Money Ball the movie

I would have seen it already, but I didn't feel I would be doing the subject matter justice by paying full price, so I have to wait for the weekend "before noon" half-price discount.

 

A person after my own heart.

AMC up here charges $6.00 for screenings before noon on the weekends.

And the NYT liked it as well:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/movies/brad-pitt-in-moneyball-by-bennett-miller.html

So the top three films HC & I want to see are "Moneyball", "Drive" and "Contagion"

Sure beats most of the crap from the summer movies

 

Moneyballmania on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=09-23-2011
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/22/140629778/brad-pitt-moneyball-life-and-the-stalkerazzi

 

I discovered last night that a guy I know got the part of Grady Fuson, who is supposed to be the anti-Moneyball guy in the front office.
Kenny Medlock, he was a high school star in the 60s and injuries KO'd him in the minors. He's been in a bunch of baseball-based movies. I discovered it watching "Brewster's Millions" last night in which Medlock was the big hitter on the Yankees. He was also the Twins bench coach in "Major League: Back to the Minors." Cool guy.
Now, I might be more intrigued to see this movie. It's not one I was planning to rush to the theater to see.

 

A couple of other thoughts. I don't think they are massive spoilers, but if you want to know nothing, don't keep reading:









* I thought the scene at Hatteberg's house was very well done. It might not accurately reflect how business gets done in baseball, but I thought it necessarily humanized a baseball player. I think that a lot of casual viewers think of ballplayers as millionaires who have it made. The scene showed Hatteberg as a guy with a wife, a child, and no job, waiting for something to happen. I think, particularly in the post-recession economy, it was something that viewers can really relate to. I believe that Beane and Wash walk out, and Hatteberg and his wife share a quiet, wordless hug. I thought it was a terrific moment in the movie and a good job by Chris Pratt, showing some versatility from his more famous role as a lovable buffoon.

* There was a scene that didn't seem to fit, where Beane goes in the clubhouse and throws stuff around and yells at the players for partying after a loss. This would seem to go against the "Moneyball" philosophy, that it doesn't matter if a guy gets drunk on Saturday night as long as he gets on base on Sunday. He ends up trading away Jeremy Giambi the next day for being a poor influence. I looked it up and he was hitting .274/.390/.471 at the time of the trade. In the movie, the DePodesta character begs Beane not to make an emotional decision, but Beane forges ahead anyway.

I'm not exactly sure what the sequence was meant to illustrate. My wife thought it was supposed to show that, yeah, it's more science than people thought, but there's still a little bit of art to it. And it's still a game played by humans. I think you could also interpret it, from a screenplay standpoint, as necessary to show that Beane was the brains behind the operation, not his sidekick. Because, otherwise, I think the movie dangerously paints Beane as just the Wizard of Oz and DePodesta as the man behind the curtain.

 

All the more interesting that DePodesta is the one guy who didn't want his name used in the movie.

 

Paul DePodesta, I swear, didn't want his name used because Jonah Hill is fat. Pretty insecure, if you ask me. I suspect he hated the contrast between Beane, being played by Brad Pitt, and him, being played by Jonah Hill. I suspect he didn't like what it seemed to indicate.

 

The spin now is that he begged out before he even knew Hill was attached. But I agree with you.

 

Saw the movie last night. It was entertaining, probably more to people who are casual baseball fans who didn't spot all the inaccuracies.

A couple things I thought were strange:

* The movie made it sound like Beane was unfamiliar with the concept of on-base percentage until Jonah Hill explained it to him. I doubt there were any GMs in 2002 who didn't understand OBP. People were talking about how one of the keys to the Yankees historic season in 1998 was their ability to draw walks and tire the pitchers. And the reason players like Hatterberg and Jeremy Giambi were undervalued wasn't because OBP was unknown it was because they sucked defensively.

* Bradford, Justice, and Hatteberg were the only players that got more than a mention in the film. Their big three of Mulder, Zito, and Hudson got less than that - not a single reference to them.

* Interesting how Bean does not watch the games. This seems to be the reason the A's are no longer a winning team - he relies entirely on the statsheet. I'm sure Red Sox fans are glad he didn't accept the job with them after the 2002 season. Beane in Boston - most likely no world championship in 2004 and 2007.

 

I saw it today, enjoyed the hell out of the movie, but leaned over to my wife halfway through and whispered "He also had three of the most talented starters in the American League at the time -- makes it a hell of a lot easier."

 

I think the Big 3 went a combined 65-19 that year. For all the talk about undervalued assets etc Beane probably could have followed his scout's advice and ended up with the same record.

 

Saw the movie today. As someone who has also read the book, I enjoyed it. I thought there were a ton of similarities to the book.

Granted, I didn't like Hill playing Depodesta, and I there were some cheesy parts (the whole thing about players paying for pop was dumb). As with all movies, it was catered to the lowest common denominator, so true baseball fans were going to have issue with certain aspects of it.