A Whole New Ballgame

See the resemblance? No? I didn't either, but apparently the studios deemed Brad Pitt's visage a carbon copy of the real life protagonist he plays in Moneyball, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane. I get it though. If you're going to name the title of your movie MoneyBall, which has about the same sex appeal as a gluten free cookie, you have to throw out the biggest piece of bait ever to have graced the silver screen: Mr. Jolie, eerrr, Brad Pitt.

Moneyball is based off the best selling 2003 book titled, Moneyball by Michael Lewis. In it, he chronicles the financially troubled Oakland A's and their progressively thinking general manager Billy Beane, as they try to keep up with the Joneses aka the New York Yankees. Unable to compete financially and geographically with the big market teams, Beane seeks out an advantage that is not hijacked by the size of a franchise's bank account (it's like shopping in Neiman Marcus without a black AmEx).

From the recommendation of his then assistant general manager Paul Depodesta, they turn to an obscure and controversial use of analysis known as Sabermetrics. Essentially, it is predicting the likelihood of a player's ability to help his team score runs, rather than how the player performed as an individual. After all, it's about the final score and not whether A. Rod hit a grand slam or not. Think of Billy Bean as one of those women in TLC's Extreme Couponing, where it's all about bargain shopping. This of course was considered sacrilege as the methodology for evaluating players for over one hundred years had been purely about what was observed out on the field. How fast? How strong? Look at those arms! All things that are observable but definitely subjective.

I have high hopes for Moneyball and can't wait to hear your comments and reviews of the movie. Or Brad Pitt (but not really).