Moneyball: New Movie Will Paint Baseball's Stats Revolution in New Light

When it was first announced that a film version of Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball was being adapted into a film, the most common question that people had was how Hollywood was going to tackle a story that doesn’t end with in World Series triumph.

Based on the reviews from critics and fans, the idea was not to try and “Hollywood” the story up by having the team win something that it didn’t win. Rather, it was about tackling the essence of Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland A’s.

In the book, the drama comes from this “new” way of thinking about stats. (I put new in quote marks because Sabermetrics, the principle philosophy used to determine the value of a “Moneyball” player, had been around since the 1980s, but teams were not using it to evaluate players.)

In the movie, the drama comes from Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt. Some of the best characters in film history are paranoid, insecure and unable to enjoy the ride that life takes them on. Beane is afraid that what he is doing is so out-of-the-box that he is going to get fired, and that is actually what drives him.

Film critic Roger Ebert described the Billy Beane character as “an inward and lonely man.” That is the most apt description that you can use, because this new thinking is essentially Beane’s baby. No one, save for the Peter Brand character, who is based on Paul DePodesta, supports Beane and what he is doing because it is so different, and people associated with baseball don’t deal with change that well.

If he can make this new way of thinking work, he knows that he will forever alter the landscape of baseball. No longer will players be judged at face value, rather they are going to be studied and evaluated like never before.

If he is unable to make it work, not only will he lose his job with the A’s, but he is going to be a pariah in baseball circles. He will never again be allowed to be a part of the game that he loves, though he can’t bring himself to watch a game because he is so superstitious.

Moneyball, the movie, may not be everyone’s cup of tea because it does not have that traditional happy ending of a team holding a trophy. But the movie is not supposed to be about this team winning a championship.

It is about a man, Billy Beane, doing what he has to do to keep his team relevant in a system that does not make it possible for a small-market team to keep its best players for very long. And he has to do that while battling his own personal demons and the angry, bitter baseball world that resents him for screwing up their “perfect” system.

Whether you are a baseball fan or not, you should be able to appreciate what Beane had to do in order to build a team that is capable of winning a championship.