Moneyball: A Review

Ever since Michael Lewis's Moneyball hit bookstore shelves in April of 2004, I've been a big fan of the story of Billy Beane's transformation from small market GM to baseball revolutionary.  The story, as portrayed by Lewis's book, is one not just about baseball, but also about risk-taking, relationship-building and management style.  It's these themes that have placed Lewis's book in the hands of business executives across the country and motivated countless people, myself included, to pursue professional opportunities on the then-emerging, now-established numerical side of sports.  Shortly after the book came out, I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Lewis on the phone about his experiences while writing it, and I was also fortunate enough to meet Billy Beane himself this past year.  The next logical step in my love of Moneyball was to see the movie, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, and I took care of that last night.

Overall, I found the film extremely entertaining, both as a baseball / sabermetrics nerd and as a moviegoer.  From my brief interaction with Billy Beane last school year and from what I read in the book, Brad Pitt's representation of the Oakland GM seemed accurate and well-acted.  Jonah Hill did a great job playing the part of the "baseball outsiders" who really lead the statistical revolution popularized by the A's and Moneyball during the early- to mid-2000s; while most people assume Beane is the father of sabermetrics, in reality his contribution towards the movement was using the tools that Bill James had invented and "stat heads" like Hill's character had embraced.  While sports movies typically struggle to find actors who can artfully and realistically portray professional athletes, the cast of mostly no-names who played A's Moneyball poster children Scott Hatteberg, David Justice and Chad Bradford handled the roles well.  I also loved Philip Seymour Hoffman as bumbling and over-praised Oakland manager Art Howe - perhaps the most underrated performance in the movie, in my opinion.

The movie is admittedly slow, and takes a little while to get to its ultimate point - that Beane took a huge risk by transitioning from traditional scouting practices to analytical reasoning and, after early-season struggles and internal conflict with his scouting director and manager, won (at least until the playoffs rolled around).  There are a lot of scenes showing the conflict between Beane and his scouts, coaches and, at times, his own "gut," most likely left in there to ensure that the average movie-goer fully understands the distinction between Beane's Moneyball strategy and the more traditional, career-maintaining strategies of baseball's "old school."  Readers of the book and baseball fans might find all of these scenes a bit repetitive and slow, albeit very entertaining and at times quite humorous.

Brad Pitt does a great job as Billy Bean in Moneyball.

What I liked most about the movie, though, wasn't how it portrayed what Beane did, but instead the way it accurately portrayed what Beane didn't do.  At the end of the movie - I don't think this needs a "spoiler alert" tag because a) the book has been out for more than seven years and b) it's based on historical events that happened almost a decade ago - Beane is left without a World Series championship and caught between staying in Oakland near family and leaving for a much higher paying job with Boston.  The movie acknowledges that while Beane's Moneyball shockingly took the 2002 Oakland A's to the American League playoffs, his methodologies were incorporated even more successfully in places like Boston, which won the 2004 World Series with then-29-year-old GM Theo Epstein adopting Moneyball-esque practices.

Whether or not you've read the book (or even like baseball, for that matter), I would highly recommend the film.  More than just a baseball movie, Moneyball is a great story about leadership, self-transformation and risk-taking - a true underdog story that relies more on mental will than physical strength.  Start by seeing the movie and, when you find yourself enjoying it, you can go back and read the book for the full story on Billy Beane's impressive rise to the top of baseball's list of most wanted General Managers.