Throwback Thursday: Moneyball

Director: Bennett Miller
Writers: Stephen Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin, Michael Lewis (Author of "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game")
Starring:  Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright
Released: 2011

Moneyball is based on the real-life story of Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), General Manager of the Oakland A's (Athletics) major league baseball team and his attempt to create a championship team using a controversial statistical method based on computer modeling. Essentially, each player's performance is reduced to a series of values using sophisticated formulas and then the 'perfect' team is created by adding together each player's performance values. For the purposes of Moneyball, Beane is most interested in a player's on base percentage (the number of times he gets on base per at-bat) as that is what his economist-turned-baseball-analyist Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) has determined to be the most influential factor in winning games.

Still with me? Good, because I don't like baseball. Like, I really don't like baseball. I don't like watching it. I don't like playing it. I just don't. like. baseball. I also am not a huge Brad Pitt fan. I find he's getting more interesting roles as he gets older but overall he's not a box-office draw for me. Having said that, I truly enjoyed Moneyball. It's a fantastic story of using your available resources to create the best product possible within the confines of a fundamentally unfair system. In this case it's a baseball team and in spite of the sports focus you find yourself rooting more for Beane and Brand than the team itself, as the two make last-minute trades to craft the perfect team and struggle against the team's manager (played by a suitably apathetic Hoffman).

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