Unlikeable people plus little baseball make this a bore

Rating: 4/10 (17 November 2013)

I watched this on TV finally in November 2013. I am puzzled why anyone thinks highly of this dull film with no likable characters. The film shows how the Oakland Athletics ) won a division title in 2002, despite losing three star players after 2001. It focuses almost solely on general manager Billy Beane, (Brad Pitt) and his new assistant, a fictional character named Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill). It is presented that Peter's chief contribution is letting Beane know that on-base average is the best way to judge the value of players.
One night the club is going for the American League record of 20 straight wins, Beane is out driving to Visalia to see their minor league club. I guess we aren't supposed to know it is a 4-hour drive, because the A's are playing a night game when Billy decides to turn back to see the A's game instead. I should imagine it unlikely the Visalia club to have a game scheduled for midnight, so why was he driving there at that time of night to see the minor leaguers?
My chief criticism of the film is they make Beane out to be rather hostile, almost rude, to virtually everyone around him. I hope the real Billy Beane doesn't behave like the movie Beane. There is one scene of Beane and his ex-wife and her new husband. For no apparent reason, Beane treats the new husband rather shabbily. I wonder why they included this scene since there was no follow-up to it, no other scene dealing with any aspect of his broken marriage. Nor was there any hint that in real life, Beane had a new wife himself. They throw in 2 or 3 scenes of him being nice to his teenage daughter. Since the film was almost totally about his work life, they would have been wise to leave out the small bits with the daughter altogether.
Just like Billy and Peter, none of the players have any character development. Unlike the stars, the players are quite minor characters.
As a baseball fan, I thought it laughable that Billy flies from California to Cleveland just to talk to the Cleveland GM about making a trade for a little-used relief pitcher. That was to set up Beane noticing Peter, leading to him being hired by Beane.
Another laugh came when the two were together in Beane's office and Peter tells Beane that the left-handed reliever he wants to get from Cleveland, could only be wanted by 1 other club—San Francisco. Beane immediately phones the Giants and engineers a quick trade to get them another lefty reliever, so Cleveland will have to trade the guy to Billy. I dare say that a good left-handed reliever would in any season be desired by more than one or two clubs.
The film tries so hard to make it seem like this new strategy of Beane's—look for high on-base average players, disdain bunting and stealing—he tells them at one point that they should never bunt, leads to Oakland winning the division in 2002. Facts are they bunted for sacrifices 25 times in 2001, 20 times in 2002. The did cut down their stolen bases from 68 to 46, but considering the center fielder they lost, Johnny Damon had stolen 27 himself in 2001, and he was replaced someone who stole only 4, the lower stolen base figure must surely be attributed to that more than anything to do with strategy. It was interesting to hear Peter telling Billy early on that he didn't want Johnny Damon, that it was good for Oakland he was gone. Many people in the game consider Damon's play huge in helping the Red Sox win the World Series two years later, and later helping the Yankees to their only post-2000 World Series title to date. The A's have one post-season series win since 1993, and haven't won 100+ in any season since 2002.
I know the A's really relied on more than OBA, but that one stat cited in the film as being key makes it worth noting that the club On-Base Average in 2001 was .345, and in 2002 it dropped to .339. Their runs scored dropped from 884 to 800. I found it troubling that the real hitting stars of the A's, Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez, each of whom drove in over 100 runs are not featured at all.
More significantly, the key role of the pitching staff was totally ignored. The only scene featuring a pitcher, was Chad Bradford, who like a grateful kid approached Beane at the start of the 2002 season and thanked him for being the first one to give him a chance. This was rather weird in two ways. First, Bradford not only had pitched in 44 games over three seasons with the White Sox, but had worked 35 games in 2001 for Oakland. It's true he worked more in 2002, but he hardly would have known about getting a bigger chance before the season started. The other thing that was weird was the way Beane reacted. He couldn't wait to walk on past Bradford, almost like the "Go away boy, you bother me," notion of W.C. Fields.
Even though I knew the A's haven't reached a World Series since 1990, how they've stayed competitive, which they indeed have, seemed like a good idea for a movie. But Beane seemed like such a jerk who doesn't know how to talk to people nicely. Peter had almost no character other than a guy who quickly comes up with numbers. And no other person's character was explored in any way. So we got not character development AND almost no baseball action other than what took the place of the old newspaper headlines in movies from decades ago. All we're left with is some people talking about the fortunes of a baseball team during one season, plus a few random highlights.