They’ve never won a World Series, but as “Major League,” “Bull Durham,” “The Bad News Bears” and many other beloved movies have shown, the number of championships won by the heroes does not determine the quality and worthiness of a sports film. And they did it all despite consistently having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. Oakland has never advanced to the World Series under Beane, but the A’s had a winning record in eight straight seasons from 1999-2006, including four consecutive trips to the playoffs and five postseason appearances in the span of seven years. One of the loudest criticisms of “Moneyball” as a book and as a movie is that Beane and the A’s “never won anything,” but that misses the mark on two different levels. “Moneyball” the movie is more a character study of Beane - including his brief and forgettable stint with the Twins - wrapped around a beginner’s guide to sabermetrics, all told through the story of the A’s 2003 season.
“Moneyball” the book was about the rise of statistical analysis in baseball and one team’s attempt to overcome their significant financial disadvantage by embracing the approach that legendary baseball writer and Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) member Bill James long ago coined “sabermetrics,” with Beane’s story serving as a through-line. And they created a movie that mainstream audiences wanted to see, as “Moneyball” grossed $20.6 million on opening weekend and has a 94 percent “fresh” rating on movie review website Rotten Tomatoes. Not only did director Bennett Miller and writers Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian transform a relatively action-starved book about concepts and statistics and innovation into a compelling narrative, they brought characters both real and imagined to life on screen as charming, smart, funny and flawed. In fact, my skepticism remained even after plans to adapt the book into a film were announced and one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Brad Pitt, signed on to play Beane. I read “Moneyball” as soon as it came out in 2003, re-read it a few years later, and have looked back at certain key passages since then, but at no point did Michael Lewis’ best-selling book about the Oakland A’s and their general manager Billy Beane strike me as potential movie material.
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