Moneyball: Does New Film Have Any Hope of Pleasing Baseball Fans?

Any baseball fan worth his or her salt has read Moneyball by now. Michael Lewis' 2003 best seller about the Oakland Athletics is one of the great baseball books ever penned, a well-written, fascinating inside look at a front office that changed everything.

Next Friday, these same baseball fans are going to go see Moneyball the movie. It's a reality that most fans of the book probably thought would never come to fruition, much less with Brad Pitt playing A's general manager Billy Beane.

From what I've been able to gather in recent months, though, these same fans are also very worried. Hollywood has screwed up adaptations of many great books over the years, and the possibility exists that Hollywood will now screw up a baseball book that is held near and dear by the sport's most diehard fans.

The question, indeed, is whether or not these fans are going to be pleased by the film.

The good news is that the early reviews are quite positive. Moneyball currently has an 87 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If that figure holds, it's going to be one of the year's best-reviewed films.

Moreover, the review excerpts certainly get one excited.

"The movie does achieve something nearly impossible: Someone who doesn't even like the sport may care about Billy Beane and the 2002 Oakland Athletics," writes Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter.

"Baseball movies are hit and miss, but this one is the shrewdest take on the game since Ron Shelton's Bull Durham and it has appeal that reaches beyond the ballpark," writes Pete Hammond of Boxoffice Magazine.

And so on and so on. While there are a handful of reviewers who did not sign off on the film, the early buzz sounds good.

Does this mean the film is going to strike a chord with baseball fans as much as the book did? Maybe not, but that's a question that can only be answered by watching the film.

I'll say this, though: the fact that this movie even exists is pretty amazing. I don't think it's any secret that baseball is not as popular with the general American public as it used to be, and Moneyball is a book that really only speaks to the sport's most diehard fans. Not exactly fodder for a major motion picture.

Yet here we are looking at the impending release of just that. And from the look of the trailer (above), it looks like Hollywood has taken a story for baseball geeks and turned it into a baseball-themed version of The Social Network.

Heck, even if the film doesn't end up being a great baseball movie, it certainly looks like it could end up being a great movie. Period.

If so, there are going to be plenty of baseball fans out there who just plain enjoy the movie, even if it isn't a perfect adaptation of Lewis' book. And if non-baseball fans also dig the movie, good things could happen.

For example, maybe the film will inspire the otherwise unaffiliated to head to the ballpark. And that, I think, is an eventuality that nobody would be able to complain about.

Least of all Bud Selig. The A's too, come to think of it.