"Moneyball" Takes A Solid Swing For The Fences

Editor's Note: Burnsville Patch offers a movie review, published each weekend. Check back next week for Patch commentary on the latest films to hit the silver screen.

“Moneyball” tells the story of one-time Minnesota Twin Billy Beane, a former first round draft pick who is good-looking enough to have Brad Pitt play him in a movie. Beane tries to re-invent how baseball front offices think and act as general manager of the small-market Oakland Athletics, who fight to compete with big payroll teams like the New York Yankees.

The movie picks up in 2001, when the Oakland A’s finished 102-60, but lost their top three players to free agency and bigger markets. The scouting staff wants to find suitable replacements for the lost players, but Beane gives up traditional scouting methods in favor of a Sabermetrics system (analysis of baseball through math and statistics) to find cheaper and undervalued players.

Beane is assisted by Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill), a Yale economics grad that he hires away from Cleveland.

The changes ruffle the feathers of established baseball scouts and manager Art Howe (played by Oscar winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman), but prove to be effective. The A’s would go on to win 103 games and win 20 straight games, the longest streak in American League history before losing to the Minnesota Twins.

Sounds like a relatively straightforward tale, right? Nevertheless, Hollywood took some creative liberties that make this movie less than convincing for a baseball fanatic, presumably the film’s target audience. Let’s begin with Brand, a character who is loosely based on Paul DePodesta. In the movie, Brand is as a timid misfit who views baseball from a statistical background. In reality, DePodesta was a baseball and basketball player at Harvard. In the movie, Beane bought Brand from Cleveland for the 2002 season. However, in reality DePodesta joined the team in 1999 as a promotion before the team lost their top three stars.

For a big sports fan like myself, these inaccuracies made me scratch my head.

There are also a few moments that fly in the face of all I know about the baseball business. The movie later shows Beane and former Twin Ron Washington, who is now the manager of the Texas Rangers, meeting with at the home of former catcher Scott Hatteberg about playing first day for Oakland. This type of meeting would never happen in reality as teams would go through an agent, not the player. It made a good scene in the movie and its trailer, but would never happen in real life.

Then there’s the issue of timeliness. Under Beane, the A’s won 96 games in 2003, 91 in 2004, 88 in 2005 and 93 in 2006, when they upset the Twins 3-0 in the American League Division Series before being swept by the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series. However, the A’s never made it to the World Series and have not been back to the playoffs since 2006. They are just , which detractors of Beane and Sabermetrics aren’t exactly upset to see.

The movie is based on a book that came out in 2003 — “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis. The movie might have been more relevant during a time when the team was playing well, instead of being 20 games out of first place.

 Nitpicking aside, the movie does a good job of showing a different side of baseball, where the players don’t always hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth inning or make the game-saving catch.

Sports fans will like the movie more than their non-sports brethren, but it will appeal to both.

GRADE B: The movie misses hitting a home run, due to some creative liberties, but is a solid triple with good performances from Pitt and Hill.

Also opening this week “Abduction,” (starring Taylor Lautner and Lily Collins) “Dolphin Tale” (starring Harry Connick Jr. and Morgan Freeman) and “Killer Elite” (starring Jason Statham and Clive Owen).

Opening next weekend – “50/50,” “Courageous,” “Dream House” and “What's Your Number?”

For a complete listing of local movie times, click here.