I watched many baseball movies and I was waiting for this movie cuz it was based on true story and I love those type of sports movies. Since I am European, baseball is not really a sport where I have favorite club, but since Hollywood makes a lot of movies based on their popular sports I think I prolly watched more baseball movies then football (soccer) movies, so I understand the basics of the that sport atleast.
The cast of the movie is pretty good, that was one of the reason I was eager to check it out and the story about thing that actually brought some change in the game itself. In 2001. Oakland A’s lost in playoffs against Yankees cuz of simple thing, Yankees have the money to buy better players and their budget is few times bigger then Oakland’s. After that Oakland loses few of their best players cuz they cant afford them anymore and general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) with limited budget need to find replacements for them, which is pretty much impossible and the old way of scouting just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Then he meets a baseball fan Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Yale graduate in economics and computer guy who look at players not how other scouts look at them but through pure statistics. So two of them start to make a team based on the numbers and basically treat the players as a tool. They made a team of players with different skills that as individuals just cant reach that level of play but all together they fulfill what its needed to win the games. The coach (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of the team is of course against it and he is putting players he thinks are best until Beane removes all of those from the club and makes him do what he has planned from the start.
Now, the way Beane is removing and trading players to me looks little cold and heartless. I assume that’s one of rules of the baseball, that you can trade players throughout whole season just with a phone calls. Looking at the English football, things like that don’t work and I’m glad they don’t. Trading players like that is pretty bad if the player has family and suddenly you play in one town next week you are in different town. I mean what about contracts, in English football if a player signs a contract for 4 years then he is a playing for that club for 4 years and he can even spent most of that time on the bench but contract is a contract. If club wants to sell him, theres only 2 times it can be done, winter and summer break. Also player can decline the offer if the buyer is some club where he doesn’t want to go if he is still under contract.
What I have seen in Moneyball and how the players are treated like an merchandise, kinda got me by surprise. Theres one parallel that can be drawn between baseball and English football, who has more money wins trophies. Even though lately that difference is shrinking and some players who are worth dozen millions don’t become good investment, while little clubs with budget big as some of rich clubs single players worth manage to beat those rich clubs. Though I doubt that there will be time when every club will be equal, now and then some small club will make a surprise but in any sport, its all about the money.
Now back to to movie. I was little disappointed at the end, not cuz the movie was bad but cuz its just not made for other type of audience then American. Most of the baseball movies I watched before had some story that everyone could connect to, but Moneyball is missing that. Theres plenty of characters but they are not that much in the center of story like the whole new scouting idea which makes the movie little boring for people who are not baseball fans. I am pretty sure that US audience, especially real fans really enjoyed the movie, that’s why the IMDB score is 8, but if same type of movie is made about English football it would be boring for US audience.
So my final conclusion – not next Blind Side type of movie but still good movie and if you are baseball fan definitely check it out.
