Moneyball

Most movies that involve baseball can be watched and enjoyed by fans and non-fans alike. "Field of Dreams" has family struggle at it's heart and who doesn't want a kid to have a catch with his dead Dad. "The Natural" taps into the mythic side, a Homeric journey and return to what is good and right in the world. Baseball is often used to frame what is quintessentially American. "Moneyball" is about none of that. It is a peek behind the curtain at the ugly sausage-making side of a modern team. It is as much about payroll as it is about play-making. It does not shy away from the stats that make modern baseball a matter of math. You have to be a fan of the game to care about On Base Percentage and hits with men in scoring position. I am such a fan. Baseball, old and new, is in my DNA. I come from generations of Embardo Red Sox fans that date back to the early 1900's, the very roots of the modern game. I loved this movie. Of course it doesn't hurt that the film was penned by two of the best screenwriters of the past three decades, Steve Zallian (Schindler's List, Searching for Bobby Fischer) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network). There's Oscar gold on them thar mantles.
Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, a washed out player-turned-general manager for the Oakland A's in the early 2000's. He has a small market budget in a big market world and teams like the Red Sox and Yankees have picked him clean. His challenge is to put together a winning team without a lot of cash. Enter Peter Brand (an admirable Jonah Hill) who has a modern take on stats and player selection, finding undervalued players by running their numbers on his PC. The old guard scouts and coaches HATE this newfangled reliance on statistics. They prefer relying on their gut. Problem is their guts aren't winning games. This is the central conflict of the film. If Beane succeeds, it'll change the nature of the game.
"Moneyball" is a baseball movie of ideas, and like "The Social Network" it's about the nature of societal change in the face of entrenched interests. It is not as compelling as "The Social Network', nor is it as crisply written. Like baseball itself, it is often slow to get to the point, laconic. And at 2 hours and 10 minutes it is perhaps a little overlong. Pitt's performance is terrific, mixing bravado with humor and a touch of worried uncertainty. Jonah Hill is perfect in his role as front office rookie, learning the ropes and all the while changing the very nature of those ropes. Hill is an enigma to me, a character actor who doesn't really have a fundamental grasp of how to change character. But he does play the naive neophyte to perfection and here it serves him well.
This film may be too much baseball for the non-baseball fan but for me it was like a good pitcher's duel, a bit long and understated, but a thing of beauty to watch.

Side note: This movie opened during what may be a real-life historic collapse by my Red Sox. Perfect timing to point up the timeless appeal of baseball even when the circumstances are painful (and boy are they painful right now). As a long-time Sox fan, it's something I'm used to, trust me. It's just another example of how baseball provides the markers on the timeline of my life. I just hope that before it's too late, the Red Sox pitching staff sees this film. They need the inspiration.