Excellent inside glimpse of the operation of a major league baseball team.

Rating: 10/10 (3 October 2011)

If you want gain a better understanding of the operation of a baseball club, this is the movie to watch. This movie dramatizes the role of the general manager, the key front office person who seldom is in the limelight but whose decisions effect the operation of an entire baseball organization. No baseball club will be successful without an effective general manager, but even if the g.m. is effective, there is still no guarantee that this will produce a winning ball club because much of what the g.m. does depends on luck. In baseball, the g.m. is gambling on the players being able to play well, and often the gamble fails. The players get injured, they have emotional issues, attitude problems, labor-management conflicts, events outside of the g.m.'s control that effect the players' performances. It happens all the time. The field manager may be in charge of the players on the field but it is the general manager who has overall responsibility for the team's performance.
This is an excellent movie about baseball, as told from the the vantage point of the general manager, a vantage point that is seldom, if ever, dramatized. Yet, there is probably no job in baseball that is more critical to the success of the team then the general manager's. The GM is the guy (or gal) who is charged with the responsibility for putting together the team. The GM signs the players and makes the trades. The field manager is much more visible but it is the GM who provides the players for the field manager to manage. This movie is about one GM who is unique among GMs since he was actually once a baseball player, albeit a marginal player, who worked his way up the front office ladder. Brad Pitt does an admirable job portraying the field manager. The movie, however, asks the audience to accept a premise that is unsustainable, namely, that the GM hit upon an idea for putting together a winning team according to some kind of mathematical formula based on percentages. This idea, playing the percentages, is as old as baseball itself. Actually, the GM is effective because he can relate to the more marginal, and less expensive, players and believes that if properly managed, these players can get on base just as often as the higher priced players. This idea, too, is as old as baseball itself. Also, the GM's "system" fails, that is, his team loses in the playoffs, which sort of takes the wind out the story's sails. Nevertheless, this movie provides an excellent inside glimpse of the operation of a major league baseball team and the challenges confronting the front office in putting together a competitive team.