Fascinating bio: both for human interest & its inside look at baseball

Rating: 9/10 (26 September 2011)

(This film is based on the true-life book of the same name by Michael Lewis.)
Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A's, is wrestling with trying to put together a winning baseball team when his budget is the lowest of any major league team. Whenever his team does well, the more affluent teams hire away all his best players. How to win?--or even survive?
Beane (Brad Pitt) turns to the work of Bill James, who invented a variety of new statistical ways ('sabermetrics') for evaluating major league baseball players and what it takes to win ball games.
Billy finds a statistical nerd & baseball addict, Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a recent Yale economics graduate, who understands how to apply Sabermetrics to identify and hopefully acquire those low cost players who would be the biggest help to the team's winning. Billy makes Brand his team's assistant GM and risks everything, daring to walk a plank -- either leading to an abyss or across a bridge to success.
In part, the film shows the conflict between the old, time honored style of largely intuitive evaluations by baseball scouts and coaches versus this use of strange, new, statistical evaluations.
In recent media interviews, baseball insiders say this film really captures the feel and scenes inside club houses, BB meetings, negotiations, etc. But it also has touching, human elements (e.g., between Beane and his daughter).
The book/film, based on true events, is only slightly prettified.
(Quite a bit more about James & Sabermetrics is described in Wikipedia; search it for: "Will James Sabermetrics". And/or google "Paul DePodesta," the actual assistant GM for Beane, on which the film character of Peter Brand was based.)