"It's hard not to be romantic about baseball." Impossible, perhaps.

Rating: 10/10 (15 December 2014)

Whatever problem you may have with the accuracy of the history of the A's ascendency in baseball in the Billy Beane era, the movie rates as one of the finest films about the game—and that's saying a lot because there are a hell of a lot of good baseball movies. They certainly over-played Art Howe as the bad guy but fiction needs a villain, or something close to it. With the truth put aside the story is a great one and the major points are history. As James Thurber says, you can look it up. What makes it even more exciting for me is the fact that I was right there in Seattle watching—like a train wreck—as the A's took the lead in August with their spectacular 21 game streak.
The acting and writing in the movie are sublime at every turn and some of the best examples come in the form of one-ended phone calls—usually with Brad Pitt shoving some sort of junk food in his pie hole.
Just because the A's didn't win the World Series doesn't mean that moneyball doesn't work. Every team loses every yearexcept one, and that team is always a rich club. More than anything this movie screams out for revenue sharing in baseball because without the A's there can be no NY Yankees. Spanish soccer could definitely learn something from American football as 2-3 clubs seems to dominate here year after year (it's mostly Barça and Real Madrid).
This is a brilliant observation I found in the forum from user tricksoftrade01: "Rooting for the Yankees or the Red Sox is like cheering on the schoolyard bully who knocks down a smaller kid, steals their lunch money and then kicks them in the balls."