From the Pen Of Peter Paul Markin-Money Makes The World Go Round – Brad Pitts’ “Moneyball”

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Brad Pitts’ Moneyball.

DVD Review

Moneyball, starring Brad Pitts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Columbia Pictures, 2011

Professional sports in America (and more recently elsewhere as well) has always been about making money, making money for the owners, making money for the players, and making money for the inevitable ten-percenters that come around whenever the smell of money is in the air. Professional big time sports, moreover is about big money, real big money as this slice of sports management film, Moneyball, amply demonstrates. But it is also, at some level, depending on the sport, the team, and the guys who put together such teams about winning, winning the brass ring. And that is what makes this film that I would probably pass over on other grounds so intriguing

Frankly it has been a while since I have even summoned the courage to watch sports on television much less attend some event in person. And that takes some doing in a city like Boston which over the past decade or so has won championships in all of the four major sports in America (baseball, football, basketball, hockey for the very clueless). And the main reason for that stance is the point I made above about the money pit. But it also about the obscene price of the winning that has distorted the legitimate role of sports in society way out of kilter. Winning and winning merely by overwhelming out-spending the other guys seems to have diminished my capacity to watch guys who are mostly going through the motions.

But Moneyball, and the story behind it presents another story, a story that I could actually relate to. What if you just, strapped for cash and in a minor franchise market, used every available method, including technology to build a team not of hot shots (although they are nice to see) but of guys who could stand to be together in the same room for more than fifteen minutes. That seemed like a premise worth trying.

And that premise gets a tryout here as Billy Beane (played by Robert Redford, oops, Brad Pitts), as the general manager of the Oakland As (a team that back in the glory days, back in the Reggie, Catfish, Sal, Blue Moon, et. al days, back in the early 1970s when I lived there, I followed like crazy), a wonk from Yale and a recalcitrant manger (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) work their magic, and work it almost to that final game of the year. The one that in the end is the only one that counts. But, except maybe in horseshoes, almost doesn’t count doesn’t mean a thing so it in the end is back to the drawing board to work out the missing links. Nice try though, nice premise, and nice sports film even for non-sports nuts.