Moneyball is a hit for sports fans

Rating: 9/10 (21 September 2014)

A must see for any true baseball fans, Moneyball takes a look at more than just the Oakland Athletics. It beautifully mixes Oakland general manager Billy Beane's decision to shake up how he runs his team, with his personal life. Bennett Miller, the director, really causes the viewer to root for not only the A's team from ten years ago, but gives fans reason to root for Beane and the A's in today's season by the end of the film.
The Oakland A's are coming off a season in which, although they made the playoffs, they suffered a disappointing loss to the New York Yankees. Unfortunately for Billy Beane, three of his biggest stars leave in free agency. Beane has to find a way to replace his best players, while still staying within the lowest salary cap confines in all of baseball. Beane turns to unconventional methods of replacing lost production.
This is where Moneyball, in my opinion, excels. The way Bennett Miller portrays the old school vs. new school ways of thinking is very good. It portrays how many baseball scouts and front office men were stuck in the past where the eye test is all that matters. However Billy Beane and his new assistant Peter Brand, a Yale graduate with a degree in economics, turn to a radical new method of determining player values: saber-metrics, which is looking mainly at certain statistics to determine players value. Many of the old school scouts greatly resent this new method of determining player value and think that Beane is ignoring all of their hard work, especially when Beane sign a slew of unconventional players to help replace the loss of his three stars.
The first half of the season does not go well for the Athletics, leading to critics to call Beane's new method of selecting players a failure. This is very frustrating for Beane as he has to win the support of the owners, while pouring every single minute of his life into his job. The problem is that Beane recently got divorced and shares time with his daughter. His increased work responsibilities make it harder for Beane to see his daughter.
One of the neatest scenes, if you are a sports-nerd like myself, is the trade deadline scene. It is a very tense few minutes as Beane and Brand attempt to wheel-and-deal with other teams. Miller paints Beane as a powerful general manager to be feared by having him give other GM's deadlines and telling them they are giving up a huge opportunity.
However the turning point of the film definitely is the streak. After struggling to compete in the first half of the season, the team rips off a 20 game win streak which is the longest in A.L. history. At this point in the film, there is a general consensus being reached that Beane's experiment with saber-metrics have worked as the A's are roaring towards the playoffs. Although they may lose to the twins in the post season, almost everyone around baseball generally agrees that saber-metrics is here to stay and is probably the future.
The end of the film has Beane meeting with the owners of the Boston Red Sox, who offer him the largest contract for a general manager at the time. This is the hardest decision Beane has to make of the whole film. He could go to Boston and take the money and help remake that once great team into contenders again, or he could stay near his daughter, and finish what he started in Oakland. In the end, he ends up choosing to stay in Oakland, after listening to a CD of his daughter singing and thanking him for being a great Dad. After the film ends, the reader learns that Beane stays in Oakland to finish what he started and to win a World Series there. They also learn that the Red Sox have won two world series in the last decade using a strategy similar to that of Beane's. By including this information, the director causes the viewers to feel sympathy for Beane and makes the viewer hope that the Athletics can win a World Series with Beane at the helm.
Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill perform very well in the roles of Billy Beane and Peter Brand respectively. This is a great film to see if you have a genuine interest in baseball or even sports.