Moneyball (2011)

Moneyball explores the classic battle of right and left brains and concludes one thing: you need both. It also shows us how to maximize returns when you have the constraint of investment. But along the way, it shows us the courage of Billy Beane in experimenting with a system of rating players that enabled him to build a baseball team with limited means, that would go on to have the longest winning streak in American League history. And it does so with little fuss.

Billy Beane is the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, a team that is losing key players and unable to afford good new ones. Beane is himself a failed Major League player and divorced parent, who chose to forego a study and play scholarship from Stanford to enter the League. Frustrated with the traditional approach of the team’s scouts, Beane proceeds to negotiate with the Cleveland Indians to exchange some players and stumbles upon Peter Brand, a Yale Economics graduate who works as a researcher for the Cleveland Indians. He is intrigued and impressed by Brands espousal of a sabermetric approach to rating baseball players, that aims to provide an objective view on player performance.

Beane hires Brand and proceeds to fight numerous battles with the team scouts, team owner and the team coach, who do not seem to understand Beane and Brand’s choice of players. The A’s manager, Art Howe does not start any of the players picked by Beane and Brand and is ultimately forced to do as Beane sells players to push Howe into a corner. Beane’s gamble pays off as the A’s enjoy the longest winning streak in history. It gets Beane the biggest General Manager job offer ever from the Boston Red Sox. Will he take it or think about taking one more major decision in life for money or follow his daughter’s advice to ‘enjoy the ride’?

Written by the screenwriting pair of Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian who have individually written films such as A Few Good Men and Schindler’s List to name a few, the film plays down a lot of the drama that is normally associated with sports films and sporting moments. The focus is very much on Billy Beane and his colorless life, his unfulfilled baseball dream and a broken marriage. The A’s progress is seen through Billy’s eyes more than it is on the field. This provides freshness to the treatment of a redemption story, while not going overboard in taking Beane to Deliverance.

Bennett Miller’s direction gives us several special moments in the film. The best one being Beane walking up to Peter Brand’s desktop in the Cleveland Indian’s office and asking him ‘Who are you?’ repeatedly until Brand is stripped of all his defenses and revels his true role. Miller’s filming of Beane’s fear of jinxing the A’s by attending the game and his sensitive relationship with his daughter make the film a lot more emotional than the title would suggest. The interspersing of Beane’s failed past as a player with his experiences as a General Manager has been done well. The conflict between the objective and subjective views of sport has been shown realistically and understandably left unresolved, with a subtle hint towards using both together as the Red Sox intended to.

Brad Pitt serves up another serious acting performance that won him an Academy Award nomination. As Beane, he often as a wry smile on his face as he takes on the A’s set methods with persistence and patience. Jonah Hill as Peter Brand who won a nomination delivers an earnest performance as the talented economist who is unsure of his place in the world until Beane finds him.

Moneyball is a mature sports film.