What is the point of the movie MoneyBall?
I just got home from watching it and I am feeling a bit ticked off. I understand what the movie was about, but I am having a hard time figuring what our reaction is supposed to be.
I knew the basic plot before I entered the theater, since it is in every review. Brad Pitt as Billy Bean, general manager of the low budget Oakland Athletics, creates a winning ball club by finding cast off players who play an unglamorous game of attrition of drawing walks, wearing down pitchers by throwing extra pitches and not taking chances by trying to steal bases. The choice of this type of player is based on statistical analysis. The picture does not mention it, but statistical analysis of baseball has become its own field, sabermetrics. Bean is shown to trade and hire the players as if they are so many chess board pieces.
So what are we supposed to get excited about? The camera angles shifts constantly, with no shot lasting more than 30 seconds, having the effect of distancing us from the characters. I found it really hard to feel sympathetic toward Pitt’s character. Bean says that he is in the game to get it played right, which is apparently to treat everyone like a statistic. The picture implies at the end that other clubs now apply the same techniques pioneered in Oakland, so the A’s are back to having losing records. I come back to my original question. How are we supposed to react?
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7 Answers
I think it’s a movie for people who like baseball and baseball statistics. My husband will probably love it. In fact, he’ll probably be mentally fact-checking the movie the entire time.
I haven’t seen the film and baseball bores me to tears but the film got good reviews in Rotten Tomatoes. It has a good cast but I probably won’t go to see it.
( SPOILER ALERT )
I think the point is to prove that in the world of baseball, a team does not have to be mega expensive to get wins. Bean’s team became an underdog when his best players got bought and no money to buy expensive athletes so he adapted a formula to even the odds. I don’t think Bean was looking for symphaty. He knows baseball is a great sport but its way of doing business could be quite cruel to any athlete who loves the game yet unable to deliver the goods. They are traded or terminated. The game show must go on.
Also, I think we should not be cynical about the art of statistics as treating humans like chess pieces. It’s just a way of seeing things and there’s nothing evil about it. I actually liked the way they portrayed Bean’s character. He is not one to dramatize his feelings. It was clear to me he hates hurting a player’s feeling for any reason other than when the player is making fun of a game loss.
But someone’s gotta do it. Hire and fire for the sake of the team and the singular goal of winning. What was Tom Hank’s character in A League of their Own said? There is no crying in baseball.
What are we suppose to be excited about? Everything or nothing. It’s your call.
This movie suffers for not having an ending where the A’s win the World Series. They try to sponge off the fact the Boston Red Sox won 2 years later using the A’s techniques, but that falls flat.
The point of the movie?
Bean changed baseball, a game that has been around for 150 years.
Bean mentions that, if his team didn’t win it all, their strategy would be dissed and rejected. It was, for a bit.
Beans struggle to push forward his plan is an amusing story.
It is a David vs.Goliath story.
It is an inspirational story of the success of out-of-the-box thinking.
You may have had to be a bit of a basebsall nerd to have enjoyed it more. Billy Bean’s approach was revolutionary to the game.
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