Moneyball

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

Moneyball is a 2011 film directed by the talented Bennett Miller who also made the excellent movies Capote and Foxcatcher. It received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Screenplay, with Aaron Sorkin being one of the writers.

This is a sports movie centering on Major League Baseball, and its theme revolves around the desire of a couple of men who want to overcome traditional notions of what it takes to be successful. The film uses the baseball story to make a comment about how the quest of the main characters applies to life in general. The argument here is that American professional sports teams are big businesses which pay tremendous amounts of money to promote star players to generate revenues from advertising, product endorsements, and ticket sales. To accomplish these goals, Major League Baseball wants athletic versions of entertainment stars which will be attractive to fans who want to worship enhanced versions of themselves. Therefore, those athletes who are not physically attractive or who may perform in a non-orthodox manner will be discarded despite their admirable abilities.

It is 2002 after the Oakland Athletics had a terrific season the prior year only to lose in the playoffs. The next year the team lost many of its star players to other outfits who had larger payrolls than the A’s. General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) must rebuild a winning roster at bargain-basement prices. He was a major league player who did not become a success despite being aggressively recruited by scouts who made it sound as if he would be a star. He gave up other career chances because the thrust of the over-the-top recruiting pitches unfortunately did not consider any failings that he as a player might have. Beane’s experience taught him that a young player will believe the hype even though he may not really be prepared for the difficulties he may encounter.

While visiting the Cleveland Indians office, Beane meets an overweight, nerdy, young man named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill, who has since dropped a great deal of the poundage. Brand is not the name of the real-life person, who is Paul DePodesta). Beane is curious about Brand’s advisory capacity, since the guy definitely doesn’t look like a fellow who would have a career in professional sports. But, that is the point of the film. Brand says that because he offers an alternative way at looking at the game, he is considered a “leper” and is “ostracized.” The film illustrates that people don’t like change, especially if it upends their preconceived notions of what they think is right.

Beane coaxes Brand to tell him his story. The young man is a Yale University economics graduate. He advocates applying a statistical model developed by Bill James to recruit players. Brand, being an outsider, can see that those running professional baseball teams “think in terms of buying players … your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.” He says that star players are overpaid, and losing those who receive large salaries “opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities” to take advantage of ball players who have been overlooked.

Beane goes back to Oakland and after contemplating what Brand has said, calls him up and asks him if he would have picked Beane on the first round of the draft. Brand says no, he would have waited until the ninth, would not have offered a bonus, and would have assumed Beane would have accepted a scholarship to go to college. If Brand had been the scout recruiting Beane he would have not rushed prematurely into a game he was unprepared for and would have received his education and had time to mature. Brand’s response confirms that Beane made the right choice in having purchased his contract from the Indians. Brand is made Assistant General Manager.

To get those runs he mentioned, Brand says it’s necessary to zero in on “one number.” He uses mathematics to determine which players get on base the most. They may not be flashy with how they do it, so someone who walks a great deal won’t generate a high salary. Brand argues his statistics can find those individuals who have value, are not expensive, and thus meet the A’s monetary restrictions. He tells Beane, “People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws. Age, appearance, and personality.” He offers the example of Chad Bradford (Casey Bond), the “submarine” relief pitcher, who releases the ball as his hand almost touches the ground. Brand says of him, “Nobody in the big leagues cares about him, because he looks funny.” The man may be “one of the most effective relief pitchers in baseball,” but because he doesn’t conform to what people perceive to be the right look for a pitcher, the A’s can get him for a relatively minuscule salary. Brand says that they can afford twenty-five players that can form a winning team because “baseball undervalues them.” He calls them “an island of misfit toys.” He could be talking about himself, since he might easily be dismissed because of his youth and his looks before anyone even hears what he has to say. Luckily, Beane listened.

There is a great image of Brand walking into a room at the A’s front offices and sitting down next to an outdated, clunky personal computer. He then opens up his sleek laptop and gets down to work. The shot sums up the antiquated mindset of those still running the game, and he is at least been given the chance to show the need to move forward. He doesn’t have long to wait to make his presence felt. Beane calls him into a scout and coach meeting where there is a great deal of resistance to the players Beane wants to sign up. These guys are more concerned about public image. On the plus side for one player they note he has a “classy swing,” which doesn’t have anything to do with whether he can get on base safely. On the negative side they note he has “an ugly girlfriend,” which one says means it communicates that he has “no confidence.” Appearances seem to matter more than scoring runs to these old-timers.

Beane tries to make his argument that they must recreate the strong players they lost “in the aggregate,” which is probably too uppity a word for these guys. Beane wants to acquire a few men that combined have the abilities of a star player, and he can do it by paying out less money. He tells them, “It’s an unfair game,” which is a reference to the subtitle of the book on which the film is based. He says that their team is at the low end of the spectrum financially, which has allowed the A’s to have “been gutted. We’re like organ donors for the rich. Boston’s taken our kidneys, Yankees have taken our heart. And you guys just sit around talking the same old ‘good body’ nonsense like we’re selling jeans.” Beane wants them to move away from flash and on toward substance. That means, “We’ve got to think differently.”

