henry ford meets baseball

Rating: 3/10 (25 September 2011)

I bought the hype. I watched this movie yesterday thinking it would be a story that teaches something about the business of professional sports. I thought I would be entertained with a story that explores concepts like greed, pride, perseverance etc. It probably does do this, but it was really boring.
I can summarize the theory as follows: A player should not be judged on how well they play individually, but how do they contribute to the team's ability to score runs. If a winning game was the equivalent of a Model T, then a player is the equivalent of a worker on the assembly line. Billy Beane, the General Manager decides to replace Giambi, their star first baseman who earns 7 million a year with" 3 defective players" for less than a million dollars, who total the same batting average when put together. The fact that none of the 3 players plays first base is inconsequential because it doesn't contribute to scoring runs.
The new theory put forward by the Yale Economics Major who becomes the Assistant Manager to Beane, is to pick players that can produce the most number of wins for the least amount of money. The movie delves into baseball minutiae, it touches on player experiences but focuses on the main character's history through the use of flashbacks. Billy Beane was considered a rising star who passed on Stanford University to play for the New York Mets. He had been considered full of potential but could not deliver. This motivates Beane to accept and implement the new team structure based on the new theory.
Unless you are a major baseball fan, this movie is tedious to watch.