Not even the tiny portable DVD player—accompanied with cheap 10-dollar ear buds—could defer the emotion I felt while watching Moneyball for the first time. After the screen went black and the credits rolled, I simply said to myself, “Wow.”
Moneyball is the true story of Billy Bean, the Oakland A’s general manager (played by Brad Pitt) and the A’s baseball team going through the grueling baseball season and offseason. Moneyball is more about what goes on inside Major League Baseball offices, the analysis and theory of what makes a good ball player, than what happens on the field. The story follows Billy and the struggling A’s trying to outwit and outsmart much wealthier teams like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. The opening foreshadows so much the themes of the movie. The first thing on screen is a quote, “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life.”— said by Mickey Mantle, a famous Yankees player from the 50’s and 60’s. The quote shows the internal struggle that people have with things that they love, but can’t seem to figure out. Following the Mickey Mantle quote are highlights from the American League Division elimination game in October of 2001, an image flickers across the screen:
New York Yankees
$114,457,768
Vs
$39,722,689
Oakland Athletics
From the opening, we see the difference between teams and the money that they have to spend. Then we are introduced to Billy Bean, who sits alone in an empty stadium, listening to the game on the radio. In the Disney channel version, the underdog A’s would beat a Yankees team whose payroll more than doubles theirs. But this isn’t the Disney channel version. Billy Listens to his team lose. The question throughout the movie is how can a team like the A’s even compete with the rich teams? A question that hits home when the A’s lose two of their best players to the deep pockets of the Yankees and Red Sox. Billy soon realizes that he needs more money to a put a winning team on the field, money that the team does not have.
Billy meets young Peter Brand, played brilliantly by Jonah Hill, in a meeting with the Cleveland Indians. Peter introduces a new way of thinking and seeing the game of baseball, using math equations to evaluate baseball players. Billy buys Peter from the Indians and they begin to shake up the team. They recruit new players and go against everything that the traditional scouts say. They have their unconventional team, much to the disappointment of the scouts and manager. The movie shows the ups, and mostly downs, of the beginning of the season. Coaches, scouts, fans, and local radio are all blaming Billy on the team’s losses and mishaps. Nothing is going well and they aren’t winning. Finally, because the equation starts winning or just because of luck, they start winning. Six in a row. Nine in a row. Fourteen in a row. The team battles against history, going up against some of the all-time great teams for most consecutive wins in a season, and after that, a run at the playoffs. Some regard Billy as an innovator, others as a crazy general manager who won’t last another year in the big leagues. But the movie paints him as a man who loves the game of baseball. A man who hates losing, more than he loves winning.
Moneyball is about thinking differently, and adapting to an unfair game. It is much more than just a sports movie. It is about the internal struggle of doing something you love. Working at what you love is not always easy, and if it were, maybe you wouldn’t love it as much. The losses make you gain perspective, and the difficult times make you grow. Moneyball shows the struggle that is baseball. Moneyball is emotional and romantic—not rom-com romantic, but working at the thing you love romantic. As we are reminded when Billy asks a few times throughout the movie, “How can you not be romantic about baseball?”
