Moneyball (2011)

With today being the official start of the MLB Baseball season for 2014, I decided to review some baseball movies. 

 

“How can you not get romantic about baseball?” – Billy Beane

Number of Times Seen – 2 (19 Dec 2011 and 30 Mar 2014)

Brief Synopsis – The true story of a baseball team General Manger who tried to think of a better way to win games…and succeeded

My Take on it – Moneyball is a movie based on a book that I happen to know quite a lot about eventhough I’ve never read it.

For over at least 30 years, I have been an avid player/manager of fantasy baseball. It’s a game where each player chooses a roster of baseball players from any team and gets points for numerous categories based on how each player performs. As a kid, we needed to scour the standings in the paper every day to calculate out scores, but with the invent of the internet, it has become much easier since there are a lot of sights that do all the calculations for you.

Due to this love, I have never really been a fan of any particular team, but rather a fan of the game and the players themselves since each team is an eclectic sum of players from lots of different teams.

The way to win this game is to know your players’ stats and to “draft” the right team.

Billy Beane was the first Major League General Manager to start looking at different stats than most GM’s and scouts were trained to look at.
This method of his (based on the writings pf Bill James)changed the way every team started looking at their players because he was able to show that player potential is more important than previous expectations based solely on stats related to pure hits.

I’m not the biggest fan of Brad Pitt, but he is perfect as Beane and he was so keen n getting this movie made that he is also one of the Producers.

For fans of baseball, this movie is lots of fun to watch. For those of you who don’t know baseball so well, this movie could possibly give you a better understanding of how the game works.

Bottom Line – Great baseball movie for those who love the sport and for those who don’t it’s an inspirational story of perseverance against all odds.  Brad Pitt is great here. Highly recommended!

Rating – Oscar Worthy

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