that played a pivotal role in the plot. I love how the Minnesota Twins actually factored into things and had a minor role to play in this. One thing that surprised me was the language in this film. This could have been a PG movie so easily due to the innocent charm of the film's premise, but I imagine it was made gritty enough to get the PG-13 rating so adults would take it seriously enough to see it. I have no regrets about paying full price to see this film. It easily deserves a B+.