Bean can be very congenial most of the time, and is unselfish about his own problems when dealing with his daughter, Casey (Kerris Dorsey, who, appropriately, sings the song, The Show,” which, if you remember Bull Durham, is what they call playing in the majors). But he is not above having outbursts of anger. He tosses over his desk at one point because his newly formed team has trouble at the outset meeting his expectations as they must get used to working together. After one loss, he unleashes his anger in the locker room as the team members play music and dance. He rhetorically asks, “You think losing is fun?” He lets them know that the sound of losing is silence, and then he knocks over a table. He is a man on a mission because he feels he was misused in his youth by the standard operating procedures of professional baseball.

In order to make the changes he deems necessary, Beane feels justified in crossing job lines and making his own scouting and managerial decisions. One scout, Grady Fuson (Ken Medlock) is particularly belligerent, and Beane fires him. He wants to sign a catcher, Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), who can’t throw anymore, and turn him into a first baseman, since that position mostly requires catching the ball. Beane puts so much emphasis on getting on base (Hatteberg gets a lot of walks), that he underestimates how difficult it is for the player to learn a new job. He tells Hatteberg, “It’s not that hard,” but one of the coaches, Ron Washington (Brent Jennings) then says, “It’s incredibly hard,” trying to bring Beane back to reality. But, to Beane’s credit, he tells Hatteberg, “we’re gonna’ teach you.” And later, he tells Washington to be encouraging in order to build the new first baseman’s confidence. Beane later tries to improve morale by making sure the players get free soda, and he convinces veteran player David Justice (Stephen Bishop) to be a mentor to the younger team members.

Beane is on the receiving end of the seething, dismissive manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Howe came off a winning season but the team did not win the World Series, and now the players that made Howe become a winner are gone. Despite those facts he wants more than a one-year contract. Beane is not willing to grant that request given that Howe subscribes to the antiquated way of looking at the game. Beane does overstep his jurisdiction by telling Howe who should play at certain positions. When Howe refuses to go along with Beane’s suggestions, Beane trades away the team members Howe won’t put on the bench. From Beane’s standpoint, when those entrenched in their ways won’t consider any alternative ways of acting, he feels he must wield his power to overcome the obstacles to progress.

Beane must endure a great deal of negative feedback from the press and the fans at the beginning of the season as his experiment begins and there are a number of losses. But then the team turns it around. They start a winning a streak. However, because those that worship whatever is in place as opposed to anything new, the baseball establishment, after seven wins in a row, wants to award the praise for the team’s success to Howe for making the best of a bad situation. But Beane does not complain because he is not looking for accolades. He wants to make a difference. He says to Brand, “All I heard was ‘seven in a row.’”

The team goes on to win nineteen consecutive games. The American League record of twenty straight wins seems to be in the bag as the A’s open up an eleven to nothing lead in the next game. Beane, who does not watch the games, and is on the road when he hears the score, decides to turn around and defy any jinx he may have thought he may instill on the team by returning to the stadium to watch the contest. Incredibly, the A’s blow the huge lead, and the game is tied. But, in what seems like an act of vindication, the catcher-turned-first baseman, Hatteberg, who Beane fought to get in the lineup, hits a home run to win the game, and secure the record.

But the record is not enough for Beane. He says to Brand, “it’s fun for the fans. It sells tickets and hot dogs. Doesn’t mean anything.” Brand is astonished since he feels that they have triumphed. Beane says he has been in the game a long time and if they don’t win the last game of the World Series, the old guard, “will erase us. And everything we’ve done here, none of it will matter.” Beane isn’t in it only for glory or money. He wants to make a difference that lasts. If the A’s become champions, “on our budget, with this team, we’ll have changed the game. And that’s what I want. I want it to mean something.”

The A’s do not win the World Series, and Beane is correct in his prediction. The sports press, the owners, and the impressionable fans turn their backs on Beane’s attempts to revolutionize Major League Baseball. They say the wins were a fluke, and that even though the team had a successful season, the general manager’s model is flawed and unsustainable. But, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, John Henry (Arliss Howard) doesn’t think so. Beane visits him in Boston, and Henry points out to Beane that even though the A’s lost their stars, “you won more games without them than you did with them.” And, the A’s won as many games as the New York Yankees at a far lower cost. He says that all the teams should be adopting Beane’s plan, or else, “they’re dinosaurs,” implying they are waiting for extinction to kick in. He also provides the theme of the film when he connects Beane’s difficult struggle to anyone bucking entrenched institutions. Henry states, “whether it’s the government or a way of doing business, or whatever it is,” those in power feel threatened by change. They are worried about “losing their jobs,” and “the way they do things,” most likely because they are not strong enough to be flexible in order to adapt, even though new ways work better than the old ones.

Henry offers Beane a huge contract that would make him, as Brand says, the highest paid GM in baseball history. But, Beane turns it down, because he wants to continue his efforts without money being the incentive for his efforts. When Beane felt that he had failed to accomplish what he set out to do, Brand shows him footage of a 240-pound catcher who was usually scared to run to second base after getting a hit because he was so heavy. But, on one occasion the player gets a hit and rounds the bag. Just as he feared, he falls down, and looks devastated. What he didn’t know was that he hit a home run. Brand states the obvious, calling it a metaphor for Beane’s situation, which the general manager gets. The thrust is Beane isn’t recognizing what he has accomplished.

The closing notes state that the Boston Red Sox won the World Series the next year based on the model that Beane championed. As Henry said, “the first guy through the wall” of established prejudice always gets bloodied. The movie argues that those who have the courage to fight are worthy of our praise.

The next film is Selma.