Good but very cerebral

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2011)

I have heard it said that the most nerdy sport of all is baseball. I believe that to be true. If a math major is going to be interested in a game, the usual choice is baseball.
It is a statistician's delight. Hockey (by comparison) has only a few well known stats and few are published routinely. Hockey might be more exciting to watch, but baseball is a much tenser spectator experience. Will the pitcher out maneuver the batter or will the batter dominate the pitcher? The question hangs in the air as the pitcher absent mindedly scuffs the rubber on the mound and the batter takes a practice swing and sets his stance. Who wins, what are the odds, what history do these two have, how hot is the day, which way is the wind going, who's in a slump, who's not, who can throw nothing but blinding fastballs, who has a slider that looks like it can be hit into the parking lot of Yankee stadium until it winds up in the catcher's mitt? And as the seconds drag on, all these questions are discussed between people who may never meet again.
But these statistics are kindergarten level questions when Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) opens up his computer and starts really classifying data, using factorials, permutations, combinations and z scores and goodness knows what other statistical mysteries known only to the nerdiest of nerds.
Peter is the obvious genius, but there is someone else in the movie who is unusual. His skill certainly ranks above talent. He is driven primarily, it seems, by working a new angle in Baseball, an angle that he himself has no idea where to begin looking. Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) knows the answer is somewhere, but he does not know where. There has to be some way to replace the individual "hero" of baseball. If you loose someone like (say) Mickey Mantle in your line up, do you look for another Mantle or do you seek a collection of players that individually come no where near Mantle's skill and ability but as a collection of players who can add up to Mantle? Do you go for the individual or the group? Prior to Beane the answer was the Yankee model. You go for a Dimaggio to replace Ruth and Gehrig and a Mantle for a Dimaggio.
Beane changed all that when he looked for a group that could somehow work together and together do what looked like it was an impossibility: put together a winning team that was made entirely of average (affordable) players that collectively could deliver an amazing result, an unexpected one, one that would grab the imagination of a fan base that could not believe the results until records that had stood for years were broken. Day after day the fans were treated to a lengthening of the consecutive wins record. It gave them heart and it gave them courage.
The movie does the same thing. It is all metaphor for collective cooperation rather than individual heroics. We see a man who recognized the gift of someone else and was not at all threatened by it. The two central characters work with each other, each understanding what the other knew and each deeply respecting it.
I took off 2 points for the music at the end. I cannot imagine why the director used it. Nothing justifies it.