It Doesn't Mean A Thing If You Don't Win the Last Game

Rating: 8/10 (3 March 2012)

I have been a Dodger fan since I was five years old. And I have the emotional scars to prove it. And because I'm a fan of baseball I've seen a ton of baseball related movies, everything from "Fear Strikes Out" and "The Stratton Story" to "Bull Durham" and "The Natural". Moneyball is right there with the very best of them.
But Moneyball really isn't about baseball; rather, it is about business. The film uses baseball as a parable, much like Peter Brand, marvelously played by Jonah Hill, uses a video of a player who doesn't know that he has hit a home run to make a point for the Oakland A's general manager, Billy Beane, portrayed, in case you haven't heard, by Brad Pitt. The f
The film skillfully and poignantly demonstrates that, in business, if something doesn't work, you should try something else. And then tweak that something else until you get it right. And don't be afraid to challenge prevailing thought. In fact, this film encourages everyone to challenge the status quo and business as usual concepts on a regular basis. And it does so with an exclamation point. It also makes clear that you have to have a standard by which to judge your success. In Moneyball, Beane states that if the A's don't win the last game of the season, meaning the world series, then anything else they accomplish is meaningless.
Moneyball's storyline is simple enough. The Oakland Athletics lose three key players. The team subsequently has a lot of holes in its lineup and little money to fill them. Brand convinces Beane that he can get better players at rock bottom prices by properly analyzing the right statistics. No other team in the sport had ever engaged in such analysis. Beane ends up challenging over a hundred years of "sound" baseball scouting practices that consist primarily of instincts and gut feelings.
All of the performances in the film are extremely believable. Brad Pitt, gives a quietly effective performance. I admit that the first time I saw Jonah Hill in this movie I laughed. I mean you can't help it if you have seen him in "Knocked Up", "Super Bad", or the "40 Year Old Virgin". But I shouldn't have because I saw him in "Cyrus" and was impressed by his non-comedic performance in it. In Moneyball he does a commendable; but as it turns out, not an Academy Award winning job of playing a computer nerd who, in his first ever job, implements theories he discovered as a undergraduate student at Yale.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, as usual, is excellent as manager Art Howe. Has Hoffman ever not been stellar? Even in a movie like "Along Comes Pollly" he was effective. You would think that he would no longer accept supporting roles. But, to his credit, he did. And Moneyball is better for it.
The A's don't win a world series with Beane as its general manager. But the Boston Red Sox, using the business model Beane developed, do two years later.
As a die-hard Dodger fan, I hope the people who make personnel decisions for the Dodgers have spent the money to see Moneyball. But knowing its soon to be ex-owner (I hope), Frank McCourt, I doubt it.